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Mark Everett Hall

Sanity as a Service

A Blue Sun is a black day for IT

14 comments

TAGS:IBM, IBM-Sun merger, Sun Microsystems
IT TOPICS:Development, Hardware, Management, SaaS & Cloud Computing, Software

The story first reported in the Wall Street Journal that IBM is talking to Sun Microsystems about a potential acquisition has promoted some commentators to tout the benefits of such a merger. Our own Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols made the best case for an IBM-Sun wedding.

Me? I'm against it.

Granted, I do not own any of Sun's stock, so I'm not one of the many stockholders desperate to unload shares at a near 100% premium. Nor am I Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO, desperate to find a strategy to "save" the company, even if he has to make it disappear inside IBM.

Full disclosure: I worked at Sun between 1985-1990 and co-wrote the first book on the company and so am not completely objective. Nonetheless, it's more than nostalgia that concerns me about this proposed takeover.

Sun has many assets--Java, Solaris, MySQL and more--that IT shops depend on. (And it has just packaged them in an aggressive way to exploit the growing cloud computing market.) IBM has serious interest in only one Sun technology, Java, and it will likely strip away many of Sun's Java tools and push everyone toward its own, forcing unwanted change into IT development plans.

Solaris would die a quick death. IBM would migrate users to AIX. While not the end of the line for Unix, per se, a Unix world without Solaris is a greatly diminished one. It would also force many IT operations to consider massive and expensive transitions to new a operating system environment.

MySQL would languish. IBM is fully committed to DB2. It will keep MySQL alive, if only to cherry pick users for migration to DB2. But I doubt it will do much with it except to keep the database on life support.

I know that Sun's in trouble. It has never fully recovered the dot-bomb debacle. (Remember: "We put the dot in dot com.") But in addition to an excellent technology portfolio, the company does generate cash. Its fiscal 2008 revenues were nearly $13.8 billion and it pocketed a modest profit. Even during this miserable recession it has generated more that $6 billion in revenue for the first half of its fiscal 2009. Sun also has about $3 billion in the bank. Maybe I'm a bit simple-minded, but what kind of lame management team can't make that into something sustainable over the long haul?

Even CIOs who don't use Java, run Solaris or any other Sun-branded product benefit from the company's existence. Sun pressures its competition on price and inspires competitors to be more innovative through its technology development. Removing Sun from the industry's list available options hurts all IT in a serious way.

I don't think Sun should be looking for new merger partners. It should look for new management leaders.

IBM buying Sun?

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New Management!

Submitted by Steven on March 25, 2009 - 11:38 A.M.

It may be too late, but I agree completely with Mark. Sun has needed new leadership for years. Their problems have not been products and operations, but rather terrible marketing and sales strategy execution. Due to nine years of annual reorganizing they've created a Lifo culture where politics rides supreme over performance. The result is too many people are spending half their year positioning for their next job in the next reorg. wave vs. leading the effort to execute. The result is a constant wake of unaccountability throughout the organization. Without leaders in the same roles for 2-3 years min. you aren't ever able to weed out non-performers and cultivate true performers. What has happened to Sun is that they've created too heavy of a dependence on ill-equiped partners to market their brand and Fifo personnel from the 90's internet order taking boom lacking the skills/talent/drive to turn the ship around.

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It could be easily prevented

Submitted by miami web design on March 23, 2009 - 4:04 A.M.

It could be easily prevented by putting appropriate terms in the contract. I mean sure IBM wouldn't mind signing a contract that they won't stop developing smaller features for the next 5-10 years.

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Mark asks: "Maybe I'm a bit

Submitted by Anonymous on March 21, 2009 - 4:10 P.M.

Mark asks: "Maybe I'm a bit simple-minded, but what kind of lame management team can't make that into something sustainable over the long haul?"

A. The kind of lame management Sun has had since Scott handed the keys to Jonathan.

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Don't forget STK

Submitted by Anonymous on March 21, 2009 - 1:01 P.M.

Sun bought StorageTek and still supports tape and virtual tape subsystems. IBM will get the revenue from all those large shops running the former StorageTek hardware until they can squash that product line or blend it in with their own.

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IBM takeover Sun

Submitted by Anton Loeffen on March 21, 2009 - 9:41 A.M.

I fully agree.
And here's my opinion: Blue ocean instead of big blue!
http://petto.typepad.com/antonloeffen/2009/03/blue-ocean-instead-of-big-blue.html

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MySQL and Java are safe. The rest...?

Submitted by Jon on March 20, 2009 - 7:42 A.M.

No way is MySQL in danger. The installed base is just too large. IBM is not foolish enough to risk alienating that user base. The code isn't the asset - it's open source, it can be forked independent of IBM. The companies that are using it... THAT is the asset that doesn't appear on a balance sheet.

Java is a safe.

Netbeans? That competes with Eclipse, but IBM doesn't make money there, either. They may let NB die on the vine, or spine it off with a million $ or two behind it to stand on it's own. It isn't strategic.

The good, strategic products at risk here are Glassfish and Solaris. Both are excellent, but both require a lot of care and feeding from Sun to survive. What will IBM's commitment be for these products?

My organization was just starting to evaluate Open Solaris as a standard to replace our haphazardly installed various Linux distros across our data center. That's on hold now because of this news.

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I'd hate to see Solaris go

Submitted by Anonymous on March 20, 2009 - 7:07 A.M.

I'd hate to see Solaris go away, I really think it's one of the most scalable OS' out there. My main concern though is Netbeans, will we all be forced onto Eclipse? Eclipse isn't bad, and was my preferred for years, but, pardon the pun, it's been eclipsed by Netbeans as far as usefulness goes.

MySQL. Well, the sooner that goes away, the better. I'm not a fan. I'll take DB2 or PostGreSQL over it any day.

Java seems pretty safe, since IBM is the other big champion.

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I respectfully disagree about MySQL

Submitted by Cesar Rojas on March 19, 2009 - 8:53 P.M.

I used to work for Informix right before the IBM acquisition and I was concerned about what would happen to Informix because of the DB2-centric focus but at the end the Informix user community heavily influenced the IBM Information Management Team and now those users are enjoying a great product like IDS 11.5. I believe something similar will happen to MySQL where the community will heavily influenced IBM to make this a very successful product.

I also believe IBM will monetize this opportunity better than Sun.

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That was a great book, Mark!

Submitted by Mac McCarthy on March 19, 2009 - 2:31 P.M.

Ah, that's right - you wrote that book about Sun, "Sunburst: The Ascent of Sun Microsystems." I read that back when I was editor and publisher of SUnWorld.com -- great book, Mark! Very interesting, very flavorful!

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Or Solaris would kill AIX?

Submitted by Edmond Dantès on March 19, 2009 - 12:14 P.M.

Should this be a concern? Both Solaris and AIX are System V based operating system that result from various unification efforts of Unix. This would be final unification that should have happened a long time ago anyway.

In final analysis this move is good for Sun as its R&D arm becomes financially viable with IBM's support.

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