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Patrick Thibodeau

D.C.

A pocket guide to IBM's takeover of Sun Microsystems

4 comments

TAGS:enterprise systems, IBM, merger, Sun, Unix
IT TOPICS:Enterprise Software & Services

Here’s how IBM’s (rumored) acquisition of Sun will unfold.

1. IBM and Sun announce planned merger. IBM’s CEO says something like this to the press: ''This is a decisive move that accelerates our strategy and positions us to win." [Carly Fiorina, the chairwoman and CEO of HP in 2001 on the take over of Compaq.]

2. IBM gives strong assurances of product support to Sun customers. These customers don’t want love, they want product roadmaps.

3. IBM gives strong assurances to Java, Open Solaris, MySQL open source development communities that it is committed to open source. Developers don't want love, they want guarantees.

4. Competitors seek to block and delay this merger and appeal to Washington. IBM like AIG is now too big to fail, they argue. Congress holds a hearing or two. Absolutely nothing comes out of any of this.

5. IBM needs to keep Sun's engineering talent. These workers are already on the hunt for VC money.

6. Layoffs, or stealth reductions. Alliance (at) IBM sends out ‘welcome aboard’ letters.

7. Heightened rumor period (usually reaches its crescendo six months into an acquisition) as sales and service forces go into whisper mode.

8. Bearing nondisclosure agreements for customers to sign, IBM discloses support and product strategy to its new Sun customers.

9. Farewell parties are held for technologies being phased out.

10. Scott McNealy can’t help but to start a new company.

IBM buying Sun?

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MySQL has a better chance with IBM

Submitted by Cesar Rojas on March 19, 2009 - 9:21 P.M.

Sun has failed to monetize its $1B MySQL investment primarily because has been extremely stubborn on the kind of users they are going after. They believed that going after Web 2.0 application portals only was sufficient to obtain a desirable ROI. IBM will do a better at MySQL monetization.

IBM can actually position MySQL not as the database for Web 2.0 apps but as a database replacement for IBM competitors in the SMB market. There are millions of applications worldwide that are paying extremely high database premiums. That in this current economic crisis is completely unjustified as many analysts are saying that up to 80% of all applications worldwide are ready for a MySQL migration. So I would only imagine that IBM might want to provide a low cost alternative to Microsoft’s SQL Server and others.

Cost and complexity of the application migration process has been THE impediment to MySQL migration but there are new migration technologies that are really accelerating this process. Analysts are saying that ANTs Software (www.ants.com), my current employer, is the only company able to migrate from database A to database B without the painful/costly job of rewriting the business app and we have customers like Wyndham Hotels to confirm this.

If you are interested in getting more information or a quick briefing, please feel free to contact me at

cesar(dot)rojas(at)ants(dot)com

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Why???

Submitted by Anonymous on March 18, 2009 - 9:17 P.M.

Why has none of Sun's executive team come out to comment on this situation/rumor? The longer they remain hidden in their bunkers the more fear and doubt it places in the minds of Sun's customers. To me, with each passing hour they remain silent is another brick in the foundation that this deal is getting done. If it was just a rumor, don't you think the Sun Executive team would have tried to squash it before it hit the press early this morning?????

The SUN is truly setting on one of the great innovation companies in the tech world...

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IBM keeps managers on board,

Submitted by Anonymous on March 18, 2009 - 6:31 P.M.

IBM keeps managers on board, triples the 6k sun layoffs, including all persons involved in actually supporting things and making them work.

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Sad to see another innovator fall....

Submitted by Gregg Lain on April 2, 2009 - 11:12 P.M.

SGI -> Rackable Systems
Genentech -> Roche
Sun -> IBM
Its sad to see more Silicon Valley innovators falling/merging - that's business and even back in 1998, a friend told me Sun would go the way of SGI. Like SGI, Sun was a great place to work and ignored the growing Wintel monster for too long. Now its also facing the AMD/Intel Linux beastie and its a lot to fight. Sun does build some of the best servers I have ever worked with - Dell's are decent but a distant second...

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