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Is IBM on a Strategic Path to Control Java?
nightspd writes "David Berlind of Cnet has written a series of articles over at ZDNet about IBM's return to market dominance, including this one titled When Will IBM Buy Sun? It's a VERY interesting read and a very interesting predition, and poses a question. With the mega-merger of Compaq and Hewlett-Packard going forward, can we expect other possible mega-mergers down the line in the tech arena? Is a IBM buyout of Sun possible and/or viable?"
As if the FTC/SEC/EU would let that happen... since HP and Compaq effectively decided to self-diminish, the "merger" of the two largest commercial Un*x server companies would probably raise a few eyebrows... something about a Parker Brothers' game, I believe...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
You know, just because Ziff Davis became the media giant it is because of the PC doesn't mean the world revoles around PCs.
Yes IBM does well with the Thinkpad division, and yes I'm sure there are sour grapes over OS/2, but do you think anyone is crying that they're not selling PCs at a profit of 6 cents per machine? They own Lexmark! They own Lotus! They make a fortune selling AS/400s and RS/6000s and Z/90s (if that's what they're called this week).
There is a small tug of war over Java, no denying that, but why would IBM buy Sun other than for their customers? They are two completely different companies in mindset and direction. You think HP and Compaq will be a difficult merger?
There are also Sun's partners to consider. Larry Ellison is not going to like it if Sun buys IBM, since Oracle ties itself so closely to Java these days, and IBM just bought Informix. I would rather see Oracle and Sun merge and split the software division.
Interesting conjecture on the part of the author, but I think it's pretty unlikely.
"All I ever wanted was to see Larry Wall give Bill Gates a Perl necklace."
http://www.eisenschmidt.org/jweisen
If IBM buys Sun and applies its marketing 'EXPERTISE', then we're going
to see the demise of yet another product that 'could have been'. Think OS/2...
As much great technology that comes out of IBM, they always screw it up when
it comes to marketing..
This is pure speculation with no basis in reality. It is bad enough that zdnet rewards writers to fabricate this stuff, why should slashdot repeat it? All this does is reward zdnet by creating more hits for their advertising clients.
Believe nothing -- Buddha
Considering how much money AOL/TW lost, and how painful the HP Compaq merger is becoming, I would think that IBM would want to stay away from mergers for a while.
Gee, IBM wants to take over the computer industry... Stop the presses!
I have news for ZDNet... It is the fiduciary duty of every publicly owned corporation to attempt to gain a monopoly in every market it enters. It is not illegal to have a monopoly, just illegal to take advantage of that monopoly to retain and extend dominance.
It should come as a surprise to no one that IBM is attempting to wring profit out of open source. What else to you expect it to do? IBM does not exist to promote free software. It exists to make money, and if free (beer or speech) software is a way to do that, so be it.
And no, IBM will not be buying Sun any time soon. They have plenty of money dedicated to continuing the improvement of the already quite fine pSeries/RS6k boxes. What do they need to buy Sun for, when they have a perfectly good UNIX box already? What a moron. Buying competition at an inflated price simply to put them out of business would be a silly and stupid move.
SirWired
This is not the first time there has been talk about IBM buying Sun.
AIX (IBM's brand of Unix) has always been the red-headed step child of Unix OSes, lagging far behind Solaris and HP/UX in market share.
IBM has always wanted people to develop applications for AIX and usually resorts to paying ISVs huge sums of money to port their apps to AIX.
Buying Sun just makes sense. You get rid of AIX, which isn't that popular (outside of the scientific computing arena) anyway. You can concentrate the Power architecture R&D on its use in the iSeries 400 (AS/400). You can bring the huge resources of IBM's semiconductor business to bear on making SPARC more competitive on a performance basis.
As for IBM's control of Java, who knows? I think they have been coveting Java for quite a long time now. They would kill for an opportunity to co-opt Java to their own devices, but Sun stands in their way.
IBM would rule the commericial Unix computing market, which is why the FTC/EU would never approve the merger.
It's something to think about, but unlikely to happen.
"I'm not a journalist, but I play one on TV."
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
IBM has been reclaiming control of its destiny since Lou took the reigns a while back. IBM's recent profit warning notwithstanding (who isn't issuing these things right now?), they've been on a road towards success that most other companies can only dream about. They have a strong business and a strong idea of the business that they are in, and I don't currently see them jumping into their longboats to embark on a campaign of Executive Hubris that is threatening the roots of Compaq and HP at this very moment.
Now they are facing a merger between Compaq and HP, and they could probably not be happier with the impending disaster that will arise from it. Sure, the merged company might rival theirs on paper, but such rearward looking statements does little to ensure the financial viability of such a company years down the road. And keen IBM Execs are sure to see this.
I struggle with the article numerous ways, not the least of which is that it is buzzy and hypey and that it utterly disregards the fact that IBM is already a massively dominant force in the industry.
Maybe the fellow is working for Sun, and hopes that some buzz and hype will inflate Sun's stock value and therefore his own.
Like Sun's stock, I ain't buying it.
>>"It's a lot easier to create a natural monopoly by simply selling a better product(ala Microsoft) than to create a monopoly by buying up all of your competitors."
Sorry Sheldon, Microsoft in no way has a superior product. None of it's products are "best of breed". Furthermore, Microsoft illegally created and leverages it's monopoly. It's also continuing to try and grow into other markets by buying other companies. Never forget, Microsoft *never* invents anything, it either steals it or buys it.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
From the article:
t ories/mai n/0,14179,2860394,00.html
"When asked about the desire to own Java, IBM's Director for eBusiness Standards Strategy Bob Sutor said 'I don't know about owning it, but we'd sure like to see it open sourced.'"
I think the author's point in the article is that IBM needs to influence control over Java to gain equal footing opposite Microsoft -- the type of control that would come through a hostile takeover. The author delves into what such a fantasy takeover would entail as an extended metaphor for what kind of control [he believes] IBM could have were Java to become open sourced or a true open standard.
The author continues with this point (open source could essentially get IBM what it'd get with a buyout) in this article, in the same series:
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/s
Very interesting!
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
This reminds me of a number of problem we had with Java API's supplied by IBM (for instance the ones you can download from their website or the ones supplied with WebSphere).
After simply including the API's on our classpath, the Java VM stopped behaving normally. Execution would suddenly jump from one class to the second(!) line of an exception handler in another class. After removing the API's things returned to normal.
I don't know if IBM is planning to buy Sun, but they certainly have their own ideas about Java.
IBM isn't kicking everyone's ass. Their OS's are failing and so their moving to Linux. They are fighting tooth and nail with Sun in the server market; Sun still maintains a lead there. The list goes on. IBM is a very competitive company but isn't kicking everyone's ass.
:) They kick ass; they get repeat business at low cost of aquisition; they are the reason IBM is sinking.
Except for Global Services. GS has the ability to come into an organization and keep on selling IBM goods and services until the customer runs out of money
If IBM buys Sun, then expect Sun to go kaput. ...
IBM has a poor record of acquiring companies.
Look at Rolm, Lotus, etc. Every company that
IBM buys goes belly up. It's just impossible
for any normal company to survive within the
massive bureaucracy of IBM. The best people
leave within a year of the acquisition because
they can't deal with the IBM bullshit
I note that IBM is pretty careful about mergers, actually. The only ones I can think of are Rolm and Lexmark, but they kept the brands separate.
There are some synergies between IBM and Apple. Apple's microprocessor architecture is controlled by IBM/Motorola. And, IBM is a big backer of Palm. I would expect that IBM would buy up Palm before allowing them to disappear. IBM is heavily invested in the Palm architecture as their mobile solution.
I'm not sure that the proposed merger of IBM/Sun/Apple/Palm would be a monopoly. Maybe in the Enterprise space. Certainly not in the handheld or desktop space.
Monopoly or not, the integration problems would be considerable and it would probably suppress innovation across the new divisions.
Too many of you people are too young. You think that MS is and has always been the monopoly that it is. You guys all forget about the IBM monopoly that was. Desktops that cost $5000+, very expensive EVERYTHING... Then competition fixed the problem. If we go back to an IBM controlled monopoly, things will be no better. Hell, in ten years we'll all be 'covertly' using MS software to 'fight' the machine that is IBM.
The players change, but the game? Not so much.