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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?"
For those who have not already checked it out, IBM's little tank simulation program for teaching java, RoboCode has hit version 1.0
http://www.kubuntu.org/
There would be a *huge* culture clash trying to combine these two companies... much more than ever will happen with HPaq.
IBM is a long way off from all white shirts all the time days, I'd suggest that Sun is much more conservative than IBM from a business perspective these days... Sure there are pockets of IBM that are still starched *way* too much, but overall they're quite innovative and nimble.
Sun, while it pushes Java hard, it quite a proprietary company (note that Java is not open source), and IBM on the other hand, is willing to get into about any business that it feels like it can get a foothold in, and see what works out. It's services folks are often implementing all kinds of non-IBM technologies. Sun would *never* do that.
I don't see it working... even if IBM is the acquirer, the culture mishmash would be a disaster.
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
While I don't think Sun would martyr itself just to challenge Microsoft, it's a good possibility that IBM could try to buy more Java rights or buy the technology outright from Sun, if a merger isn't in the cards.
Java is a innovative (and I use this term judiciously) technology which Microsoft has not been able to successfully clone, copy, or kill, yet. It is Sun's current anchor for relevancy amongst its main competitors. I can't see Sun letting go Java without a lot of compensation or litigation.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
There you have it. Sun is in direct competition with IBM on three fronts (hardware, operating system, and software), and I'm sure Ellison could care less who buys his product, as long as it's selling. Obviously IBM wants some control over Java, and Sun isn't playing nicely. I'm kind of on the edge of my seat myself.
IBM is already seriously in bed with SUN: they fab most of SUN's serious chips, including CPUs and are key to SUN's success. So IBM has a heck of a lot of visibility into SUN's future prospects and can make an educated guess on whether or not they want to acquire SUN.
Remember Cyrix? IBM used to fab their chips and there was some speculation on whether IBM would buy them and come into the x86 market. But IBM had visibility into Cyrix's future *and* visibility into AMD's. So was it a good decision to pass on buying Cyrix? I think so.
My point is that IBM could buy SUN if they wanted and if they thought it would be helpful to them. But my view is that IBM is deemphasizing hardware and investing in services, so it's unlikely they'll drop the cash into buying a hardware company.
Microsoft is only bigger in market capitalization : IBM is the larger company, and has been for some time. In any case obviously you're trolling as generally IBM targets a very different audience than Microsoft (computing is a massive, and very disparate, field).
Having said that, mergers and acquisitions are hilarious, and it's a riot seeing how upper-management of very large organizations fools the public into believing that they "Create value" worth their enormous compensation packages : The market goes through a flurry of mergers and acquisitions when that fad is big, and then afterwards they turn ship and move into divestitures and spin-offs that'll "recover focus" and "capitalize on success", afterwhich they return to mergers and acquisitions. It really is laughable from a distance, but up close everyone buys it and believes it.
Huh?
.Com.
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IBM is leading the market, and has a substantial share for several years. Remember, IBM is the Dot in
http://serverwatch.internet.com/news/2002_03_11
"IDC believes that the current competition for the number one spot in the Unix market will continue, and 2001 saw a positioning shift among the top players. Fourth quarter 2001 was the first time since 4Q98 that IBM took the top spot for worldwide Unix market share. Big Blue's 26.9 market share gave it a marginal edge over Sun Microsystems' 26.8 percent. Hewlett-Packard ended the quarter close behind with 25 percent market share."
What would this mean to Java? Would the linux-loving Big Blue company open up Java? What about Tomcat and JBoss? Would IBM make WebSphere and Visual Age the ultimate in J2EE enviroments?
It would be interesting to see how IBM would handle Java if it did buy Sun. It almost seems like it'd knock some part of open source (the Java source and the proprietary webcontainer and IDE IBM sells).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
An IBM/Sun merger just doesn't make any sense. IBM has a successful Unix division using a completely different CPU and completely different OS. If Solaris/Sparc had significant advantages OR disadvantages to AIX/Power, then maybe. Don't forget that IBM is absolutely notorious for not likeing one division canabalizing the sales from another. Heck, that's one of the factors that led to the clone market and IBM's unwillingness to innovate in the pc arena for years. So what are they going to do if then acquire Sun. Which platform do you push? What do you say to customers who are trying to buy a "IBM" solution? Nope, just a big mess.
One could also imagine scenerios where Sun customers would jump ship, since Sun has long been viewed as the anti-IBM (young and spritely vs old and lethargic). If IBM bought Sun, how many potential Sun people would look elsewhere (read PC's w/ Windoze/Linux) specifically because they DON'T want to tie themselves to IBM.
The Compaq/DEC merger was fine since Compaq for the most part didn't play in DEC's sandbox. The HP/Compaq merger has a chance (as far as Unix goes) since PA/RISC is moribund and so is Alpha. No such situation here though.
Also, one would have to imagine that the govt would have a VERY close look at any such merger, since the combined companies would own over half the Unix market and the feds are always on IBM's *ss about any type of monopolistic activities.
IBM/Sun - Just say NO.
*drool*
I can just imagine it: A company whose products are great (not just passable or good), well integrated, works against Microsoft, and has embraced (not extended) the open source ideal.
The dramatist in me would love to see it, if only for the epic struggle between two modern giants. But the pragmatist sees trading one monopoly for another, even if the new monopoly does have better products and some form of open-source.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
There would be no advantage whatsoever for Apple in a merger with IBM or anyone else, and it would likely be counterproductive. Apple's culture is too different from the rest of the industry. And IBM has not been successful with hardware on the desktop, nor are they very interested in it.
I understand your desire for competition to Microsoft, but another monopoly is not the answer. It is important that there are smaller companies like Apple that try different things. Computing should not be reduced to a two-party system between AIX and Windows.
Lies about crimes
Clearly this is not the first to make this interesting observation. I have heard it said other places as well; IBM is on a sub death watch.
.NET, Sun has no real way to make or reinforce core product sales thru Java. In fact, Sun as a software services company is very week, so there is no core value there either once Sparc sales take the big dive south.
.NET to leverage itself as an application services business as well as reinforce the sales of it's .NET "client" and "server" platform, by making the language standard but not the platform. This will steel potential revenue directly from IBM.
Consider, how much of a future is there really for selling sparc boxes? Unlike Microsoft with
Now IBM is the one company well positioned to take advantage of Java. If they could gain control of it, they could do the one thing Sun cannot; make it into a real standard. The problem Sun faces is that, unlike Microsoft, which choose to hang their valuable trademark on the "whole" (.NET) rather than C#, Sun trademarked the language rather than Sun NetOne,
Hence, it's painless for Microsoft to make C# a "pseudo" standard, but since Sun licensed and trandemarked on the language itself, they are stuck.
Microsoft can use
So IBM waits. The sparc business dies off, and it can pick up Sun for a mear $100 million or so. Very cheap. Then it can do the one thing Sun can't, and make sure Java is everywhere, that it is free, that everything has it. It doesn't need the revenue from Java licenses the way Sun does and will by then, but it needs to establish a platform not controlled by or redirecting revenue into Microsoft.
So if Sun goes under, the world of enterprise computing might finally be free and everyone else benefits, except Microsoft. Not a bad scenareo. Hey, Scott, do you think you can do the world a favor and pull it off soon?
Of course, if Microsoft manages to outbid IBM for the dying Sun or offer them a bridging "deal" like they did to Apple to get Java out of the marketplace, well, that is the day I leave the industry for good.
Please don't ever mention Oracle obtaining Sun again.
Oracle corporation employs programmers which know little-to-nothing nothing at all about the following concepts:
Source Control
Indentation/Formatting
API
Static Linking
Kernels
Filesystems
Debugging
Oracle is a fine database - but it would be worthless if the 5 programmers in the world who understand its source code suddenly died or contracted Alzheimers: which isn't really unlikely considering that they will be getting old long before they can explain that mess to anyone.
Sun saw the light: their days were numbered. Eventually Linux will surpass Solaris in the one remaining area that matters: SMP. After that Sun is in biggo trouble. They are better off grabbing Linux and coaching embrasure of their hardware, Linux software and Java for platform independance. IBM buying them makes sense for IBM because IBM already plays nice with Linux. Oracle buying them will mean that Solaris will become iexorably tangled up with Java and Oracle and turn into a very very nasty mess.
I want to see IBM buy Sun, build a kernel module JVM running at near-compiled speed, and open Java up completely.
Now that would be sweet.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so