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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?"
I wouldn't count on that seeing as just a few days ago IBM reported that it isn't doing as good as they hoped it was. Their income came out much lower then expected.
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."
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/
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
And they'll open-source Java. And everyone will start coding their applications for the java virtual machine, and Microsoft will be like "shit!" and WINE will be like "okay, we can go home" and we'll be like "look, C#, it's not that I don't love you. But I'm not in love with you."
fourth-quarter 2002. You heard it here first!
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.
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.
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.
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!
linux-kernel.tk = goatse, you have been warned.
>>"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 ---
IBM doesn't need to merge with Sun to be bigger than MS - they already are.
... there is simply no comparison.
They earn more money than MS, they have more employees, located in more countries, sell more products
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.
I thought that I recalled the name David Berlind from somewhere. It was an article I read over at The Register about one of the most clueless half-witted tech articles ever written. The register article is here and the original ZDNet article is here. Both make for very amusing reading.
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
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.
IBM, do you?
DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT OFFTOPIC!
I would say it's no more than 50/50 that this merger actually goes through. In the current post-Enron climate, all allegations of corporate wrongdoing are being taken VERY seriously.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
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