IBM Withdraws $7B Offer For Sun Microsystems, Says NYT

suraj.sun points to a story in the New York Times indicating that the much-rumored merger (or purchase) that would have united Sun with IBM may have dissolved before it began. Excerpting: "I.B.M., after months of negotiations, withdrew its $7 billion bid for Sun Microsystems on Sunday, one day after Sun's board balked at a slightly reduced offer, according to a person close to the talks. The deal's collapse raises questions about Sun's next step, since the I.B.M. offer was far above the value of the Silicon Valley company's shares when news of the I.B.M. offer first surfaced last month. .. Since last year, Sun executives had been meeting with potential buyers. I.B.M. stepped up, seeing an opportunity to add to its large software business, acquire valuable researchers and consolidate the market for larger, so-called server computers that corporations use in their data centers. ... Now, Sun is free to pursue other suitors, including I.B.M. rivals like Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems. Cisco recently entered the market for server computers."

Comments

Re:Just how much is enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

All blu-ray devices include a licensed java virtual machine for running the interactive crap
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Java_software_support

Re:Cisco Sun

[ltmon]

I use (and like) both Solaris and Linux.

I think the "stable" moniker mainly comes from Solaris + Sun hardware, not Solaris as a standalone entity. Tight coupling to SPARC hardware (and Sun-made x86 to a lesser extent) means that Solaris has the ability to take portions of RAM offline if errors are detected, deactivate individual CPU cores or sockets if errors are detected and similar fault monitoring and recovery across the hardware. It's pretty cool stuff really, have a look at it if you get the chance.

Solaris SMF also kicks the ageing init.d method for 6 as far as software fault monitoring and recovery goes IMO.

Of course plenty of consultants have oversold this, deriding other good OSs at the same time, often without any knowledge to back it up.

Re:Stupidity.

[bcrowell]

If you're an executive in a company and the suitor making the offer won't agree to a golden parachute then it doesn't matter to you how much they are offering per share.

According to the article, IBM wasn't refusing to offer them a golden parachute. What it says is that various people at Sun already had contracts with Sun guaranteeing them golden parachutes in the event of a buyout. When IBM worked up all the figures, they realized that the golden parachutes were going to cost more than they'd thought, so they reduced their offer.