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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."
I was looking forward to the merger, actually.
Sun seems to want to hold on for a better bid than IBM's $7 billion, but there's seems to be a hard time justifying much higher of a markup beyond the $6.3 billion it has in market cap. Who wants to bid more?
Uh huh. 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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
But I don't think Apple really wants Sun. Sun seems to be everything Apple isn't. Sun has a lot of corporate customers, not something that Apple really caters to. Java would be a nice acquisition by Apple, but I just can't see them wanting Java for iPhone applications, something that would seem natural if they acquired Sun.
I just think that Sun seems to be everything that Apple has opposed, and acquiring it doesn't seem to make sense. On the other hand, (assuming various regulatory bodies would approve it), MS merging with Sun, or Cisco buying Sun seems to work better.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Cisco + Sun would make more sense. Mostly because there is very little overlap in their actual products but their two lines constantly need to work together. (Our sun servers are connected to Cisco ethernet switches, our SunRays vpn into Cisco vpn concentrators, our Sun Storage is connected to Cisco MDS switches, etc). It would also give Cisco the biggest, baddest InfiniBand switch on the market (and at 110Tbps, its switching capacity totally trashes anything cisco has ever produced).
The biggest problem with the Sun+IBM deal was that there was so much overlap, customers would be left to wonder which product lines would get discontinued. (glassfish vs websphere, solaris vs aix, sparc vs power, sun's servers vs ibm's, storage, tape, etc, etc, etc. )
They think their company is worth a lot more than what the stock market says their shares are worth and a lot more than IBM is willing to pay, and they may very well be right.
Sun owns and is developing a lot of things that have a whole lot of worth and a whole lot of future potential.
If they don't think it's enough, and they won't succeed on their own and generate all that value for their investors, then yes, it makes sense to sell.
If the proceeds from the sale really offset the anticipated worth and provide investors a hefty profit in the here and now, similar to to successful business, then, yes, it's worth it to sell.
Otherwise, if there's any doubt, they have a decision to make, and only time will tell -- but they may have made a good one.
The same old sad refrain, right to the last breath. I have had countless Sun consultants for the best part of ten years telling me that Linux is unstable versus the 'rock solid' Solaris and that no one could ever run anything serious on a x86 system versus SPARC. When I challenge them for specifics they clam up tightly as if saying it should somehow be enough or they retreat by pointing to some exceptionally vague Sun 'studies', again, as if pointing to them is somehow sufficient. Your comment is the same amongst thousands and it's not helping.
Alas, saying it doesn't make it true, and given Sun's current sad state it can't be all that important to people if it's actually true.
Solaris is more stable than Linux.
stable. n. resistant to change of position or condition.
Indeed.
Sometimes, stable is good. I prefer having my house built on stable ground, and I prefer standard libraries to have stable ABIs so I don't have to recompile everything every time a system upgrade blows through. OTOH, "stable" is sometimes a codeword for "sclerotic". I suppose ones view on stability depends on whether one has a direct interest in the stable thing or not.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
It would also aid us in the IT field, as the post-merger IBM would sell Sparc AND POWER hardware, with the option of Solaris or Linux on either one (theoretically), all bundled with IBM's famous support.
The support they just outsourced to India? I'm sure that won't hurt the quality.
Java is poison to Apple. Apple's whole business model is one of OS differentiation. Java promises OS homogenization. Apple has done everything it can to damn Java with faint praise, ensuring its second class status on Mac OS, and complete absence from the iPhone OS.
On the other hand, (assuming various regulatory bodies would approve it), MS merging with Sun, or Cisco buying Sun seems to work better.
Other than it being an excellent opportunity to kill off a Unix vendor, why would MS merge with Sun? Never mind the consequences an MS take-over of Sun would presumably have for Java. Sun being swallowed up by Hewlett-Packard doesn't sound all that good either. Cisco buying Sun has a better ring to it, at least at first glance. I'll take continued diversity on the OS market over consolidation any day.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
stable. n. resistant to change of position or condition.
Hardly - with some of the most innovative and performance raising changes in the last 10 years being developed and released (in opensource format) by Sun, I'll call your bluff and raise you...
So not only are they more stable, but also more innovative...
Thanks for the note, too bad it wasn't accurate.
Dtrace
ZFS
Container/Zone technology
CMT - UltraSparc T1, T2, T2+ and the new Rock CPU to name just a few...
Hmmmm - and have you noticed that the changelog incorporates almost all of these technologies?
I think the poster merely stated the most recent innovations to show ones that the majority of the slashdot posters would be familiar with.
Check out this link, for a list of Sun contributions...
http://mediacast.sun.com/users/pgdh/media/sum_of_parts_v2.8a.pdf
I'll highlight just a few, probably found in your beloved *BSD* as well..
NFS, NIS, XDR, Posix, SVR4, mmap, Streams, ld.so, diskless boot, autofs, rpc, news, abi, xdr, vfs.... /proc, truss, nsswitch, ptools, dynamic kernel, smp, domains, libthread, nis+, vold, jumpstart
hls, mpss, pools, fss, zones, brandz, s8ma, mdb, dtrace, fma, pgrep, smf, mpo, least privelege, zfs
and for additional software contributions...
JAVA, OpenOffice for starters...
Now.. this list is not all inclusive... but I think it shows a more than fair share of technologies, a lot of which are considered to be *common* tools, that would either not be here, or would not be what they are today, without Sun's contributions...
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Doesn't seem to work for me. Every time I have to add a SAN drive to a Linux box (Red Hat), I have to reboot the system. There are a few suggestions on recognizing the drives while the system is live but none have worked so far. We're pretty much resigned to rebooting when adding a SAN drive.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
If true.
And I say that for three very important reasons:
a) IBM was sure to 'consolidate' a great number of things. And I'm sure any remnants of Sun left after this process would have been IBM-ized. And I do say that with a great deal of negative connotation. IBM has a habit of having some great tech, but in many cases doing very dumb things to it to make it annoying to work with. (Exhibit #1 = AIX boxen)
b) Our choices for 'iron' and 'OS' variety in the IT space would have been reduced as I'm sure overalpping server lines would disappear, as well as perhaps an OS (AIX vs. Solaris). Some variety in the I.T. space is most definitely to our advantage as I.T. folks. Of course, pricing competition between rivals is always a good thing, too.
c) Lastly, the most important thing, is that we'd have lost one of the most innovative enterprise I.T. companies ever. Say what you will about their ability to turn it into large $$$, but Sun has come up with some of the most innovative ideas the server-related I.T industry has seen since their inception....and they continue to do so. I think many people lose sight of this as they like to whine about Sun simply because they're a big corporation.
Sun has tons of innovation, a quality pool of software, hardware engineers and community, their servers are really good quality and their move to the storage segment with ZFS is definitely very interesting. Storage might be where they can turn around, they have everything ready to make a splash there. Storage on x86 commodity hardware, including SSD, with 10 GBe, OpenSolaris, ZFS and COMSTAR.
And it would aid the economy in the sense of the two pooling their money, and centralizing their spending.
Seeing as the whole justification of mergers is to "cut costs," I'm pretty sure the combined IBM/Sun would spend less money in fewer places. Centralized, yes. Good for IBM, yes. Good for the broader economy...probably not.
It would also aid us in the IT field, as the post-merger IBM would sell Sparc AND POWER hardware, with the option of Solaris or Linux on either one (theoretically), all bundled with IBM's famous support.
I'm not sure that I'd want that at all. IBM's support is famously expensive. Yes, the big blue army does know how to come through in an emergency, but they charge handsomely for the privilege. And constantly call you to make sure that you have everything from IBM that you could ever want.
IBM owning the rights to Java would work wonders for the Java community, especially in the Linux aspect
Hopefully, they'll accelerate the process that Sun has started and open-source everything. Neither IBM, nor Sun, nor any other company should "own the rights" to anything except the Java name.
and IBM would have probably contributed more to StarOffice/OpenOffice
Good, good...
using some Lotus material.
...whoa, DO NOT WANT!!!! (Yes, I'm a former Notes developer, can you tell?
I was really looking forward to the two becoming one, needless to say, especially for more formidable Microsoft competition (from both a business stance and IT stance).
Before there was Microsoft, there was IBM. Trust me, IBM was no better.
But ah well, IBM withdrew, so It'll just go back to Sun barely remaining a company, and IBM being competition on a fairly peer-to-peer level with them and Microsoft when it comes time to design new network infrastructures. If Red Hat bought Sun, I don't know if it would be as much of a benefit as if IBM and Sun merged, but for Sun anything is better than their current status - I just wish they would have seen that more clearly when IBM offered them a healthy current-economy-sum for their company.
All I hope is that Java, MySQL, OpenOffice, and all of Sun's other initiatives (it's hard to call them products, since Sun can't seem to make money off of them) can find stable homes, either as self-sustaining open-source projects or under companies that won't smother them. IBM does not fit the bill, in my experience (although their work with Eclipse comes closest.)
Sun is a terrific innovator. IBM is a great company. What's not to like? IBM outsources everything that isn't nailed down. They are a global company, not an American company, and they cut staff in the USA while growing elsewhere. Outsourcing is something Sun isn't that good at. They try but their heart's not in it. Keep Sun out of IBM and keep a chunk the the software industry in the USA.
Good god no. Keep IBM well away from that, thanks.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Java promises OS homogenization.
I think Apple can breathe easy: it's promised that for more than a decade and always failed to deliver.
Not HP! Anyone but HP!
.NET running on Windows. And although Linux has finally started to gain some traction on the desktop, that too would come to a halt without OpenOffice.
Remember when Compaq acquired DEC? They quickly went out to all of DEC's unix customers and told them "Good news! We're migrating you to Windows!" A few made the switch, but most of them replied "Fuck you. If you're killing off your own unix business then we're moving to Sun." And most of them did.
Compaq and HP are now merged, and the once-great DEC unix business has all but been dissolved. Is that the fate which awaits Sun if they are acquired by HP? HP is firmly under the control of Microsoft. The day after the merger, they would receive their marching orders from Redmond: quietly suffocate Java and OpenOffice.
Java is currently the lingua franca of business logic, and whether you like it or not, it's a key enabler for Linux's success in the enterprise. Without Java, the data center would slowly be taken over by
Cisco is a slightly better bet, but I'm not sure they'd really know what to do with Sun. Cisco is fabulous at merging networking companies, but when they buy other types of companies (such as WebEx or the people who built Openchange) they really don't seem to know what to do with them. IBM would have been a good merger. Now I'm worried.
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