They'll keep all three and run them on POWER.
The SPARC architecture is what is most likely to see an immediate fall of in investment.
IBM doesn't really care what OS you run as long as it is seeing a slice of the pie.
For instance "IBM" (read IBM Software Group) will happily recommend Windows on a cluster of x86 servers if you are considering WebSphere, they don't even care if it's IBM hardware (the margins are poor anyway).. all the more cores that you need to be licensed for.
"IBM" (read IBM Hardware) will happily recommend AIX, OpenSolaris or Linux running on POWER for the same solution.. they don't (really) care if you use AIX, they may mutter something about it being superior but at the end of the day their commission is based on the tin.
IBM is not one company. Not even the hardware division is one company, try asking your rep whether a System P solution or a System X x3950 x86 Nehalem solution is better for a DWH and watch them go apoplectic. They are getting better at showing a unified front but its still like dealing with 6 companies.
My prediction:
1. POWER7 (2009?) will support Solaris
2. There will be no more development of SPARC based systems, the tech will be immediately raided for goodies for POWER/Cell.
3. Solaris on System X will be a supported config
4. By POWER8 (2010-11?) all of the Solaris goodies will be ported to AIX (Containers.. WPARs were half baked anyway, ZFS) and new customers wont choose Solaris unless they are ideologically bound. This will lead to eventual natural demise of Solaris by 2013-14.
5. Glassfish will either be gutted or rolled in to WebSphere CE. More likely to be gutted, IBM needs a better product to compete with JBoss at the low end of the market.
6. StorageTek will be immediately rolled into System Storage.
7. Netbeans will be rolled into Eclipse.
Try giving up caffeine. I've given up a few drugs in my time but caffeine is by far the hardest.
I sympathise though, once you're addicted to nicotine you have to keep giving it up for the rest of your life. I haven't smoked in over a decade and STILL get cravings when drinking.
This applies to the many other comments that have claimed that china has a market of 1.3 billion consumers... it doesnt. Particularly consumers of IT products. At the VERY best it would have 100 million consumers of IT products. The percentage of the population that are consumers of these products are significantly lower than in "more developed" countries
This is true. Technology companies at the moment though are feeling nervous.. many of them think that particularly in the PC market we have or very soon will reach a plateau where the consumer is completely satisfied with the functionality of their current system.. This applies to both software and hardware vendors. If you consider the PC market at the moment, high end systems are sold exclusively to two types of people: Gamers and niche developers (graphics and animation mainly). Don't believe me? Microsoft and Oracle's new pricing systems should provide some evidence that they are worried about renewal sales. For the average PC user upgrading their cable connection will provide far more "value for money" or "increase in user experience" than an upgrade of their PC hardware or software. Therefore IMO the general feeling at the moment is that while investing in "copiers" is risky (b/c people are generally happy with what they have) investing in R&D in the current climate may be worse than risky.. it may be investing in a product with no market.
Thats the risk that Dell takes. However Dell's risk is considerably lower in the short and medium term than a company like HP. I'm not saying that innovation is a bad thing (TM) it's just that in the current market it's a bad investment.
Unfortunately the real wielders of power in the stock market (insurance companies) are (at the moment) risk adverse... so a company like dell which does not invest in risky R&D is far more attractive that a company that like HP which is investing in R&D. Given that the current economic environment is likely to persist for the next 5 years, for a lot of R&D companies the question becomes "can we survive 5 years of lack luster investment in the hope that we will rake it in when the the market is more buoyant". Personally, given global IP laws not being as.. stringent as they could be i think that heavy R&D companies are a poor short term investment, average medium term investment and risky long term investment.
I wish i a spare mod point... you receive a delicious (-1 Troll)... as is thousands are tricked into reading your less than insightful and unsubstantiated drival
IMO the reason that most people dont go the star/open office route is that it doesnt have an Outlook clone. The alternatives to this highly proprietry piece of software are almost non-existent... for example to get kmail to work with Exchange it is necessary to run a pop3/imap server and do some very hackish TNEF decoding.
Actually i think its perfectly ligitimate for him to sell car parts. Why does his chosen form of seeking a lively hood have to be restricted b/c a company with the same name sells cars. IMO there should be no laws for anti-squatting... FCFS... more so than local law. International laws must be simple, and domain name law is/should be international... therefore KISS
When was the last time Microsoft paid you when a security hole was found in their product. YOU should have got your admins to verify the checksums before installation. The parent poster is a troll
Although outrageous sentences may make people wary for a time it will require convictions for the offence to turn people off completely. IMO even if found guilty of pirating the latest pop drivel a court would have a hard time sending someone to prison for it.
Some statements while fulfilling Popper's criteria for being scientific, never-the-less are not USEFUL scientific statements. For instance "There is always at least one lemming in the centre of the sun at all times". This is falisfiable as all we must do is find one instance of the sun lemmingless. The problem is, it is VIRTUALLY impossible to check this condition... of course today's virtually impossible becomes tomorrows plausible, becomes next year's old hat. This of course is applicable do a great number of scientific statements and it is certainly valid to query the worth of a scientific statement that may not ACTUALLY be falsifiable for the rest of human existence.
How many times must people be told:
THE DMCA IS AMERICAN LAW... AMERICAN LAW PEOPLE!!! Not International law... this raises no DMCA issues because the case ISNT American!!
Forutnately or unfortunately the vast majority of people disagree with you... just because you personally do not believe that the question is not a useful one does not make it so. Many ancient nomadic people may think that the question of their address is a ridiculous one. Your idea of bizaare is exactly that.. your idea. When designing census questions those deciding on the questions must look at what the MAJORITY would or would not consider bizaare. Now if you could convince 99% of the world's population that the question of religion was nonsensical you would have a point.
Slashdot Mirror
They'll keep all three and run them on POWER. The SPARC architecture is what is most likely to see an immediate fall of in investment. IBM doesn't really care what OS you run as long as it is seeing a slice of the pie. For instance "IBM" (read IBM Software Group) will happily recommend Windows on a cluster of x86 servers if you are considering WebSphere, they don't even care if it's IBM hardware (the margins are poor anyway) .. all the more cores that you need to be licensed for.
"IBM" (read IBM Hardware) will happily recommend AIX, OpenSolaris or Linux running on POWER for the same solution .. they don't (really) care if you use AIX, they may mutter something about it being superior but at the end of the day their commission is based on the tin.
IBM is not one company. Not even the hardware division is one company, try asking your rep whether a System P solution or a System X x3950 x86 Nehalem solution is better for a DWH and watch them go apoplectic. They are getting better at showing a unified front but its still like dealing with 6 companies.
My prediction:
1. POWER7 (2009?) will support Solaris
2. There will be no more development of SPARC based systems, the tech will be immediately raided for goodies for POWER/Cell.
3. Solaris on System X will be a supported config
4. By POWER8 (2010-11?) all of the Solaris goodies will be ported to AIX (Containers .. WPARs were half baked anyway, ZFS) and new customers wont choose Solaris unless they are ideologically bound. This will lead to eventual natural demise of Solaris by 2013-14.
5. Glassfish will either be gutted or rolled in to WebSphere CE. More likely to be gutted, IBM needs a better product to compete with JBoss at the low end of the market.
6. StorageTek will be immediately rolled into System Storage.
7. Netbeans will be rolled into Eclipse.
Try giving up caffeine. I've given up a few drugs in my time but caffeine is by far the hardest. I sympathise though, once you're addicted to nicotine you have to keep giving it up for the rest of your life. I haven't smoked in over a decade and STILL get cravings when drinking.
66.35.250.150
This applies to the many other comments that have claimed that china has a market of 1.3 billion consumers ... it doesnt. Particularly consumers of IT products. At the VERY best it would have 100 million consumers of IT products. The percentage of the population that are consumers of these products are significantly lower than in "more developed" countries
This is true. Technology companies at the moment though are feeling nervous .. many of them think that particularly in the PC market we have or very soon will reach a plateau where the consumer is completely satisfied with the functionality of their current system .. This applies to both software and hardware vendors. If you consider the PC market at the moment, high end systems are sold exclusively to two types of people: Gamers and niche developers (graphics and animation mainly). Don't believe me? Microsoft and Oracle's new pricing systems should provide some evidence that they are worried about renewal sales. For the average PC user upgrading their cable connection will provide far more "value for money" or "increase in user experience" than an upgrade of their PC hardware or software. Therefore IMO the general feeling at the moment is that while investing in "copiers" is risky (b/c people are generally happy with what they have) investing in R&D in the current climate may be worse than risky .. it may be investing in a product with no market.
Thats the risk that Dell takes. However Dell's risk is considerably lower in the short and medium term than a company like HP. I'm not saying that innovation is a bad thing (TM) it's just that in the current market it's a bad investment.
Unfortunately the real wielders of power in the stock market (insurance companies) are (at the moment) risk adverse ... so a company like dell which does not invest in risky R&D is far more attractive that a company that like HP which is investing in R&D. Given that the current economic environment is likely to persist for the next 5 years, for a lot of R&D companies the question becomes "can we survive 5 years of lack luster investment in the hope that we will rake it in when the the market is more buoyant". Personally, given global IP laws not being as .. stringent as they could be i think that heavy R&D companies are a poor short term investment, average medium term investment and risky long term investment.
I wish i a spare mod point ... you receive a delicious (-1 Troll) ... as is thousands are tricked into reading your less than insightful and unsubstantiated drival
Its life Jim .. but not as we know it.
RedHat maybe be King in US but in Europe many people use SuSE and in Germany (one of the most pro-open source nations) it beats RedHat hands down.
IMO the reason that most people dont go the star/open office route is that it doesnt have an Outlook clone. The alternatives to this highly proprietry piece of software are almost non-existent ... for example to get kmail to work with Exchange it is necessary to run a pop3/imap server and do some very hackish TNEF decoding.
Actually i think its perfectly ligitimate for him to sell car parts. Why does his chosen form of seeking a lively hood have to be restricted b/c a company with the same name sells cars. IMO there should be no laws for anti-squatting ... FCFS ... more so than local law. International laws must be simple, and domain name law is/should be international ... therefore KISS
They're probably from Everything2
Unfortunately we cannot always do what is correct. We often need to do what is necessary.
When was the last time Microsoft paid you when a security hole was found in their product. YOU should have got your admins to verify the checksums before installation. The parent poster is a troll
Although outrageous sentences may make people wary for a time it will require convictions for the offence to turn people off completely. IMO even if found guilty of pirating the latest pop drivel a court would have a hard time sending someone to prison for it.
Some statements while fulfilling Popper's criteria for being scientific, never-the-less are not USEFUL scientific statements. For instance "There is always at least one lemming in the centre of the sun at all times". This is falisfiable as all we must do is find one instance of the sun lemmingless. The problem is, it is VIRTUALLY impossible to check this condition ... of course today's virtually impossible becomes tomorrows plausible, becomes next year's old hat. This of course is applicable do a great number of scientific statements and it is certainly valid to query the worth of a scientific statement that may not ACTUALLY be falsifiable for the rest of human existence.
How many times must people be told: THE DMCA IS AMERICAN LAW ... AMERICAN LAW PEOPLE!!! Not International law ... this raises no DMCA issues because the case ISNT American!!
Why do you need a second PC for this ... ethereal runs just fine on Windows
Forutnately or unfortunately the vast majority of people disagree with you ... just because you personally do not believe that the question is not a useful one does not make it so. Many ancient nomadic people may think that the question of their address is a ridiculous one. Your idea of bizaare is exactly that .. your idea. When designing census questions those deciding on the questions must look at what the MAJORITY would or would not consider bizaare. Now if you could convince 99% of the world's population that the question of religion was nonsensical you would have a point.