The purchase of Sun by Oracle for $7.4 billion has far less industry buzz and excitement than the rumored acquisition of Sun by IBM.
IBM stole the thunder and the impending acquisition of Sun became an imminent and expected event. While hardware overlap existed in the IBM deal, IBM would have provided a much needed home for Sun’s software assets. Software giant Oracle lacks a hardware portfolio, so the key Oracle / Sun overlaps are far fewer except for the $1 billion acquisition of MySQL by Sun in 2008. Given Oracle’s tendency to be proprietary in its markets, ownership of MySQL by Oracle would be perceived as a great risk in the open source community. (Register or Login to Read More)
The purchase of Sun Microsystems by IBM would be a win for IBM.
Sun has been in a holding pattern since the dot com implosion. And, while Sun positioned themselves as “the dot in the dot com”, that was the last innovation we have seen come from Sun.
Sun, while it once had very competitive hardware, had no idea how to productize and implement effective software products. Sun works on the assumption that all software must lead to Sun server sales – definitely a flawed idea that was proven wrong numerous times. Sun also was never able to quite grasp the idea of high volume and low margin sales. Sun continued on in its technology efforts like it was 1988.
IBM has clearly demonstrated that it is more than capable of:
IBM has also managed many acquisitions and always seems to find something in an acquisition worthy of continuing on with the IBM brand.
The potential of a Sun acquisition by IBM makes sense. IBM is a world class business organization and will be able to make business sense out of Sun’s academic assets.
The market has been aflutter with fanfare over the fifth birthday of Eclipse. Most of what has been reported has been on the positive side. However, to really accurately think about the future, the past must be considered. In this “Market Commentary”, we will examine two fundamental Eclipse questions:
