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IBM Withdraws $7B Offer For Sun Microsystems, Says NYT
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Apr 05, 2009 06:43 PM
from the what-color-is-your-trial-balloon? dept.
from the what-color-is-your-trial-balloon? dept.
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."
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Developers: What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems? 237 comments
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister believes Oracle is next in line to make a play for Sun now that IBM has withdrawn its offer. Dismissing server market arguments in favor of Cisco or Dell as suitors, McAllister suggests that MySQL, ZFS, DTrace, and Java make Sun an even better asset to Oracle than to IBM. MySQL as a complement to Oracle's existing database business would make sense, given Oracle's 2005 purchase of Innobase, and with 'the long history of Oracle databases on Solaris servers, it might actually see owning Solaris as an asset,' McAllister writes. But the 'crown jewel' of the deal would be Java. 'It's almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Java to Oracle. Java has become the backbone of Oracle's middleware strategy,' McAllister contends."
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Purhase? (Score:3, Informative)
Is that internet slang for "much-rumured merger?"
Who edits the editors?
Crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Now RedHat can buy them ... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
H
Re:Now RedHat can buy them ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good god no. Keep IBM well away from that, thanks.
Parent
Re:Now RedHat can buy them ... (Score:5, Interesting)
They've been doing this for many years, and even though their first IT technician whom set this up passed away long since, they've kept the same infrastructure for all these years and it hasn't failed them. They also do this to remain backward-compatible with the older mainframe tapes, which has proven successful. Even at the busiest times, the mainframe is only at 10% utilization, even though it is a pretty low-end model.
This has amazed me about IBM support, and since then I've always weighed IBM as a candidate in new networks, although many of them are too small size or budget-wise to deploy a mainframe. But this is the support I've come to associate IBM with, can't speak for their phone support although everyone seems to outsource to India for phone support these days (a problem I have frequently with Cisco). But this support with Sun's hardware running Linux for cheap was one thing I was longing for with this merger.
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IBM and uptime. (Score:4, Interesting)
IBM (and to a lesser extent, Sun) GET uptime. They understand what it takes to develop systems with uptime measured in more years than slashot has even existed... think DECADES and you are starting to get the idea.
For all the bluster about uptimes with Linux, it really isn't all that great about it. For example, if you really do have 1 year of uptime on a public-facing system, you are a bad admin because there have been a number of security bulletins over any given year's time w/ Linux.
The miracle of Linux is that the uptimes are as good as they are, as cheaply as it costs. It's damned impressive that you can sustain 3-4 nines of uptime with a system board purchased at pricewatch for 60 dollars, yet the numbers don't lie - this isn't unusual!
The real question is whether or not those 4 hours per year of downtime at 99.95% actually is worth the jump from a $2,500 dollar server to a $75,000 dollar server. (I have no idea what an AS/400 really costs)
The number of cases where the additional costs are really worth it is rare. Less is more, better is worse, etc....
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Re:Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be much much easier to Embrace Enhance Exchange if OpenOffice were in the hands of microsoft? That's what worries me.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So what is MS going to do, close the source code? All those products are opensource, they can't. Any other company (IBM, RHAT, NOVELL) would resume the investment in Java & OO.org, and could offer jobs to the original programms.
Re:Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Sun didn't have to close the source to kill MySQL. Just forcing upon it a poor structure and community for continued development was enough to send away the lead developers. Nobody can say yet if any of the few forks will succeed.
If Sun can ruin MySQL, I'm sure Microsoft can ruin everything Sun has done as well. Imagine when Java is just an optional compatibility layer on top of .NET, never again to run on Linux or Solaris except via the (then deprecated) OpenJDK.
Parent
Re:Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
What does Sun have that wouldn't fork if Microsoft bought them?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Uhh... IBM & Sun are also competitors, don't let the fact that one of them isn't Microsoft fool you into thinking they aren't. In some ways, this merger would be MORE restrictive than if Sun merged with Microsoft (which would never happen BTW, MS has no interest). Think about it: MS isn't really a hardware company in any of the same places that Sun is (no the XBox doesn't count), while IBM with Power is directly competing with SPARC. An IBM merger would likely lead to SUN's software assets being dist
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OOo being Lotus-ized would be a fate worse than death, I think.
Cisco Sun (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cisco Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
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. )
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Re:Cisco Sun (Score:5, Interesting)
Cisco's trying to become a server company. Sun has a lot of credibility in that market, some interesting hardware and, yes Virginia, Solaris is more stable than Linux.
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Re:Cisco Sun (Score:5, Funny)
Solaris is more stable than Linux.
stable. n. resistant to change of position or condition.
Indeed.
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Re:Cisco Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Cisco Sun (Score:5, Interesting)
Solaris is more stable than Linux.
stable. n. resistant to change of position or condition.
Indeed.
Used and admin both. I've never seen a live-locked Solaris system; seen many times on Linux.
Parent
Re:Cisco Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [sun.com]
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...
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Re:Cisco Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Cisco Sun (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Cisco Sun (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Solaris on SPARC has device drivers in user-space. This lets you add SCSI devices to the server without rebooting.
Need to add a new SCSI tape library to a Linux server? Sorry, need to reboot the server!
Need to add a SCSI tape library on Solaris? No problem!
1. Plug it in
2. # add_drv st
3. # add_drv ds
4. # devfsadm -Cv
5. 99.999% uptime!
6. Profit!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
in another post you've mentioned your on 2.4 kernels, much has changed in later 2.6 kernels, with right hardware you can hotplug CPUs now and with right drivers plus hardware hotplug disk and tape even on copper scsi.
Re:Cisco Sun (Score:5, Interesting)
I've used probably more x86 based UNIX / UNIX like operating systems than many people out here.
Let's face it, there's not a lot of folks who remember turning key switches to load CTIX over CTOS on a Burroughs XE-550. Yes, I know there are some who will remember this, and things even older...
What I'm getting at, is that of all the operating systems I've used, based off of a plethora of chips, motorola, x86, powerpc, pa-risc, alpha, sparc, of them all, Solaris has been the most stable and reliable.
I've seen Linux systems, using kickstart, loaded onto identically configured hardware, end up with different packages loaded, due to some driver quirk that made it not load during one bootup, and work fine on another. I've seen boxes that ran fine, while their identically configured system crapped out repeatedly.
I've taken those same systems, and using a jumpstart server, loaded them with Solaris x86, and ended with identically configured, installed (down to the last package, configuration, etc) systems. All ran stable, fast and reliably.
Try taking your own run at comparing an application written for the A.M.P. stack, and first run it as a LAMP stack, then run it as a SAMP stack. You'll find that the SAMP stack outperforms the LAMP stack, sometimes by almost 100% on the same hardware.
Take a look at the security certifications, the revamped TCP/IP stack able to process millions (possibly billions) of messages per second (depending on the hardware it's configured to run on).
Take a look at the proprietary hardware, including CMT technologies, or the new ROCK processor due out this fall.
For a company that has been so solid in the operating system arena, to also be leading the pack in some of the hardware innovations is simply amazing.
Anyway, as I said, I've used most of the available UNIX/UNIX like operating systems, and find Solaris to be the best of breed for most, if not all, applications. That's my personal 24 years of experience talking, not just empty marketing words...
Parent
Re:Cisco Sun (Score:5, Interesting)
Same reason they've started building it's own servers - they want to expand into new markets.
Sun would sure give them a leg-up, as the two product portfolios have very little crossover, but it remains to be seen if Cisco would be any better at selling Sun technology than Sun has been of late.
As a Sun partner/reseller I'd probably prefer Cisco however, because it's less likely that the cool stuff that Sun makes, which I know and sell, would be just be swallowed up never to be seen again as would likely happen in an IBM deal.
Parent
Just how much is enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Just how much is enough? (Score:4, Interesting)
If they do... they might as well publish it and start using it in sales presentations. A 10% premium above current value was IBM's offer. How much more do they want?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My feelings exactly. I feel that SUN, like PALM had with the PRE, may have something on their hands. I have no info besides the history of a company that has been so innovative and also embracing of FOSS (which shows they understand the new landscape). All that brainpower inside the company is not dead, so I think they just might have something up their sleeves.
Re:Just how much is enough? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Red Hat buying Sun would be the exact same mistake as Caldera buying SCO.
Time to modify this hilarious graphic? (Score:5, Funny)
Apple Should Buy Sun (Score:4, Interesting)
If Apple bought Sun, then they would be a very interesting Server-Desktop combo.
Re:Apple Should Buy Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Apple Should Buy Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Apple Should Buy Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
Java promises OS homogenization.
I think Apple can breathe easy: it's promised that for more than a decade and always failed to deliver.
Parent
Re:Apple Should Buy Sun (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Apple Should Buy Sun (Score:4, Informative)
Sometime back in the 1980s, Apple made an insultingly low take-over bid for Sun. When Apple was in bad financial straights in the 1990s, Sun returned the favor and put an insulting low offer out for Apple.
I don't think either Sun or Apple was serious about it, however Apple really wanted IBM to buy them out.
Parent
Hahah... (Score:5, Funny)
Bloomberg link (Score:4, Interesting)
Here [bloomberg.com] is a link to the Bloomberg news article. No registration or subscription required.
The Best I.T. News I've Heard In A Long Time (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
hostile takeover? (Score:3, Interesting)
What are the chances that IBM will try a hostile takeover instead?
Are rher more things to consider to that than the likelihood that they could get 51% of Sun shareholders to be willing to accept a near 100% mark up from pre-purchase rumor price?
Cause if that's all that it takes, in this market I think it would be easy to find that many people willing to take the money and run. And not even that many, since in my understanding IBM could already have secured 5%.
Penny pinching for the deal (Score:3, Informative)
Today IBM announced that it would no longer be supplying Tea or Coffee to their office workforce.
This is a true story, don't laugh, it's not funny.
Name Merge (Score:5, Funny)
Noooooo! Anyone but HP! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Stupidity. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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