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What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean For Java, MySQL, Developers
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Mar 26, 2009 02:30 PM
from the get-our-your-auguring-tools dept.
from the get-our-your-auguring-tools dept.
An IBM-Sun merger is a tantalyzing possibility; snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister suggests that an IBM/Sun merger could crown Big Blue king of enterprise software development. 'Acquiring Sun would make IBM the clear leader in Java, as it would become the caretaker of the open source reference implementation of the JRE,' which, along with GlassFish, would become entry-level gateways to IBM's WebSphere stack. Moreover, MySQL would give IBM's database division a significant entry-level hook, and NetBeans/Eclipse would unify IBM's front against Visual Studio. 'All in all, this move would solidify IBM's role as "the developer company,"' McAllister writes. 'In other words, if this merger goes through and you're an enterprise developer and you're not an IBM customer now, get ready — because you soon will be. Better bring your wallet.'"
And blackbearnh writes with a short interview with Brian Aker (who came to Sun as MySQL's director of architecture, and is now the lead for MySQL fork Drizzle) about what life would be like under Big Blue's control.
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Slimmed Down MySQL Offshoot Drizzle is Built For the Web 370 comments
Incon writes "Builder AU reports that Brian Aker, MySQL's director of architecture, has unveiled Drizzle, a database project aimed at powering websites with massive concurrency as well as trimming superfluous functionality from MySQL. Drizzle will have a micro-kernel architecture with code being removed from the Drizzle core and moved through interfaces into modules. Aker has already selected particular functionality for removal: modes, views, triggers, prepared statements, stored procedures, query cache, data conversion inserts, access control lists and some data types."
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Sun In Talks To Be Acquired By IBM 526 comments
gandhi_2 writes "Sun Microsystems soared in European trading after a report that it was in talks to be acquired by IBM.
The Wall Street Journal, quoting "people familiar with the matter," reported Wednesday that International Business Machines was in talks to buy the company for at least $6.5 billion in cash, a premium of more than 100 percent over the company's closing share price Tuesday. Officials of Sun and IBM could not immediately be reached for comment."
[+]
IBM About To Buy Sun For $7 Billion 699 comments
plasticsquirrel was one of several readers to send in the sharpening rumors that IBM is on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, as we discussed last week. The pricetag is reportedly $7 billion. According to the NYTimes's sources, "People familiar with the negotiations say a final agreement could be announced Friday, although it is more likely to be made public next week. IBM's board has already approved the deal, they said." After the demise of SGI, one has to wonder about the future of traditional Unix. If the deal goes through, only IBM, HP, and Fujitsu will be left as major competitors in the market for commercial Unix. And reader UnanimousCoward adds, "Sun only came into the consciousness of the unwashed masses with the company not being able to get E10K's out the door fast enough in the first bubble. We here will remember some pizza-box looking thing, establishing 32 MB of RAM as a standard, and when those masses were scratching their heads at slogans like 'The Network is the Computer.' Add your favorite Sun anecdote here."
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What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM
Re:What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean (Score:5, Funny)
IBS [wikipedia.org].
Parent
And the answer is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean (Score:4, Funny)
Oh my... And I thought Eclipse would suck very hard. How horrible is Visual Studio then?
Like developing for the IE... by using MS Word for layouting... with a large portion of Radeon driver quality... on a Windows ME / VMS mutant... running on a retro Edsel in-car original Pentium/VAX hybrid?
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You can't be serious (Score:3, Insightful)
... Visual Studio sucks compared to Eclipse when it comes to how user-friendly the tool is.
Do you actually use both on a regular basis?
I've honestly never met someone that does that prefers Eclipse.
I use Visual Studio, XCode, and Eclipse, on a daily basis, and as far as I'm concerned, Visual Studio is just about the only thing Microsoft has ever done right, and beats the hell out of any other IDE I've ever used.
Re:What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean (Score:5, Funny)
I repeat, if you are not IBM, then you must stop being not IBM immediately, or else.
Parent
Re:What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that Sun's in such a bad position that they might need a buyout.
Things aren't great right now. They've been cash flow positive for a while up until 2008. That was a big deal considering the beating they've been taking.
They have a decent amount of cash. Some of their acquisitions may take time to pay off. MySQL, I'm not too sure that was worth 1Bln.
The strategy Schwartz has takes a big investment and will take time to realize the financial benefits. Right now, with everything going on, it may take longer to realize the financial benefits, but the same conditions also make the acceptance of open source platforms more attractive so it could help spur developer involvement with Sun technologies.
They may not buy the support or the high margin hardware right now, but in a year or two as the company starts realizing the benefits of using Sun's open source stack, they might pick up support contracts and hardware. Maybe even some of their consulting services. If not, then they become a success story they can use in marketing.
Sun's big margin customers seem to be in the financial sector and we all know how that sector is doing. Their lower end servers have much lower profit margins. In that space, they have to compete with Dell, and they do pretty well on price. But if you need to scale vertically, you don't have as many options. If you want a big box for your application you also want Solaris on it too. It's the only OS on midrange servers that's worth looking at IMO.
I'm not sure Sun needs to be bought, but whoever does, if they handle the merger properly, would be getting one hell of a deal.
Parent
Can't imagine (sorry) (Score:3, Insightful)
The company culture between Sun and IBM are too different for a successful merger. The trend that anything big blue acquires seem to die a slow and agonizing death isn't helping either.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The trend that anything big blue acquires seem to die a slow and agonizing death isn't helping either. [citation needed]
I haven't heard about the trend lately. IBM seems to be doing generally pretty well.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
XyWrite [wikipedia.org]
Oh and Lotus products seem to be doing well too...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's your citation. XyWrite
But IBM never acquired XyWrite, did they? Although, IIRC, they screwed XyQuest and left them holding the bag when IBM bailed. Can I find a citation? [ ... on hold music here ... ] Here 'tis: http://yesss.freeshell.org/x/_xywhat.htm [freeshell.org]
Too bad - I was a XyWrite fan.
Re:Can't imagine (sorry) (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently, IBM wants that business back.
Seriously, IBM didn't buy Sequent for Sequent. They bought it for NUMA. And that lives on in AIX (can't recall if it's iSeries or pSeries or both).
I'm trying to recall something that IBM has bought that died when IBM wanted the technology to live (as opposed to ransacking the company for technology and/or patents to integrate into other products). Lotus? Still alive and kicking (no matter how much some want it to die). Rational? Yup - even displaced some of IBM's software (ClearCase displaced IBM's CMVC). Cognos? Too new to tell. Informix? Still alive and kicking even though that one obviously is something IBM bought to ransack.
I suspect IBM is looking to buy Sun for Java and OpenOffice (which they're already rebranding as Lotus Symphony), and getting MySQL would be considered a freebie. This makes sense when you realise that IBM is still a little sore about losing the PC OS war, and are doing everything they can to combat Microsoft (e.g., pledging not to pursue patent claims against open-source software, defending Linux against SCO). Java is still seen as a platform to make desktop OS irrelevant, and OpenOffice is a direct attack on Microsoft's other main source of income. Cripple those two aspects of MS, and you've crippled all of MS.
Parent
Re:Can't imagine (sorry) (Score:4, Insightful)
The transition to Notes alone is likely to send Sun talent running for the hills.
Parent
Re:Can't imagine (sorry) (Score:5, Funny)
The transition to Notes alone is likely to send Sun talent running for the hills.
They're dedicated professionals and they'll adapt to Notes and other aspects of IBM culture in a professional way: by curling into fetal position under a desk in the corner of the office and whimpering pathetically.
Parent
Define a successful merger. (Score:4, Insightful)
"The company culture between Sun and IBM are too different for a successful merger."
Success: [n] Chomp, chomp, gulp.
Just ask the former employees of Sequent, Informix, or Rational.
Parent
Keep Sun Independent! (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a poll to vote on maintaining Sun's independence from IBM:
http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/426985/results [misterpoll.com]
Re:Keep Sun Independent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Online petitions work on companies like Facebook because pleasing as many random people as possible is their business model. A Web 2.0 company's product is its users. Nobody pays for Facebook as an end user -- the people paying for Facebook are paying for your ad views, marketing data, etc.
IBM and Sun shareholders, on the other hand, couldn't give less of a hoot about your feelings. Companies buy software based on a number of factors, but these factors always tie back to the bottom line. Are you going to stop visiting your favorite website because it would be using "IBM Glassfish" instead of "Sun Glassfish"?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OK. I voted. "No".
Sorry, I've never been very impressed by Sun, and to be honest, for the longest time, I had better luck with IBMs JVM. Given the choice (and my prior experience), I'll take an IBM product over a Sun product any day.
Then again, I also have had a Mac and went back, as your sig mentions, so maybe I've just had different experiences, and have different priorities.
Re:Keep Sun Independent! (Score:4, Funny)
I agree. IBM has been delivering superior support and Java tools for quite a while. Eclipse is the best IDE I have used, apart, perhaps, from the old Borland text-based IDE for Turbo C++.
And yes, I have used Netbeans and Visual Studio. And Kdevelop and Monodevelop and vim, vi, and emacs. And "brief" back when MS-DOS was the way to go.
And ed and Turbo Pascal back on CP/M. How many of you young punks used CP/M? Huh? Now get the hell off my lawn!
IBM is a stodgy old enterprise player, but they are solid and professional. They have been much friendlier to open source in general and Linux in particular than Sun has. I for one welcome our new Big Blue overlords...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, IBM was instrumental in creating the personal computer.
Uh, NO.
IBM may have developed the original " IBM Personal Computer" (ancestor of the models we're still using today). However, they sure as hell did *not* invent the original concept of a personal computer. That had been around for years (arguably originating with the Apple II) and there were already dozens of personal computers by the time IBM's came out.
Even if we accept that you meant "personal computer" as the later synonym for IBM's PC and compatible rivals, these were nothing revolutionary in the
Too big to fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have we learned nothing from the recent "too big to fail" mess? I realize IBM is already too big to fail, but do we want to let them add to it? Sun failing would be fine for the market. Lots of small companies would jump in to take its place. Sun being bought by IBM would stifle the marketplace and would exert far too much control.
Sometimes to have a free-ish market we have to think about unpleasant topics like anti-trust.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I share your dislike of mergers, but...
Sun failing would be fine for the market. Lots of small companies would jump in to take its place.
Like who? Most of Sun's customers are big corporate and research entities that have no interest in dealing with anybody who doesn't have a huge sales, distribution, and support operation. If they can't buy from Sun, they won't turn to a white box company. They'll turn to IBM, HP, or Dell.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you bring up the fact that there are two facets to Sun. There's hardware and there's their services division. How important you think Sun is to the ecosystem seems to revolve more around whether you're a sysadmin or developer. Most of us developers don't even think about Sun as developing hardware. Most of the SysAdmins don't seem to think of Sun as the controlling force behind Java.
Re:Too big to fail. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem here isn't Democrat or Republican (after all, it was a Republican president who signed off on the first big money toss), the problem here is that no one has the balls to say what needs to be said "A company that's too big to fail should never be permitted to exist." We need a new generation of trust busters who would be empowered to forcibly bust up companies that got too big.
Parent
Re:Too big to fail. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
There's been a good discussion of this... (Score:4, Informative)
...on the JavaPosse Google group here [google.com]. Some talk about what this might mean for Netbeans, as one of the JavaPosse guys (Tor Norbye) is (was?) on the NB team.
Also, what would this do for the massive JavaCC book [generating...javacc.com] market? Expand it, I hope!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Since 5.0 Netbeans has made tremendous improvements and now the combination of Glassfish and Netbeans is a powerhouse for J2EE development. That is real competition for Websphere Studio which costs a heck of a lot of money.
With EJB3, using EJB's even for smaller projects, using the full J2EE stack is reasonable. The complexity and performance overhead of EJBs is no longer a problem and it makes it very easy to deploy restful web services.
There's a great video on the matter from an independent developer at C
The real problem (Score:5, Funny)
Is that new releases of Java and Solaris will be EBCDIC only!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, Java will be supercesed by COBOL.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Or has anyone seen a punch card torrent
You will if you accidentally knock over a box of them. Or is that a stack dump?
"IBM is where good companies go to die" (Score:4, Insightful)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
IBM will take all of Sun's great software products, and either ruin or kill them through a combination of strategic imperative, incompetence, and bureaucracy.
Say goodbye to Netbeans. IBM doesn't want competition to Eclipse.
Watch OpenSolaris get pillaged for bits like ZFS and DTrace to GPL and put in Linux and then left in the ditch (though I don't think they'll kill closed-source Solaris).
Glassfish will survive only because it already has a large independent community, despite IBM cutting off funding for it.
Java will take twice as long to evolve, as IBM's bureaucracy will dwarf that of the JCP's. Swing will be slowly killed, to be replaced by SWT. As for Websphere, it's known to break the JEE spec, and indicates the direction IBM will take Java in.
OpenOffice, right now not the cleanest, most user friendly app, will worsen if Lotus Symphony is anything to go by.
IBM pays good lip service to open source, and contributes o some strategic projects (ex Apache Harmony), but their true commitment to open source is much less than that of Sun's. That's what the Linux crowd sometimes fails to understand.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Say goodbye to Netbeans. IBM doesn't want competition to Eclipse.
Why? It doesn't compete with eclipse now. I've used modern and 2 year old installs of eclipse, and my last netbeans install was less than 6 months ago.
Swing will be slowly killed, to be replaced by SWT. As for Websphere, it's known to break the JEE spec, and indicates the direction IBM will take Java in.
Good riddance. Most swing based applications I have had the misfortune of using, have failed miserably at being cross platform, regardless of Sun or IBM JVM. Even if SWT is worse in that regard, it doesn't matter, because I've given up on swing as far as making any reliable cross platform app. Replacing one thing that is not sufficiently useful with another,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Dunno about the original poster, but my biggest problem is that it doesn't integrate with Perforce very well. That makes it completely a non-starter. Integration with version control is one of the top-5 tasks any IDE needs to do and in Netbeans it seems like an afterthought.
After that, Sun embracing OSGi and other de-facto industry standards instead of always re-inventing the wheel would be nice. We really didn't need yet another attempt at a Java application platform.
And JavaFX support? Who actually ca
Re:"IBM is where good companies go to die" (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that Sun's job?
Parent
Re:"IBM is where good companies go to die" (Score:5, Insightful)
Sun's job is to have one of the worst marketing departments known to man. They create some really great stuff, and many of their strategic acquisitions benefit amazingly well under their umbrella. (e.g. OpenOffice, NetBeans, StorageTek, etc.)
What Sun fails miserably at is selling their products. On one hand, they give everything long, complex, and confusing names. Like "Sun Java System Directory Service", formerly "SunONE Directory Server", formerly "iPlanet Directory Server", formerly "Netscape Directory Server". Then they take this confusing pile of BS directly to executives. Now executives aren't necessarily stupid people. But if you're expecting them to wade through your piles of BS to understand what it is their buying, you've already failed. Throw in a bit of inconsistent pricing across the board to where the IT guy actually buying the stuff has no idea what price he's going to pay, and you've got a recipe for dissatisfaction.
Sun needs to learn how to market and how to sell. More to the point, they need to pay more attention to the smaller markets and stop trying to out-IBMing IBM. IBM is better at it. Try out-Delling Dell. Sun was on the right track with their "Hotter than Hell" campaign, but they gave up before it ever came to fruition!
Which is another thing that tees me off. When Sun DOES get it right, they kill it off before they give it a chance to work. Then they go back to their old ways, and probably tell themselves what a fiasco THAT marketing campaign turned out to be. :-/
Parent
Re:"IBM is where good companies go to die" (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:A list of open source projects IBM contributes (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that that is just a list of projects they contribute too. It gives no indication of the level of contributions. A lot of those contributions are patches to make sure the projects can work with IBM hardware and software.
Not saying there contributions are meaningless, but I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that IBM has contributed more to open source than Sun.
IBM might open source a less powerful version or maybe a pet project, while Sun will go out, buy a company and open source the technology.
That's a big deal, especially considering the relative size and financial power differences between the two.
Parent
Pipedream??? (Score:4, Insightful)
I see this story has been tagged "Pipedream". I don't know what kind of pipe people are smoking these days, but to me it doesn't sound like any kind of pleasant or desirable dream to have one company in control of so many things we depend on...even more so during an economic downturn.
Netbeans/Eclipse... (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope Netbeans don't become the mess that Eclipse is threatening to become. The multiple distributions, the commercial only plugins, UI inconsistencies, and instability.
I know the Eclipse fanboys will object, but I've used both IDEs and Eclipse has its issues and feels like it was built by a committee consisting of competitors.
With Netbeans, I don't have to worry about CDT not meshing with the current patched version of the platform, or having to choose between Subclipse or Subversive and trying to get past that stupid Java HL issue with Ubuntu. Netbeans just works.
Nothing against Eclipse, I just don't want any of that crap to migrate over to Netbeans.
Then there's IBM history other editors like XyWrite...
Horrible article (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow. Just...wow. All IBM gets out of the deal is the Java name. All the other assets are basically bogus, which the market has already figured out.
InfoWorld hits another high score in tech buzzword bingo, but misses the point completely...
SPARC (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm more interested in what IBM will do with the SPARC processor and Solaris, and how that affects Fujitsu [fujitsu.com].
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If IBM drops SPARC, Fujitsu will probably become the only supplier of Solaris systems. Both the SPARC architecture [opensparc.net] and Solaris [opensolaris.org] are available as open source, so IBM cannot easily prevent that.
Being open source, it is possible that other companies emerge using those technologies. Don't count on it: if anyone believed in that, this would already have happened.
I'm also unsure about how much traction Solaris will have without SUN.
Why can't Apple buy them instead??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bare with me for a moment.
Sun is full of PhDs, patents and interesting technologies and I think their corporate culture is much more close to Apple than to IBM. They have a fairly decent server product line with competitive prices, a host of enterprise contracts all over the world and an excellent OSS "server" OS which is still being developed heavily. They have a solid 64-bit RISC architecture coupled with energy efficient multicore processors that give even the best x86 chips a run for their money. Not to mention their storage strategy which is, IMHO, brilliant. ZFS, StorageTek, Lustre, fishworks [sun.com], mysql all fall into a strategy of acquisitions and development that was commenced several years ago. Has it started yielding financial results yet? Arguably not quite. Was it spot-on? Hell yes. Storage has come and it will be big. The bad economic conditions make their financial problems worse, but it's not like they didn't give their best.
Apple could really use them to buy its way into the Enterprise. They have already ported dtrace and zfs to MacOSX, demonstrating that a lot of technologies can be used outside of Sun products with success. Considering the stockpile of cash they're sitting on, it would not really be a problem for Apple to buy them. With their combined strength (heard that one before, right?) they could really be a dangerous adversary for IBM, HP and Microsoft.
Well, if that isn't a pipe dream, then what is?
Re:Why can't Apple buy them instead??? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is bad blood between Jobs and McNealy (who is still chairman). I agree though, a merger between Apple and Sun would be better because nothing they have overlaps. Apple picks up enterprise software and hardware, which they clearly lack. They also would get a global services group. Although Sun is not profitable, they have little debt and $2.5 billion on hand.
Parent
Sun Ray technology (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Developers! (Score:5, Funny)
Who has more chairs: Microsoft or IBM?
IBM. In fact, they have more than 3 times more chairs (well, employees, but a good proxy for # of chairs).
Heck, they probably have a dozen patents on chairs.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd love to see a C# plugin for NetBeans, personally. NetBeans 6.5 is the first release I'd call almost as good as Visual Studio (I can't stand Eclipse, personally), and there's not much work left to make it a genuine competitor for what I use it for. I'm already looking at moving my C++ development over to it. Having an .NET plugin would seal the deal for me.
(It can't be any worse than MonoDevelop...)
Re:IBM = No service (Score:5, Interesting)
More importantly, what has IBM open sourced?
Sun has open sourced more of their own code than IBM has. Actually, Sun probably has open sourced more lines of code than anyone for that matter.
For large organizations, such as Sun and IBM, that have licensing agreements for parts of their technology, open sourcing a closed source project is not a trivial matter.
There's still a bit at Sun that was supposed to be open sourced that hasn't. Will IBM continue this? Will they put the same amount of effort into Sun's current open source projects? This is what worries me. Some of Sun's important open source projects compete with IBM's open and closed products.
The acquisition of Sun would have to transform the mindset of IBM. The open source gameplan [youtube.com] that Jonathan Schwartz outlined in his video blogs seems like a good one, but if they get eaten up by IBM, I don't know if that plan will be able to be set in motion. It seems that when IBM acquires someone, the acquired company becomes more like IBM and not the other way around.
It's not just about open source though. Sun has been creating a lot of great hardware. The CMT chip based servers are awesome. The Ranger super computer is a great example of what you can do with their massive infiniband switch.
The billions of dollars they would spend to acquire sun would be worth it just to get Andy Bechtolsheim in my opinion.
The current economic crisis has made Sun a great bargain for those that can afford to acquire it.
Netbeans/Eclipse is going to be strange and I really hope that Netbeans doesn't die.
AIX/Solaris seems easy. IBM would be stupid to kill Solaris. AIX would likely be put on legacy support. Solaris may even become the default OS for IBM's new mainframes.
Power/Sparc would have to consolidate and with IBM/Sum/Fujitsu working together you might see some even more impressive risc servers coming out.
OpenOffice.org will continue because IBM uses it as a base for Lotus Symphony. StarOffice may die or get wrapped up in Symphony.
Glassfish might be tough. Competes with WebSphere and IBM has been more behind Apache's Geronimo app server I think.
I think Sun's blades might be very appealing to IBM.
As for Java, I'm more comfortable with it being under Sun than IBM. For all the press IBM has had over the SCO trial, I don't see them as good of an open source company as Sun. I can't remember the details right now, but there were some Apache projects, as well as OpenOffice.org where IBM wasn't really sending stuff upstream. The license in those cases didn't require it, but I still think it says alot, especially considering the financial benefits IBM has received from those projects.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Until recently IBM had made orders of magnitude greater contributions to the Open Source community than Sun.
Prove it. There was an EU study in 2006 that analyzed the corporate contributions to Debian. Sun was the largest with about 4 times the peron months attributed to it than IBM who came in second place.
That's only what came with Debian and doesn't count open sourcing Solaris or Java or any of the other projects they recently open sourced.
A different view is this old post from Ben Rockwood [cuddletech.com] that they contribute equally but in different ways. Even if that were true, that's like your rich friend and really really
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"For those out there that think this is a good thing, try to navigate IBM's website."
Yeah, too bad Sun's pages suck equally badly. As much as possible, I've always used Google to search either one.