Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Big Blue to Buy Sun?

Not many ears ago the news that IBM was reported in have an interest in buying Sun Microsystems would have been mind-blowing and as strategically equivalent today of Facebook , Google and Microsoft coming together as one, but although still significant it’s a sign of the times that this news is just view as another corporate merger.

According to a Wall Street Journal report Big Blue (IBM) is willing to pay at least US$6.5 billion for Sun.

But some view this not as two giants of yesterday coming to a late marriage but rather as a threat to Java World. Obviously there is significant overlay and duplication of offer which could result in big cuts in tools and software. Choose between Eclipse or Netbeans and GlassFish or WebShere and MySQL or DB/2.

The interesting difference between the two companies in their sales approach shows that that are probably poles apart in many strategic ways even though their products may offer the same result. Big Blue has always sold to the executive not the developers and Sun to the developers not the executive.

The potential marriage will certainly not be the wedding of the year it would have once been.

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