What Sun Microsystems Means to IBM – Nothing??

Hitting hard in the faces of recession is Big Blue, rumored to be in talks of buying another software giant, Sun Microsystems. IBM as well as Sun Microsystems have a huge corporate customer base and have been providing solutions and products for a long time. Both the companies have shown good interest in unix and other open source technologies and most of the clients of these companies show little interest in Microsoft and its products. IBM has offered around $6.5 Billion in cash, which is almost twice that of the current value of Sun Microsystems.

Previous Acquisitions by IBM

IBM has made a lot of huge acquisitions in the past like Lotus, Rational to name some. IBM has the innovation and has developed a lot of products from the prototypes. Rational Application Developer is one of the best application developement integrated platforms, I have ever used. Sun Microsystems has also been a major innovator in the silicon valley, and IBM should probably be able to pump in more innovation to Sun’s products.

IBM servers

But SUN is DIFFERENT

Sun Microsystems accredits a lot of credit to two of its products – Java and Solaris. Sun has also been a direct competitor to IBM, when it comes to servers. Most of sun’s servers though are powered by AMD processors and is one of the reasons why the servers are available at cheaper prices. While Java, Virtual box, solaris have been distributed for free, the major revenue for sun comes from its servers, accounting for over half the revenue.

Java and the developer base

Java has a huge developer base backing it in numerous ways. Java is being used by million corporate users in the software industry and an effective monetization plan could make this deal a great one for IBM in the long run. While IBM can make use of the developer potential, the interests of the developers may get scattered by this acquisition and Java may take up a lonely road. Apple, Google, IBM are few of the software giants who capitalize on the power of Java.

Customer Base

Sun Microsystems boasts a huge array of customers across verticals and includes some big shots like General Motors, General Electricals. IBM has excellent expertise in dealing with large customers, and will posibly not have problems dealing with sun’s clients. In fact, all 25 of the top 25 banks of the world, use mainframes for processing data.

The Cloud Factor

Sun has leaped itself in a good position in the field of cloud computing and IBM is also one of the key players in the cloud. In fact, IBM opened a new division in Armonk, with focus only on cloud computing. With the fact that IBM has played excellent roles in server technologies, IBM is counting heavy on cloud computing technologies and solutions.

SQL or DB2 – A tough Choice

IBM has always been keen in promoting DB2 as a weapon for people who are into data mining. While DB2 is extremely scalable and is very powerful, SQL is free and is considered as a very light database. IBM is going to have problems maintaining both of them.

Competitors

Other competitors HP and Cisco have not commented yet on the acquisition. It is in fact rumored that HP took a pass when offered to take up Sun Microsystems. In fact, GigaOm has an interesting post on why Cisco should take up Sun Microsystems.

Sun Microsystems have not yet confirmed that they have received an offer from IBM, though the news has been floating around for a long time on all major magazines.

P.S. – I am a former employee of IBM and I am expressing only my personal opinion here. This blog post has got nothing to do with IBM nor does it reflect IBM’s strategy or ideas.