Available To The Right Buyer: Sun Microsystems 489
antediluvian writes "The Seattle Times reports Sun Microsystems shares surged forward on speculation the computer maker may be bought by a rival company. Prospective buyers could include Dell, IBM or Hewlett-Packard. Computer sales of rival companies have been outpacing sales of Sun's machines. Over the past three years Sun's stock has declined 92 percent."
Apple... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apple... (Score:5, Interesting)
Please no! They might win the auction.
Apple are in prime spot to displace Sun these days. They are the only UNIX vendor committed to a proprietary UNIX that is likely to still be on offer in ten years time. IBM has already all but said it has thrown in with Linux. HPUX, Digital Unix, Irix etc are already niche market plays.
I don't think solaris can survive, simply too few seats to be viable except as a niche. It is bound to a single hardware platform which is itself starting to look old and tired with not much hope of fending of Pentium long term, let alone Itanium.
Apple on the other hand have a really strong desktop business by any measure but Microsoft. They have probably shiped more UNIX systems by now than any other vendor, their kit is robust and mature. Sorry Sun, you never did crack the quality manufacturing thing the way DEC did. So now you charge DEC prices for FIAT reliability.
The other major problem Sun has is Scott. Unless he is gone by the end of the year Sun is dead. Scott has been spending his time on futile rants about Microsoft who don't even make hardware - his core market while Linux, IBM and now HP eat his lunch.
I was eating with a senior exec of a major (F100) company who used to be a Sun shop. Scott had gone out to talk to them and his answer to everything was about stopping Microsoft. So the company concluded that they better switch from Sun quick. I then heard the exact same story a couple days later from another F100 company exec.
The single best thing Jobs did at Apple was bury the animosity with Microsoft. He told Apple that they were going to be something so different from anyone else that what happened at Redmond did not matter. He was right, he realised that the 'Network Computer' that had been developed would flop in that market but had the potential to be a killer entry price machine with a few cosmetic tweaks - and the iMac was born.
Sorry Scott, but now it is you or the company.
Just a niggle ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think I'd say Apple has a proprietary UNIX. Their UNIX is open. It's the fourth (5th? 6th? Hard to keep track anymore) OSS BSD. I don't think any closed unices are going to survive. Apple played it smart by locking down as little as possible -- just the part that makes the users drool. Developers are happy because it's all open and
Re:Apple... (Score:5, Informative)
Sun is hurting because now I can replace my low-end and midrange boxes with commodity x86 kit running Linux for about 10-15% of the cost.
At the mid-to-high-end (16+ processors) Sun is still viable and a good choice (I haven't seen good Intel kit that scales over 8 processors), but the volumes in that market probably aren't enough to sustain the required R&D effort, especially as Sun's consulting business - which would push their kit - isn't great. Still, I like our E10000s... they do the job we ask of them pretty well.
Re:Apple... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Apple... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, but how long have those boxes been around? Prior to the arrival of the 210's & 240's (less then a month ago, IIRC) the entry point for sun was the 100/120, which was an underpowered, overpriced heap. The next step up was a 280R, which was way too expensive for someone who just wanted a dual processor rackmount machine (or any mach
Re:Apple... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure I can. The new machines are attractive, but we've already jettisoned most of our suns--so the question isn't whether the new machines are nice, but whether they're nice enough to justify another platform change. The answer to that question is, "probably not". I still would like to get some and give them a chance, but it will be a hard sell to get me to tie myself back to sun at this point.
I'm not sure I used the figure 10x, but the 280R is certainly a lot more than the entry level price for an x86 dual-processor system. Also remember that the V100/120 have a IIi processor, which made the 280R the real entry point for any sort of cpu-intensive application in sun's rackmount lineup. So for a cpu app you had a choice between a $1k or $2k intel rackmount or a 280R...
And the intel box would probably be a 1u, which is much nicer from a rack density standpoint compared to the 4u 280R. (The 280R takes a lot of space for what it's doing.) Can the 280R do some things a 1u intel box can't do? Sure--but the number of apps that need those feature is fairly limited. (If there were more demand for those features I'd have more 280R's, sun would be making more money than dell, and sun wouldn't have introduced the much smaller and better priced 210's and 240's.) Even from a capability standpoint there were some nutty things about the 280R that made it somewhat less attractive than it might have been. (Single 100Mbps ethernet, only 40MB/s SCSI included, only one pci slot running at more than 33MHZ, and that only at 66MHz, only 2 internal disk drives--in a 4u box!)
I stand corrected. I could have sworn the last datasheet only had 10/100 listed, but I might have been thinking of a different line.
multiple architectures - fat binaries (Score:3, Informative)
Apple must still have that code lying around somewhere.
Re:You are wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
How absolute BAD are the Moderators when a post like this is "Insightful" (which is totally opinion) and the posts defending Java which state fact are offtopic/troll, etc.
The whole Moderation thing should probably be dropped. This is a total farce.
Nice moderation work! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Java is very powerful on the server-side" Flaimbait
Another shining example of the expert
Java is a huge server-side force because it is so powerful. Many very high end sites run on Java. JBoss is constantly in the top 10 downloads from sourceforge, and that's not likely because it "sucks ass."
their Buyer is (Score:4, Funny)
NOw that would be ironic wouldn't it?
This wil be sad news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This wil be sad news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting rid of java is like getting rid of cobol. It's hard, but it'll take a while
Re:This will be sad news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This wil be sad news... (Score:3, Insightful)
You need to get out a lot more. Java is everywhere, including large banks. Read up on CORBA, EJB. These are what bring together banks' legacy applications.
Re:This wil be sad news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it just so happens that more and more banks are redeploying their core business systems in Java. Those who haven't done it by now are the laggards who were about to be stuck with a rather expensive manned teller system in a world of largely online banking.
Any and all of the enterprise class frameworks are either built on Java or have Java interfaces (because many of the associated apps that they have to work with are in Java). I'm currently working on an enterprise class contract management system and more than half of the accounting systems we need to interface with expose an EJB interface. Any guesses as to why we'd use that over a SOAP or other simple network protocol? Yep. Transactional security.
Java is overwhelmingly the current choice of enterprise systems development. That could change in the future if Sun went away and wasn't replaced by someone equally credible. But for now, if you're developing an enterprise application and you're not doing it in Java, most customers will laugh you out of the sales call.
Regards,
Ross
Re:This wil be sad news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, are you suggesting Java become subsumed into
Re:This wil be sad news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Java will not be disappearing any time soon. Too many big name companies (most notably IBM and Oracle) have invested too much money in Java for them to let that happen. Also, with the way that Java is developed, through the Java Community Process, any potential buyer would find it difficult to exert full control over the the technology. For a closed product, Java is pretty open.
IBM would be the most obvious candidate as Java and particularly open-source Java offerings (such as the Jikes compiler and Eclipse IDE) are a big part of their software activities. They develop their own IDEs and app-servers and ship JVMs for several platforms that have routinely out-performed Sun's equivalent offerings.
It would also be interesting to see how the SWT vs Swing issue would work out if IBM were to become Java's new guardians. Swing is the Sun graphics toolkit for Java and is the standard for client-side Java. It's fully platform independent and uses pluggable look-and-feels with lightweight components to emulate the look and feel of the native platform. SWT is IBM's alternative that is used in the Eclipse IDE. It's not quite so portable as it provides an abstraction on top of the native windowing system but it has advantages in terms of performance and closer integration with the underlying system. It breaks the write-once-run-anywhere philosophy but is growing in popularity.
Oracle could be another contender, they too use a lot of Java, particularly for their client-side tools (which it has to be said weren't very good last time I used them) and they partner with Sun on the database/hardware front.
Apple could be a dark horse, they have a vested interest in Java. In a world where the desktop is dominate by Microsoft, the availability of Java software is a good thing for them as it means there will always be software that runs on Macs. They have put a lot of effort into supporting Java in MacOS X and gone further than other operating systems to help Java applications fit in with the look and feel of the platform.
A lot of people don't realise just how much Java coding is going on out there, because most of it is hidden away on the server side. This site [tiobe.com] claims that Java is the world's most popular programming language by some distance (though you may argue about the accuracy of their method of measuring these things). I also read elsewhere (can't find a link) that there are more lines of Java being written these days than any other language.
Java yes! Sun No! (Score:3, Interesting)
Sun disappearing would actually be the best thing that could happen to Java. "Community Process" notwithstanding, Sun still think
Re:Java yes! Sun No! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Java yes! Sun No! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Java yes! Sun No! (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, Sun, doesn't work that way. Separate parts of Sun don't collaborate, they work on stabbing each other in the back.
None of which really is relevent to my point about ideo
Re:This wil be sad news... (Score:3, Interesting)
SWT, like Microsoft's old Java libraries, includes things like COM and ActiveX integration -- if you use them, your program obviously will only run on certain systems (Win32). You *can* build pretty portable SWT-based apps, but the ability to make them platform specific is there for you as well.
Re:This wil be sad news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but that simply means it isn't a lowest common denominator approach. This functionality that Swing would have had a tough time exposing.
Here's the relevant section from the SWT main page:
-----
The most succinct description of the Standard Widget Toolkit component is this:
The SWT component is designed to provide efficient, portable access to the user-interface facilities of the operating systems on whi
Re:Explain Please? (Score:2)
Re:Explain Please? (Score:5, Insightful)
You had me right up until "easier". There is a reason C++ journals have sections devoted to obscure sections of the standard and how code might not compile the way you would expect it to. It's because C++ is not simple. Powerul? Yes. Easy? No. Not to mention the differing implementations by different compilers. Ugh. No thanks. I'd rather spend my time working on solutions instead of fighting the language.
Re:Explain Please? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, that's a few criticisms I've never heard before. I'll give you compact, and if you want it, a performance edge. But other than that, C++ is a much more difficult language to write real programs in. It requires approaching guru level (well beyond expert) to write a portable system in C++. Language feature interactions in C++ can put a bug into the most subtle of indiscretions.
- Operator overloading is ammunition for the inexperienced to do something that looks cool but is actually extraordinarily unwise.
- Const and const correct sound good until you inform the newbie of the mutable keyword and later find that you don't have const methods after all.
- Templates are similarly powerful/risky. Java will get them in 1.5, but the issues around their effective use are legion
- Using threads in C++ is akin to a black art. I used to literally start any discussion of C++ threads by drawing a pentagram on the whiteboard to remind everyone in the room that we were about to descend into the depths of the various C++ threading models.
- Dealing with other people's screwed up multiply inherited class structures was the only time in my life I've had migraine headaches
- How about syntax-dependent semantics for the static keyword?
- And though I tend to prefer the more explicit hpp/cpp interface/implementation separation, method inlining manages to ruin it right away (without any known benefit since the compiler will inline or not without your hint). Also, do I really need to type so much to get the hpp/cpp separation to work?
- You've still got the C-preprocessor. Have you ever seen how much damage someone can do to code readability with the C-preprocessor? It's worth it to move to Java just to avoid dealing with cpp.
- Portability. Java isn't really 100% portable either, so I'm not going to make that claim. But unless you're able to stick to gcc, porting a C++ app to another system is agonizingly difficult unless you're a guru on both systems. Even then, I'd probably get a whole chicken just to make sure.
Now I agree that Java has its warts and there are plenty of aspects about it that should get attention (jdbc, unicode handling, API conventions, faster elimination of deprecated elements, etc.) but it has some huge advantages as well. The first one, one which almost any other language could take and benefit from, is the deliverable packaging strategy. TheAnd here's the scary/exciting part: C# is awfully close to doing all of that. The only thing that C# doesn't really have is the huge library and the mindshare. The C# library will grow. Depending on how it grows (.net-only or portable), it may get the mindshare. Java has one or two chances left to fix itself before momentum starts building behind C# and the future will be a very interesting time. It looks fairly certain that we'll have C# (and Microsoft) to thank for speedier future changes in the Java language.
Regards, Ross
Sony (Score:3, Interesting)
stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, do the stock prices of three years ago mean anything? Yahoo and Amazon must also be bought!
Re:stock (Score:2, Funny)
Re:stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Need to create a mySQL table [webcalc.net]?
Re:stock (Score:3, Insightful)
That seems kind of obvious, doesn't it? I mean, by going public, a company gets a bunch of new bosses (the stockholders) who only want to increase the stock price (and thus their own wealth). That's pretty much what going public is.
Re:stock (Score:3, Informative)
He put it like this. A company cannot ethically spend money that won't, in some way, help out these shareholders. For example, if employee Joe Blow's wife needs an operation, the company can ethically pay for it because it would most likely improve Joe's
Power To The People! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Power To The People! (Score:3, Funny)
How about us? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not sexy enough. (Score:2)
Re:Not sexy enough. (Score:2, Insightful)
Because they already have [sourceforge.net]
Won't Happen (Score:3, Insightful)
what about N1? (Score:5, Informative)
What will happen to N1 after the acquisition? IBM already has a similar product callled Tivoli. If IBM purchases Sun, N1 will either be slashed or integrated into Tivoli. Any thoughts on that?
Re:what about N1? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:what about N1? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:what about N1? (Score:3, Informative)
offcourse the internals/specific of the 2 products are different, otherwise both of them will be suing each other.
Re:what about N1? (Score:2)
Re:what about N1? (Score:3, Funny)
>alcohol.
And yet people wonder what went wrong...
Vastly unlikely (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Vastly unlikely (Score:2)
However for a company to be successful/sustainable it has to produce/RnD technologies, that can be easily marketed. If a technology has no market, it will not last long.
Re:Vastly unlikely (Score:3, Interesting)
Correction - although SGI now sells Itanium2 systems, they haven't given up on MIPS by any means. There are still many things possible with their existing architecture that won't be possible with Intel hardware for years to come. Like cramming many CPUs into a box without creating a new solar body. It's a pity that they haven't been able to keep up with other manufacturers in terms
Apple (Score:5, Funny)
In my day... (Score:3, Funny)
Now where did I put my wooden teeth... ?
Will the employees cooperate? (Score:2)
HPQW? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone have an idea what kind of steward HP would be for Java?
Re:HPQW? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who's been on the recieving end of a HP sales droid in the last two years knows that HP's story going forward is "Windows on Itanium." You can bet your bottom dollar that if they bought Sun, they'd kill Java stone dead in favour of .NET.
Painted into a corner? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they'll be dead in a year, just I can't see their sales growing much, and quite possible slowly reversing. There are still some very high end applications where Sun products may well be the best product for the job, but they are painting themselves into a corner - that niche is getting smaller and smaller as x86 gets better and better.
Re:Painted into a corner? (Score:2, Insightful)
-Kevin
I'd prefer better competition (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Corner's bigger than you think. (Score:4, Interesting)
But if you need a large memory bandwidth, I think probably still beats out Itanium, and definitely beats x86.
If you need a whole shitload of CPUs in one box, Sparc is also a better architecture - even if Itanium can scale up to hundreds of processors, there's no OS that runs on it which can properly handle that many.
Re:Corner's bigger than you think. (Score:5, Informative)
The new HP Superdome machines with Itanium2 are more powerful CPU-wise than anything Sun makes at the moment.
Ewan
Hrmm (Score:5, Funny)
IBM to buy Java? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IBM to buy Java? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Sun java folks used to (until last year) work from two buildings on DeAnza in Cupertino. At least one of these was an ex-Taligent building, and consequently IBM owned the furniture (I think the lease may also have been some kind of sublease thing). One time IBM wanted all their furniture back, and I believe they flat refused to sell it, forcing each Sun java employee to move out of his office into the corridor, while the facilities dudes came and swapped his desk etc. out for an essentially identical replacement.
The sun java folks are now confined largely to Sun's Agnew's development centre, built on the site of the county mental hospital. Given that Cupertino was a totally excellent place to work, and Santa Clara most assuredly isn't, I'd guess that if the IBM folks said "we'll buy java, and y'all can come back and work in Cupertino" there would be a lot of happy people.
One of IBM's largest Java development centres is (waitforit) on DeAnza in Cupertino, right beside the old Sun java building. Both are former Apple buildings, and a bunch of the java folks are ex-apple.
I wouldn't put too much stead in the "disgruntled employees veto the deal" theory, mentioned above. These days, the average Silicon Valley employee cares about 1) do I get paid ? 2) does my commute get better or worse ? 3) do I get to do something that isn't totally crap ? (the former number 1, "will my stock options make me rich?" no longer figures much).
Re:IBM to buy Java? (Score:2, Interesting)
However, right now IBM has to comply with Java standards set by Sun and other vendors in a bunch of technical committees they (IBM) don't control. They would probabl
What about MS? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What about MS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nooooooo! (Score:5, Funny)
A computer tech company, becoming irrelevant, trying to get bought out!
Can't you see what will happen next?
THEY WILL SUE IBM SAYING PARTS OF SOLARIS ARE IN LINUX!
(/me removes tongue from cheek now).
Why NOT Apple. (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple would have to capitalize on Sun's strength - the data center.
In addition, they'd have to save some serious operating $$$. To me, that means heading in the same direction in terms of OS and in terms of CPU architecture.
I'm not saying it's not doable. But doing so would mean BIG changes to the customers (either of Apple, or of Sun, or both).
And customers just don't like big change.
Both companies are leaders in terms of technology, and Jobs is pretty darn good at marketing. He is a good desktop visionary. But can he understand the datacenter?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
NEWS for nerds? (Score:5, Informative)
An institutional buyer made a large purchase of Sun Stock. That fueled rumors about a buyout, but it seems a lot more likely that after reporting (admittedly very modest) profits in the last quarter and one analyst recently shifting Sun to buy, some institutional buyer wanted to get some "bargain" stock that they think will appreciate well in the coming years. Given how steady the stock price has been between 3 & 4 dollars, it does seem likely that it's bottomed out, so unless you think Sun is imminently going out of business (which I sure don't) this kind of buy seems to make sense more from that standpoint than from any bs about being bought by a bigger player.
As far as it goes, Sun's culture is so antithetical to IBM and to the "new" HP that I can't see either of them wanting to take Sun on....
Re:NEWS for nerds? (Score:5, Interesting)
The question was raised in the last event NC03-Q2, and Scott McNealy denied the rumor flat out. I think that he meant what he said and I cannot see how he decides to sell his company to anyone. And again, he and Sun can prevent that from happening.
I'd think that some investor thought it's a good stock to buy. It is true that they had tough time last year, but I think that two things are true:
1. Generally, Sun employees like working for the company. Head hunters are generally having tough time recruiting Sun (star) employees.
2. Customers like their product and service.
When these two are true, it's a good stock to buy even though they are not making great profit this quarter. I am just speculating, but chances are that someone/some institution figured that it's a good time to buy and they bought good chunk.
Bought by Cobalt? (Score:2)
Hey, maybe a company named "Cobalt" can buy them and then run them into the ground!!
Wrong, rose on large institutional investment (Score:5, Informative)
At UBS Warburg, Jack Francis, co-head of equity trading, said the sudden surge in price followed a 5-million-share block trade, considered to be a very large buy by Wall Street standards. "That was spurring stories of a potential takeover, which doesn't make any sense at all but did add fuel to the upside," said Francis. "The rumor doesn't hold a lot of weight, but in a market like this it gets people off the fence who are looking for any story that could generate alpha."
Anyway, Sun are currently valued at $12Bn, and have $5.5Bn sitting in the bank.
Stock prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh wait. Everyone's stock fell around 92% in the past three years.
Re:Stock prices (Score:3, Informative)
But some of us have core stocks in other areas.. and the average hit has been about 35%. Unless you're lucky enough to own Borg-Warner, Proctor & Gamble, or a few others of like ilk.. they're worth more now than they were before the stock market's big adjustment back to reality.
Not Everyone [Re:Stock prices] (Score:3, Informative)
IBM current stock price: about $85
IBM current stock price times 10: about $850
Unless IBM was at $850 three years ago, it hasnt even dropped 90% (BTW, IBMs all time high is around $135-$140).
Sun/Apple Doomsaying FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
All the anti-Sun FUD that keeps getting posted to Slashdot reminds me of the anti-Apple FUD that was all over the media a few years ago.
Speculation about IBM or HP buying Sun now is probably just as groundless as speculation about Sony or Disney (or Sun) buying Apple five years ago. Yeah, they're not doing as well as they used to, but the whole industry isn't, either.
I think Sun's main problem right now is the same problem that Apple has right now: getting hardware that customers will perceive as being equal or superior to x86 in price/performance. It looks like SPARC will get there eventually, but not soon enough; I imagine they'd either have to use Opteron/Hammer on their low-end machines, or somehow make very inexpensive 1-4 processor workstations and servers to leverage SPARC's scalability (it is, after all, the Scalable Processor ARChitecture) and Solaris's superior SMP support.
I'll admit that I have many reasons to Want To Believe that Sun will still be a strong presence in the industry when I graduate from college, but I do seriously think that rumor's of Sun's imminent death are greatly exaggerated.
Re:Sun/Apple Doomsaying FUD (Score:3, Informative)
This Just In! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:This Just In! (Score:2)
Unfortuantely for them, they hadnt really thought it through and they went broke. On the plus side, there's a really interesting documentary running around on the short life of Snapple. You might be able to source it from ABC [abc.net.au] or sbs [sbs.com.au]
EDS? (Score:5, Interesting)
EDS however was the top services company until IBM decided to go into high end consulting and services business. So... it seems an EDS / Sun merger would put them both back in IBM's league. A customer could chose IBM / zOS / db2 / mainframe for a big account or EDS / solaris / oracle / sunfire at a discout.
It also would be interesting since EDS reportedly uses big Sun servers all over the world...
just my $0.02.
What would happen to Java? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've read a lot of bitter comments on this forum about the fact that java isn't an open technology. This hasn't mattered much to me because of their community process, and otherwise open attitude, and open off-shoot projects (STL, Struts, Tomcat, etc).
I'm not trolling here at all -- I wonder what the implications for Java could be in the face of a buyout. Obviously, that would depend in some part on the buyer. And there would always be the GNU foundations [gnu.org] free implementations. OTOH, perhaps a buyout could actually prompt Java to be handed over to a standards board.
These are rumors though, and I can't recall ever hearing a merger/buyout rumor that actually panned out (maybe I just hear bad gossip, though), so I don't put a lot of beleif into this story. It's just speculation about what Sun might do in an x86's world .
I will say that it's interesting to me to see how it's usually not the case that the best technologies survive. However, when looked at from a natural selection viewpoint, one realizes that since the computing ecology is shifted towards MS products, the x86 architecure hardware has an advantage, even though it isn't the best.
Change the OS ecology, and x86 may not be the de facto architecure...
This is sad (Score:5, Interesting)
Solaris is an incredibly mature OS. Just read the manpage for the sar command some day. Also there is Trusted Solaris, and F-C2 security certification, etc. Linux is my favorite OS, but Solaris definitely has my respect for its stability, scalability and maturity. And the number of users of Solaris would decrease dramatically if Sun were acquired. Think about how different the Microsoft userbase would be if they suddenly had no desktop presence and were only servers.
However, I also think that Sun should hold in there. I mean a 30% drop in sales, thats almost to be expected in todays economic situation. I mean travel is down like 50-70% in some places. Also one has to keep in mind that Sun machines have a longer lifetime on average than say a PC, so thier volume of sales will be lower in comparison.
Sun does need to get the performance of thier Sparc chips up to the others. Thier performance is a big drawback to the pricetag of a Sun machine. But everything else about thier hardware is top noche. I mean they are so anal with their hardware that they put lot numbers on each of thier ethernet cables. And their machines are just perfectly engineered. Any box that I've been inside of, I never thought "Why the hell did they put that there?".
But, who knows maybe this will be a good thing. I mean all of their employees will go to work somewhere, and maybe Solaris and NFS sources will be opened up.
However, if it were up to me, I'd just prefer Sun sticked around for a while.
Re:This is sad (Score:3, Informative)
Then you've never had the uhm, privilege, of working on an Enterprise 450. What a piece of SH.T. If the server works, it works fine, but if it breaks, you're going to end up bleeding trying to fix it.
What a mess.
And I guess you've never had to replace 500+ CPU's due to the e-cache problem.
Or replace PCI backplanes on SF15k's.
Or replace CIC1 E10k system boards w
Sun would make sense to IBM (Score:5, Interesting)
HP would not even bother about Sun right now because it does not want to bite off more than it can chew. Investors would not at all take kindly to the acquistion of Sun by HP. HP right now is trying to fend off the dog that is Dell. HP does have about 13.2 billion $ in hand (Biz Journals [bizjournals.com]) but it will probably not want to mess with it right now.
Removing Sun from the competition would help the server market by bringing some consolidation.
What will IBM do with the Sparc chips? It is not likely to dump it for a while but after 2-3 years it may just move to Itanium and its own PowerPc chips.
Sun has already brought in x86 systems in the lower end. Both Sun and IBM are adopting AMD's Opteron for lower and mid level systems.
We have also got to remember the FTC. If IBM does bid for Sun then expect them to go through a tough scrutiny so as to avoid a monopoly status in the high end server industry.
People know that Sun is able to keep customers only by chanting the reliability and customer satisfaction song. Its Ultra Sparc's are falling behind in performance and it is probably only with the Sparc V's that it can gain any semblance of competitiveness. And when are the Sparc V's going to come out? 2005 at the earliest.( News)
Would Dell bid for Sun? Dell certainly can because it does have quite a bit of cash sitting around 9.1 billion $ as of Dec 2002 (Motley Fool [fool.com] and Yahoo ).
What is Sun's market capitalisation? As of March 19, it was about 10.73 billion $.
Dell does not have a foothold in the high end server market because it does not spend much of R & D as opposed to HP, IBM and Sun. Acquistion of Sun could be a easy way to compete with HP and IBM. Dell's entry could help reduce the prices of high end servers like Dell has done to the desktop market.
If this story is indeed true then it would be the most talked about merger. Competition for customers paying money for big tin has only gotten worse after the tech meltdown.
Personally I feel that the Sun bid is just a rumor like the Universal/Apple deal. If anyone is to believe it, then Sun or whoever is buying them have to publicly state that they are looking into this deal. Maybe the coming weeks will tell us more.
Re:Sun would make sense to IBM (Score:4, Informative)
Check out the SPEC scores. SPARC 1.2 Ghz have the same score a Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz. We all know about lies and benchmarks, but it seems to show that Mhz isn't the whole story.
The other thing people miss is the future. I would suggest checking out this article [eetimes.com] about Niagara. If Sun pulls this off, it will be *huge*.
I don't see Sun being purchased anytime soon or at least not in any kind of a mutual agreement. They have plenty to keep going for, both currently and in the future.
Re:Sun would make sense to IBM (Score:3, Insightful)
You are comparing a CPU that was released very recently against one that has been out for a couple years. This should make it apparent that if you compare Sun's fastest CPU to Intel's fastest CPU, the Intel is significantly faster. When you attempt to compare at the same price point, you find that it's impossible - you can buy many f
Re:Sun would make sense to IBM (Score:4, Interesting)
Dell is seen as a hardware company.
HP is seen largely as a hardware company.
The Apple notion is laughable. Totally. If Apple had control of Java, the only upshot is that you would be able to choose the programmer development environment in several colors. They'd probably put Javadocs on the iPod too. Somehow.
IBM is seen as an high-end architecure, software, systems, hardware company. IBM would add stature to Java. All of these other companies would drag Java's credibility down.
IBM likes Java... (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess we'll see.
History tells us that it will certainly not happen (Score:4, Informative)
These kinds of rumors are a recurring phenomenon in this industry. Check for example "When will IBM buy Sun? [weblogs.com]" which is over a year now.
Sun has a market capitalization of around $12 billion (at its current stock price of $3.75).
To buy it with a good premium would mean a huge investment.
And considering that Sun always stands alone and that its products -- hardware as well as software -- are not really compatible with the rest of the industry, anyone who would buy Sun would only buy its customers. But for how long?
Sun customers are among the most loyal ones.
And you can believe me: I was working for one of its competitors.
Really hope it's IBM (Score:4, Interesting)
IBM will buy Sun and promote Java (Score:3, Interesting)
By comparison, IBM has done a great job with producing great software and new frameworks. They have also contributed a great deal of software to the Apache/Jakarta and XML projects. They are already the leader in Java technology, Sun just owns the patents and copyrights behind it. IBM needs that to really allow Java to take off.
If you leave Sun as it is for too long, it will kill Java and
I would like to see Big Blue as the driving force behind Java.
anyone but dell (Score:5, Insightful)
sun is a true tech company. so is ibm, and so is apple. you might hate/love each of them, but you can't deny they innovate. dell wouldn't know what to do with java anymore than microsoft would. of course, figuring how much gates' ass mikey dell kisses, guess we know what dell would do to java. and sparc. and solaris. and...
SUN is the most serious threat to IBM dominance (Score:4, Interesting)
This area is the last large market segment IBM mainframes has, where they are the only player, so this is a serious threat to the IBM mainframes and therefore to all the services&support contracts, and peripheral systems that comes with IBM mainframe ownership.
The recent 100+ CPU servers from SUN and compatible Fujitsu machines as well as their mid-range machines with "hot-swap everything", and everything possible done to make software running on them 24x7x365 capable even while the hardware and OS is being upgraded, is another area where SUN is fast becoming a serious threat to the marketshare and market dominance of AS/400 and mainframes from IBM.
For these reasons alone it would be a very smart move if IBM were to acquire SUN, because it will remove a very serious competitor for from the marketplace.
Re:SUN is the most serious threat to IBM dominance (Score:4, Interesting)
HOWEVER, I still say that Sun is only the SECOND biggest threat. Who then--Microsoft? Nope.
IBM's biggest danger is IBM. They STILL believe to an unhealthy degree that they're the Only Shop In Town, and that The Market Will Follow Their Lead. They don't yet (!!!!!!) understand that the market has already just about written them off, desktops are commodity items, service in the mid- to high-end range can come from ANYWHERE, and that they'll have to be the BEST offering out there to get anyone's business.
That said, I still think that IBM is the most likely company to buy Sun. Sadly.
Wrong direction: Question is, who should Sun buy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Sun has $12Bn in market capitalization and $5.5Bn in cash on hand, I think the question isn't who's going to buy Sun, but rather who should Sun buy?
I have maintained for some time that Sun should purchase RedHat (current market cap. approx. $1Bn if my sources [yahoo.com] are correct), go whole hog into promoting Linux, move the advanced features from Solaris into Linux, and turn their hardware into the best darned high-end Linux servers and desktops you ever saw.
First of all, IBM is already trying to do this to Sun with high-end servers. New action is needed to defend that ground.
Second, putting the weight of Sun and the open source devotees behind Linux application development together can help cut into Microsoft's server market share and potentially even make some more desktop inroads.
There's probably no getting Sun out of the hardware business. But unless they harness a mass movement behind the software needed for their systems, they face the prospect of being the Apple of the UNIX server world: well-regarded but largely unused.
Re:Wrong direction: Question is, who should Sun bu (Score:3, Interesting)
I see no future for Sun now that Linux has gained the high end enterprise system features in the kernel, and the related high end datacenter administration tools are in the works.
Sun is dying, and Linux is killing it.
Irrelevant? (Score:3, Insightful)
If Intel compatible machines would put in OpenFirmware or equivalent, remove keyboard and monitor, and allow power management/console access through a single RJ-45 serial connector at a similar price point we could talk. Sun Fire v100 has this in a 1U for $995 retail.
What I'm trying to point out is that Intel machines have an incredible amount of horsepower but have consistently failed on bringing managability in at a reasonable price.
Further I think Sun is in the course of reinventing itself. They are supporting numerous open source efforts, looking for Solaris to Linux exit strategies, and moving away from proprietary hardware that kept its price point high. Just within the last few generations of hardware look at the changes. Say goodbye to SBUS for PCI, special memory for DDR, standard monitors. Similar to the reinvention Apple has gone through isn't it?
Open letter to Slashdot editors. (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, honestly, you have been pushing this crap about Sun for several months now, every single snippet found by somebody about Sun's demise is dutifully put in the frontpage of this well loved, but some times ailing, site.
What is it with Sun that opens a wound with you?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
Re:What if MS buys Sun? (Score:2)
Re:I'd LOVE to see the Sun set (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh, this should be interesting...
Hrm.
Hrm?
Hrm?!
HRRMMM!
So let me get this straight. You start with a woefully maintained box, left behind by another administrator who didn't maintain it properly, you have zero experience with UNIX (demonstrated by your inability to move user accounts), you are in a self-confessed non-Solaris shop, you don't even have a test environment for a production system, you expect free training from the support desk to do simple tasks (rather than reading a book or doing the Solaris admin course), and then when you don't get everything your way you have a temper tantrum and migrate to... HP/UX?!?!?!?!
You're a freaking idiot.
Err... (Score:3, Insightful)