Entic.net

Ever been involved in a rumor? It sure does spread like wild fire. Sun stock price increased almost 90% on this IBM rumor. There are all kinds of articles all over the Internet.



No one really knows what exactly is happening, just that IBM had showed interest in Sun and are in "talks". No one knows for sure that IBM is really interested in buying Sun. It could just be that they are interested in partnering with Sun in a bigger way. Or it could be just that Sun is selling parts of its business, not all.



There are huge consequences for Sun and the industry if IBM were to really buy Sun. First of all, a lot of Sun employees would be let go. And I doubt anyone inside Sun really likes this. It will demoralize the company, and we are not talking about a few hundred employees here. It could also demoralize the Open source community Sun is involved with.



Sun also is just around the corner of reaping the fruit from all of its R&D (e.g. with Unified Storage, ZFS) work. Why would they want to be bought now? Unified storage is a big thing. Cisco believes it, thats why its getting into Unified server business. Sun Unified storage is a great story, a full SAN environment made up of Open source cheap products: ZFS+OpenSolaris+x86 boxes. It will be a threat to competitors -- thats why perhaps IBM could remotely be interested in Sun?



Jonathan has been a CEO for a few years now. It generally takes some time for any strategy to play out in the industry. So, does he not want to see what will happen to Sun and the results of his strategies the past few years? It would seem quite a bit of waste in time and effort put in from Jonathan. He would not be happy, I assume.



Unless Sun is really out of cash and has no choice in terms of cash flow, I really doubt IBM will buy Sun and any Sun investor will really allow it. I doubt this, read Jonathan's blog. Just a different perspective. A lot of people love Sun and their products. Including us. :)