Enterprise IT managers need to be thinking about the product impact of a possible IBM acquisition of Sun. eWEEK Labs takes a look at the areas of synergy--such as database and operating systems--as well as areas of overlap--such as development. In the end, IBM's services model may be the crux of all product decisions.IBM is in talks to acquire Sun. This could be one of the biggest
deals (in more ways than one) in our industry, or it could go the way
of Microsoft/Yahoo. In any case, its important for enterprise
customers of both companies to think about what such a deal could mean
for the products and technologies on which they rely.
Would IBM get rid of Sun products that compete with or overlap IBM products?
When I look at the product lines of the two companies, I dont see a
lot of competition and overlap. For the most part, I see products that
are synergistic and actually make a lot of sense offered together.
IBMs DB2 and Suns MySQL databases, for example, hardly compete
head-to-head, and together make a very nice potential database
portfolio for IBM.
On the storage side, I see a similar group of products that have
synergy and would meld together nicely into a full product portfolio.
And, as others have pointed out, Suns ability to deliver commodity
hardware fills a hole in the IBM product portfolio.
However, there are some areas in which the competition between
products is more directfor example, between Sun Solaris and IBM AIX.
That said, I think Solaris and AIX would remain independent systems
should the acquisition happen. It basically works in IBMs favor to
keep both operating systems around, as they tend to attract different
customers. And, lets face it: Both of these OSes are pretty much
legacy systems now--or are well on their way to that status.
Click here to see Sam Palmisano's top 15 moves that kept IBM growing.
There
are also some interesting areas of overlap between Suns SPARC and
IBMs Power chip platforms, and its possible that we could see one of
the two phased out over time should an IBM acquisition of Sun go
through.
But where the two companies compete most directly is in development.
Suns Netbeans and IBMs Eclipse platforms compete head-on in many
areas, and developers tend to choose one over the other. But, again,
this is an area in which I see a benefit to multiple offerings, and I
wouldnt be surprised to see Netbeans evolve as a power-user option.
Of course, Suns Java is a big piece of the puzzle here, and I would
expect that all of the Java tools and servers would remain in play for
a long time.
It's important to note that, given IBM's acquisition history, there
is a good chance that Sun would remain in many ways intact should Big
Blue buy it.
There are examples of IBM acquisitions that led to a company and its
products being subsumed, but there are also many examples of IBM
acquisitions where the acquired company continued to produce products,
including some that competed with IBM products. (Lotus being the most
obvious example.)
The other thing to keep in mind is that IBM is essentially a service
company--its all about getting customers and driving them to IBM
services. So, getting customers of Sun products and driving them to IBM
services makes perfect sense. Sun's wide customer base in hardware,
Java development and cloud-based computing would add to potential IBM
services and put IBM in a better position to compete against
Hewlett-Packard.
Sun customers probably shouldnt worry about products being subsumed
into IBM products or removed entirely, but they should worry about
individual products essentially getting lost in the giant IBM universe.
Also, even though Sun is hardly a master of marketing and PR, it is
still much better at it than IBM. IBMs biggest problem is its lack of
ability to promote great products--best typified by its inability to
take advantage of having the best operating system of the 1990s (OS/2).
A future dearth of good marketing and PR is probably a bigger danger to
Sun products than the chance of them getting cut entirely.
Well see if this deal actually happens or if it is just another
exercise in what-if scenarios. While less competition is never a good
thing, a combined IBM/Sun could be a strong company to face the new age
of cloud and open computing.
More eWEEK Labs analyses about the effects of a possible IBM/Sun
merger:
Storage
Is the Key Technology
Open-Source
Community Would Win
Directory
That Lives Competes More Strongly with Microsoft Active Directory
Databases
Would Feed Off Each Other
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