10 Products That May, May Not Survive an IBM, Sun Merger

While Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu have been developing the SPARC processor for a number of years, it seems likely with IBM calling most of the shots that this chip would succumb to IBM’s Power processor in the new partnership. Fujitsu could then continue to develop SPARC on its own.

While both IBM and Sun have their individual tape systems for data storage, Sun could have the advantage here with its StorageTek line of products. It could mean IBM’s tape products get absorbed into Sun’s line.

Both Sun and IBM have a number of servers based on industry-standard x86 architecture. However, Sun is still new to the x86 space with its Intel- and AMD-based offerings, and that could mean its Sun Fire and Blade systems go away or are absorbed into IBM’s System x line.

The IBM Tivoli suite of products for security and identity management is here to stay. This means that users of Sun’s Enterprise Authentication Mechanism suite would likely watch as that software is absorbed into Tivoli or discontinued all together.

These are Sun’s high-end server systems, usually based on SPARC, that have not been selling well in the past few years. IBM would likely continue to offer its own Power Systems and mainframes for the high-end market and discontinue or sell off Sun’s Enterprise line, possibly to Fujitsu.

While IBM’s AIX and Sun’s Solaris are both legacy Unix operating system, Solaris has been under more development in the last few years compared with AIX. IBM might also try to put Solaris under GPL.

Of all the products, MySQL is likely to not go away, but at the same time, it’s hard to see IBM ridding itself of DB2 or even Informix. What would likely happen is MySQL will remain but receive technology from both of IBM’s other database products.

Both Sun and IBM have a number of virtualization products for different pieces of hardware. It’s likely, however, that IBM would choose to rid itself of Sun’s proprietary virtualization products but keep the xVM line and develop it to its product line.

IBM has Tivoli Directory Server, and Sun has its Directory Server. Both sets of software have their advantages and disadvantages, but if IBM is calling the shots, then it might absorb what Sun has into its offerings. But this could take time.

While Sun’s corporate blogs may or may not help IT managers, it seems clear that most of these would go away under the shadow of Big Blue. This means no more musings from Jonathan Schwartz.