IBM 'in talks' to buy Sun Microsystems

[edesignuk]

IBM has opened acquisition talks with Sun Microsystems, raising the prospect of a massive consolidation of the software, server and storage markets.

According to the Wall Street Journal IBM has mooted a price of $6.5bn. Sun is currently capitalised at $3.7bn ($4.97/share), but its share price has persistently fallen since the heady days of the dot com boom and has under-performed that of its computer systems competitors over the last few years, making it a much less expensive purchase now that it would have been three or four years ago. Legions of long-term Sun investors who have seen the value of their Sun holdings decline drastically will breathe a huge sigh of relief as they see the potential to make some money at least.

Any deal would likely bring very close scrutiny from regulatory authorities, given both firm's roles in the server, storage and systems software markets.

The Register.

Sun have been in trouble for a while.

 

[jaw04005]

Wonder what this means for ZFS? If this materializes, Apple may reconsider implementing it.

Sigh. IBM is probably the world's biggest patent troll.

 

[edesignuk]

Sigh. IBM is probably the world's biggest patent troll.

That's because the stuff that comes out of their various R&D efforts is really quite amazing.

 

[darwinian]

My first thoughts ran to the state of open source software that Sun supports. What of that if IBM took over? I am not optimistic but admittedly ignorant in speculation.

 

[Unspeaked]

IBM has mooted a price of $6.5bn. Sun is currently capitalised at $3.7bn ($4.97/share)

Make that a market cap of $6.14 billion ($8.20/share).

Doesn't take the market long to react to those rumors...

 

[trule]

My first thoughts ran to the state of open source software that Sun supports. What of that if IBM took over? I am not optimistic but admittedly ignorant in speculation.

IBM is big open source supporter.

Its questionable what IBM sees in Sun? They could just let Sun die an natural death...or even let HP waste its money on Sun since HP is so good at wasting money on pointless mergers.

 

[Malfoy]

Wonder what this means for ZFS? If this materializes, Apple may reconsider implementing it.

Sigh. IBM is probably the world's biggest patent troll.

really?

They do hold a LOT of patents (and they're quite proud of that) but how often do you hear of IBM going after someone else for patent infringement?

 

[pilotError]

Can you say Epic Fail?

Their corporate cultures are so far apart, I just don't see it working long term.

Apple is a better choice, but I don't see Big Steve getting into the corporate world.

 

[Teh Don Ditty]

I posted this in another thread...

As a Sun shareholder whom made a nice little sum of money on the IBM/Sun rumors, I personally think that whatever alleged merger may happen it's a good thing.

Apple acquiring Sun wouldn't make much sense, unless of course Apple has decided that they wanted to enter the data center market (Which HP and IBM have a nice hold on).

This deal is all about positioning for IBM. They want to take on HP and fend off Cisco which just announced they are entering the data center market.

Sad to see the once almighty Ra Sun go, but perhaps it is time.

 

[dmr727]

Well crap. What am I supposed to do about support for my SPARCstation IPC?

 

[backdraft]

Apple & Sun

Actually Apple would be a better fit. Sun has great engineers but their marketing needs work Apple could fix that. Apple doesn't have the support infrastructure and experience that Sun has in the enterprise, seems like they complement each other! By merging the would strengthen each others weaknesses. Just imagine the advances the could make by merging Mac OS X and Solaris or by combining ZFS + XSan (killer backend clustered storage) or Sun Grid Engine + XGrid for renderfarms. Sparc + PA Semi hmm... These products would be great for creative pros, not to mention the enterprise.

 

[trule]

Actually Apple would be a better fit. Sun has great engineers but their marketing needs work Apple could fix that. Apple doesn't have the support infrastructure and experience that Sun has in the enterprise, seems like they complement each other! By merging the would strengthen each others weaknesses. Just imagine the advances the could make by merging Mac OS X and Solaris or by combining ZFS + XSan (killer backend clustered storage) or Sun Grid Engine + XGrid for renderfarms. Sparc + PA Semi hmm... These products would be great for creative pros, not to mention the enterprise.

Solaris makes more sense at IBM, to fill the gap between AIX and Linux. Merging two OS's would be a great idea if your objective was for Apple to go bankrupt.

Render farms, you can make these with IBM blades servers and FREE Linux software, much cheaper solution. I don't think Apple understands FREE software.


Sun's stock price says it all, can't compete, redundant products. IBM sees Solaris as a lever to the telecoms server market, and the software complements their efforts in the open source arena.

Apples marketing strategy simply does not work in boring IT corporate environments where decisions are made mostly on price and capability, not on style or coolness.

 

[Cromulent]

Render farms, you can make these with IBM blades servers and FREE Linux software, much cheaper solution. I don't think Apple understands FREE software.

Of course Apple does. They support a lot of open source projects and generally release them on less restrictive terms than the GPL.

 

[nitrofurano]

well...

well, would be great seeing a fusion from IBM, Sun and Apple - seeing MacOS-X becoming completelly open-source, and MacOS-X starting focusing OpenSparc (Spar64) architecture instead of Amd64 (Intel 64bit processors) - i don't doubt all of this can be possible - the surprise would be when.

 

[szark]

I'm not sure how I feel about this. IBM and Sun's product lines have quite a bit of overlap, though it would ensure the survival and future development of Java.

Sigh. IBM is probably the world's biggest patent troll.

IBM is definitely NOT a patent troll. That term is reserved for companies whose major (or entire) business consists of suing companies for violating their patents, which they usually purchased from another company that actually submitted the patent. IBM essentially uses patents for defensive purposes only.

 

[mkrishnan]

I'm not sure how I feel about this. IBM and Sun's product lines have quite a bit of overlap, though it would ensure the survival and future development of Java.

I don't think any tie involving Apple made any sense -- IBM is a much more sensible partner. It's sad to see the Sun name finally set... it's so historic in this industry, but... things change.

NYT reported on Thursday that the deal talks are moving along swimmingly:

I.B.M. appears on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, a longtime rival in the computer server and software markets, for nearly $7 billion.

The two companies have been negotiating for weeks, ironing out terms of an agreement that would turn I.B.M. into the dominant supplier of high-profit Unix servers and related technology.

I.B.M. is offering $9.50 a share, down from a bid of $10 a share, said people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly. The new agreement would restrict I.B.M.’s ability to walk away from the deal, these people said.

Even at $9.50 a share, the deal would value Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., at close to $7 billion. It is close to a 100 percent premium based on Sun’s value before rumors of an acquisition spread last month.

Representatives of I.B.M. and Sun declined to comment. People familiar with the negotiations say a final agreement could be announced Friday, although it is more likely to be made public next week. I.B.M.’s board has already approved the deal, they said.

Although, as far as I know, no deal was struck yesterday.

 

[trule]

I don't think any tie involving Apple made any sense -- IBM is a much more sensible partner. It's sad to see the Sun name finally set... it's so historic in this industry, but... things change.

Sun stock is down 95% from its 2000 high, its been a long slow death.

The real sad thing is that in the next 5 years IBM will gut the Sun product line and most of Suns workers will become IBM "resource actions". Unfortunately getting taken over by IBM is not so great, at least in the US.

Its definitely not going to be a partnership

 

[mysterytramp]

NYT: IBM Withdraws Offer for Sun

I.B.M. Withdraws Offer for Sun Microsystems

I.B.M. has withdrawn its offer to buy Sun Microsystems
because of a dispute over price, according to a person with
knowledge of the talks.

It always seemed to me that Apple would benefit from acquiring Sun. Enterprise systems would be a natural growth market for OS X and the Sun hardware line would complement Apple's.

mt

 

[mkrishnan]

It always seemed to me that Apple would benefit from acquiring Sun.

(Heres the NYT link)

Thanks for posting the update... I'm personally increasingly of the opinion that Sun's position is analogous to that of Chrysler -- a plan for its survival in any sense is doubtful. Perhaps if they scale down immensely, in a way that scarcely seems feasible, and concentrate on some of their best products, they can re-emerge. But, much like Chrysler, they have the potential of bringing down any partner with whom they merge.

As for Apple, the whole point of whether there is any complementarity between their portfolios aside, where is there really any evidence that Apple can grow through M&A or that they have, particularly in the modern era, shown really any capability of growing through anything other than organic means (putting aside acquisition of very small start-ups that can be metabolized more readily)?

The one great example of growth via M&A I can think of for Apple is acquiring NeXT, and that one is obviously not a not a normal example in any way.

 

[MisterMe]

It always seemed to me that Apple would benefit from acquiring Sun.

No, not since the Turn of the Millennium.

Enterprise systems would be a natural growth market for OS X and the Sun hardware line would complement Apple's.

...

You know Sun as a major vendor of servers, the owner of StarOffice, and the pioneer of the Java programming language because you never knew Sun as the pioneer of engineering workstations. Sun's original engineering workstations used the Motorola 68000, the same processor adopted by Apple for the original Macintosh. Later came the SPARC RISC processor. Unfortunately for Sun, SGI, and every other manufacturer of desktop workstations, x86-based PCs running Linux [or Windows] chased them down from behind.

Sun found refuge in the server market, but time was running out in this market as well. The steady march of cheap x86-based servers running Linux [or Windows] became an irresistible force. Other server manufacturers like DEC disappeared years ago. Compare IBM's offerings today to those just five years ago. Look at what happened to SGI just last week. It is not pretty out there.

The enterprise hardware market is in a race to the bottom. Apple's entry into that market might be good for the enterprise. However, it would not be good for Apple.

 

[Saladinos]

It always seemed to me that Apple would benefit from acquiring Sun. Enterprise systems would be a natural growth market for OS X and the Sun hardware line would complement Apple's.

mt

I kind of agree with you, but not because Sun's business is healthy enough to complement Apple's, but because they've got a lot of smart people who understand the needs of large corporations' IT services. Apple certainly could do with them working on OSX Server.

Buying Sun would be a waste of money: Sun has lots of assets that are simply worthless to Apple. It might be better for Apple to wait for SUn to go bankrupt, and go sucking up all its ex employees.

The StarOffice team could be integrated in to iWork.
The Solaris, ZFS, Server technology teams could be integrated in to OSX Server.
Experienced managers and product designers for server technologies would be great for Apple's corporate movement.

Sun has great people. It's assets are useless. Apple needs to get those people without paying extra for IP rights and business divisions which are simply not worth anything to them.

 

[SactoGuy18]

What really killed Sun was the ability of x86 hardware capable of supporting well past 2 GB of RAM in 64-bit mode and the maturation of the Beowulf server clustering software for Linux that made it possible to do symmetric multiprocessing across multiple server machines, which mean you could build a small roomful of blade servers with several hundred machines per rack, and each machine supporting up to 16 GB of RAM.

This type of installation is how Google can process and store such gigantic amounts of data.

 

[backdraft]

I kind of agree with you, but not because Sun's business is healthy enough to complement Apple's, but because they've got a lot of smart people who understand the needs of large corporations' IT services. Apple certainly could do with them working on OSX Server.

Buying Sun would be a waste of money: Sun has lots of assets that are simply worthless to Apple. It might be better for Apple to wait for SUn to go bankrupt, and go sucking up all its ex employees.

The StarOffice team could be integrated in to iWork.
The Solaris, ZFS, Server technology teams could be integrated in to OSX Server.
Experienced managers and product designers for server technologies would be great for Apple's corporate movement.

Sun has great people. It's assets are useless. Apple needs to get those people without paying extra for IP rights and business divisions which are simply not worth anything to them.

Why reinvent the wheel? Buying Sun gives Apple ownership of the code, IP, employees all intact. Once acquired Apple can merge the best parts of Solaris like zones, zfs, etc... Into OS X. I think there is a huge market for Final Cut Server + Sun Storage if they could get ZFS working in OS X and XSAN with iSCSI not to mention integrating Xgrid + Sun grid engine and a clustered file system/mechanism into the kernel. While they are at it they can replace Mach with L4.sec kernel. Apple can bring in Filemaker and mysql and give oracle a run for it's money. Sun knows enterprise Apple needs to get into real enterprise and revolutionize that space for further growth. Apple buying Sun would only solidify Apple. Win win.

 

[pilotError]

IBM - Sun deal fell apart

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/IBM-n...5HRC7YWsA?sec=topStories&pos=6&asset=&ccode=]

IBM not interested in Sun at any price: report
Thursday April 16, 2009, 10:16 am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - IBM is no longer interested in buying smaller rival Sun Microsystems Inc at any price, due to concerns that such a deal would draw intense regulatory scrutiny, CNBC reported on Thursday.


Reuters - A Sun Microsystems sign is pictured at the company's headquarters in Santa Clara, California March 18, 2009. REUTERS/Robert ...

Citing sources close to Sun, CNBC said the high-end computer maker had approached International Business Machines Corp earlier this week to ask it to return to the negotiating table, indicating that Sun would be flexible about price.

But IBM has decided it is not interested in any further negotiations with Sun, the cable news network reported, citing sources close to IBM.

IBM's contacts within the U.S. Justice Department, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the European Union have all advised the company that such a merger could be subject to an antitrust review lasting six to nine months, CNBC said.

Sun declined to comment. IBM was not immediately available for comment. IBM had withdrawn a $7 billion offer for Sun earlier this month, after the smaller company rejected the bid as too low, sources with knowledge of the matter have said.

Shares of Sun erased pre-market gains of about 7 percent to trade at $6.18, up less than 1 percent from their previous close on the Nasdaq. IBM shares were up 1.45 percent at $100.28 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando, writing by Tiffany Wu; Editing by Derek Caney)