Sun & IBM: Frienemies gettin' Friendlier
Two days ago I wrote about the brave new world of frienemies, a world born out of the desire and need for large companies to provide their customers with choice:
"It is because of this that Sun resells Red Hat and Suse, works very closely with Canonical/Ubuntu and encourages sales of Solaris on systems from 'competitors' such as IBM, Dell and HP."
Well in the case of IBM, as of an hour ago, we now do more than simply encourage Solaris sales on IBM equipment. The two companies just announced that rather than just providing Solaris for their blade servers, IBM will now provide Solaris 10 subscriptions on IBM x86 based blades and rack servers through IBM's standard routes to market.
Very cool!
Call me a cock-eyed optimist but I like this new world of cooperation. It gives Sun access to new markets, IBM access to new markets and most importantly, provides the customer with choice. Whats not to like? :)
Pau for now...
We were calling this "Coopertition" (combination of cooperation and competition) just a couple of years ago - but I sure like "Frienemies"...
Ciao,
Wayne
Posted by Wayne Horkan on August 23, 2007 at 04:04 PM CDT #
Thanks Wayne. I first heard "frenemies" last year and loved it. A bit more playful than coopetition etc :)
Posted by Barton on August 24, 2007 at 11:47 AM CDT #