Apparently I like living dangerously since I decided to write this little comment about the latest gossip going around that Big Blue will buy Sun. Note that these are my private thoughts and comment, needless to say they do not reflect official company statements or directions, since also I know nothing about them. As Steven Seagal said in the movie “I am just a cook”. No 'r' please... So why do I do this ? Out of a sense of outrage, a sense of love to Sun and to inform customers and friends who asked me about this apparent turn of events...
As a background everything starts with the article in the Wall Street Journal, and in typical internet style all other reports quote this news... As far as I know no other real news or reports have been generated. Everybody just republishes... Am I impressed ? No. You keep seeing the rumour mill going around – for years now – with stuff like this. When I was at Novell it was “Sun will buy Novell” and “IBM will buy Novell”. At EMC IBM again, same at Dell and same at NetApp... So you could say “IBM buys ... “ is a theme for me... A good article about the rumours is at The Register today.
My outrage comes from the fact that the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this is just another one of those lousy rumours IBM is spreading in the market about us lately. They are quick to point out reduction plans, while skillfully keeping quiet about their own layoffs and job relocations. When you spread rumours like this customers start asking questions, people hesitate, divide and conquer (the market I mean...). Admittedly the java stock soared on the news, but who can predict Wall Street these days ?
My love comes from working just a year for Sun now, and as I told an executive this week, we are too shy; there are incredible things happening at Sun, we have unbelievable people working here (not me, really smart people...). Look at the whole open source movement, products like Glassfish, Open Storage , OpenSolaris, MySQL and now cloud services. I will talk about open Cloud in another article, but the moment about this is big, again we bring our open concept to a hot new technology topic, and I wonder if someone was trying to take the wind ou of that announcement yesterday... We have a great culture that IBM could not grap. As Peter Ryan said in november we are not the third coke, but the Jack Daniels everyone needs now...
So there's my 2 cents... This blog entry will be visionary once everyone realizes what's going on and propel me into internet stardom... or get me into trouble with my new employer... But I am convinced Sun will thrive, we are on a roll and I am here to tell you about it !
