Sun vs IBM rumours...
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 !
Nice post. I love working with Glassfish, MySQL and other Sun products in my free time at home. Why at home? Because those Sun products along with Hibernate, Spring, Groovy and Tomcat are a joy to work with after I spend 8 hours a day fighting the other guy's "enterprise" products at work.
Posted by RJ on March 19, 2009 at 12:50 PM MET #
Yo, I agree totally..
There are two clear winners from this type of rumour if you don't count the short term
thrill of a temporary stock price hike to the general Sun investors population.
1/ The guy who spread the rumor who went long on the stock and will short it once the
ticker turns. This guy we know is in a business that we are coming to expect this kind
of behaviour from.
2/ Sun's competitors who know for sure that Sun's customer base will not buy from Sun if
we are likely to become IBM, and nor will potential new customers if their proposed vendor
is about to be swallowed up.
The first guy, given his motivation lead to this, is manipulating the market and that is just plain illegal.
The second guy, I despise for his total lack of integrity and given that I find out who
he is, I won't be buying from him, now or ever.
Good blog.
Posted by George Shepherd on March 19, 2009 at 01:07 PM MET #
Thanks RJ ! If you need some help fighting the good fight... Nice blogs, I had a look. So what is hoter at the moment you think Ruby or Groovy ? Which should I learn to dabble in programming again ?
Posted by Alain Geenrits on March 19, 2009 at 01:10 PM MET #
Nice Refreshing post after reading all those same copied stuff from one website to another to the local news papers, with sun being a dream company for still lot of developers , we would love Sun to stay forever as SUN , nothing else.
Your post although unofficial clears lots of doubts. Thanks
Posted by ridhav on March 19, 2009 at 01:12 PM MET #
Thanks George ! And yes I think you are right on the dot...
Posted by Alain Geenrits on March 19, 2009 at 01:12 PM MET #
Alain, thanks for putting into words what many of us are thinking.
Posted by ML on March 19, 2009 at 01:24 PM MET #
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrright!
Posted by KJ on March 19, 2009 at 03:53 PM MET #
I enjoy working with Groovy because it is elegant, powerful and compiles to byte code. Ruby is also elegant, powerful and a lot of people, including myself, like Ruby. Groovy is a great tool to help you extend your Java work.
Posted by RJ on March 19, 2009 at 04:31 PM MET #
Excellent post Alain.
Posted by Dave on March 21, 2009 at 04:09 AM MET #
Alain I completely agree with you. I have been with Sun for around a year myself and I can't imagine losing the innovative products that Sun provides to the market.
Posted by Mike on March 22, 2009 at 05:40 AM MET #
I heard only today about the intended purchase of Sun by IBM from a retired IBM mid level manager here in Vienna Austria. He was somewhat gloating about it. My initial reactions of shock and disbelief have over the last few hours turned into a kind of torture for me. How could something like this happen? How could Sun, a company with such fantastic products, fall to such a sorry state?
I first came to learn about Sun at University in 1990. That was when we were introduced to the VT100's, which as it turned out were driven by a Sun server, a Sun4 I think. Later we had X-Terms. In those years I came to love Sun because what they made was so excellent. I could play around and try things and had fun with it all. This was IT for me the way it should be, and the rubbish DOS machines in the computer room were awful. I got to see the Suns that our sys admins used, and became even more impressed. After a big 10 year hole in the middle, I was able to seriously get into administering Sun servers using Solaris 10, and in the last five years I have learned so much. Since the end of January, I've even managed to pick up three Blade 2500 workstations at a reasonably good price. They're for me to continue to learn Solaris, Solaris Cluster, and to serve as a platform to support my desire to get several Sun certifications. Such is my love for Sun, Solaris, and all of Suns products. Finally, after more than 10 years I was able to go in a direction that I wanted. That came about because my bosses wanted to purchase new IBM servers, but the person who made the final decision decided that it should be Sun. So the angles had mercy on me, and helped me finally be able to work with Sun products, and Solaris, and made me happy and fulfilled. I was the proud Sun man in a hostile stronghold of IBM lovers, and still am.
Then came the rumours. In the last few hours, my shock has turned into sorrow and fear. What will become of Sun? The company has been struggling for years now, and the efforts over the last three years seem to have not reaped the benefit they apparently should have. Is this the end of an era, the end of a fantastic line of products, where they will be either "end of lifed" or "integrated" into some other product that I can't stomach (note: I think there's nothing from IBM that I can stomach) and see an end. What will become of my future? With the rumours, I've been almost in tears tonight. My future is up in the air, and the company and products that I love and stand behind and up for so much have a huge shadow thrown over them. I can't sleep tonight, that's for sure.
OK, reading your blog makes one important point - there is one source of the rumours, and all others have followed like sheep and printed them too. The biggest problem is that neither Sun nor IBM management have denied the rumours. That's very counter productive. The weblog entries of Hinkmond Wong and Nirave Kadakia's do nothing to calm the issue. It all does nothing to make me able to sleep tonight. It does nothing to calm my doubts about my future plans, my desires of certifications for Solaris, and a chosen career path which suddenly had a bomb dropped on it. What does one do in my situation?
It's time for Jonathan to make a clear statement on the issue. I want to know where Sun and all it's wonderful technology is headed. I need to know if I can show my face at work again, to know if I can continue to hold my head high and keep defending and promoting Sun, Solaris, and all the great products Sun has.
Posted by Ian Ballantyne on March 23, 2009 at 02:55 AM MET #
@ Ian - I get where you're coming from, I feel very much the same, and it's comforting in a way other to see others like yourself as upset as I am! It says a lot about Sun that we would lose sleep over the the future of the company.
As I saw on another blog, if Sun were to confirm rumours of any sort in any way, that sets a precedent - so if at some stage in the future rumours floated around and Sun didn't say anything, then something would be definitely up. On the other hand, IF there was deal in the works Sun likewise couldn't comment on that either.
AFAIK a fairly large part of Sun is now owned by investment firms, so as was put on one of the more insightful pieces of journalism on this, IF there is any credence to these stories then it would appear to be a pure business decision; these companies wanting to get a return on their investment at any cost - and not necessarily a "Sun" thing or a "Jonathan Schwartz" thing. Certainly that's the only way I can reconcile these rumours against JIS's vision at this stage.
Posted by Dave on March 23, 2009 at 07:47 AM MET #
@Ian @Dave Don't worry guys, we will be here fr a long time to come, thanks to people like you. In my opinion the best you can do with your experience is join OpenSolaris.org and start evangelizing... Or help out where you can.
Posted by Alain Geenrits on March 24, 2009 at 01:32 PM MET #
I'm back, with another night of almost no sleep behind me, and another one in the works.... While patching one of my new blade 2500's, I decided to search again to see if I could find any more information. I found the following article:
http://www.bankingtech.com/bankingtech/article.do?articleid=20000143861
The last paragraph bothers me quite a bit:
Sun has been on the market for some time, Otellini's SEC submission confirmed. "I can tell you that Sun was shopped around the valley and around the world in the last few months. A lot of companies got calls or visits," he said.
One of the bankers distinctly said also that he doesn't like the prospect of reduced choice in the market place. I understand this, and agree with him. IBM buying Sun would get rid of one of IBM's agressive competitors, and leave quite a poor choice for customers.
I don't know how things run in the US, however here in Europe as normal Joe's, we can object to a merger or takeover deal. Three years ago when T-Mobile Austria bought Telering Austria, I didn't object, much to my regret as a customer suffering under the T-Mobilization of Telering today. I won't make that mistake with IBM and Sun. I will object to any deal of IBM buying Sun.
I've looked at Sun, and what they're doing. They are on a good path, and if allowed to stay on that path I'm convinced they will be a strong and profitable company in the future. It seems time and some investment companies that are themselves suffering with the stock market crash and maybe having their existance threatened if they don't get some kind of money soon are what's really working against Sun. At least that's my 2 cents worth on the issue....
Posted by Ian Ballantyne on March 29, 2009 at 03:47 AM MEST #