
IBM's Acquisition of Red Hat Closes - jwildeboer
https://newsroom.ibm.com/2019-07-09-IBM-Closes-Landmark-Acquisition-of-Red-Hat-for-34-Billion-Defines-Open-Hybrid-Cloud-Future
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jaden
[dupe]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20391180](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20391180)

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hestefisk
“- IBM preserves Red Hat's independence and neutrality; Red Hat will
strengthen its existing partnerships to give customers freedom, choice and
flexibility”

Already now I can mention one bank where I work where RH and IBM account teams
are fighting tooth and nail over revenue. It won’t end well.

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theli0nheart
What do you mean by "it won't end well"? Seems like it's going to end up
pretty well for your bank, given that the two teams are fighting for your
business. Let the best team win?

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windexh8er
It may work out for the bank in the short term. But saying Redhat is a
separate entity within IBM won't last long if they're driving down their own
revenue by fighting each other. IBM leadership holds _all_ the cards now and
all the Redhat execs are in a glass house facade. What IBM wants is revenue
from the acquisition, not confusion and price wars. There is no best team,
there is only one team now. And that team has one goal above all else: show
how this acquisition was brilliant and the wall street numbers to prove it.

Remember that what IBM paid for Redhat, based on the fact they had to finance
a big chunk of that liquid cost, has interest tied to it. That interest
cancels out the revenue Redhat will bring to the plate. So... I'll say it now
for those who don't want to do the math: your Redhat licensing is going up
soon. Better have locked in those 3 year deals prior to today.

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rafaelturk
In my dreams Red Hat's culture overtakes IBM's and this becomes a successful
reverse takeover, but this is only a dream.

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jhallenworld
There was an old joke: "What do you get if IBM merges with Apple?" Answer:
"IBM".

(Though these days, Apple could buy IBM..)

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akhilcacharya
They could buy IBM almost 2x over with their _cash on hand_.

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calgoo
I really hope IBM can keep their fingers out of Red Hat, if not it does not
matter how many promises they make, they will run it into the ground. If they
actually manage to do so, and let their cloud business grow without old school
IBM values etc; they actually have a chance to grab a big piece of the cloud
business.

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crispyambulance

        > old school IBM values 
    

I think I prefer "old school IBM values" to whatever they've morphed into in
the last ~20 years. They got a bunch of bad press lately for mass terminating,
in an obviously shameless manner, "older" employees.

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DaiPlusPlus
“Old school IBM values” presumably refers to their time in 1960s-1980s when
they were real innovators and inventors. Now they’re just a consultancy shop.

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Pinbenterjamin
Understandable, as IBM has always targeted the enterprise solutions market.
Having control over (I think still?) the most popular enterprise linux
installation is a nice add to their business.

It opens greater flexibility for their servers, as they have 'ownership' of
the distro now. Possible bid for a speed benchmark as a selling point? Some of
the giants out there are going to be hard to beat for that though...

I don't know that they are doing this specifically for the cloud market.

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vikramkr
Hopefully this helps demonstrate to VCs the strong viability of red hat's
model, which triggers more investment and creation of competitors and
companies to fill the void after red hat is bled dry and destroyed by IBM.

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mikece
How realistic is the fear that Big Blue is going to screw up Red Hat?

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AdmiralAsshat
Old Joke: What do you get when you cross IBM with [Insert company/product
here]?

Answer: IBM.

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infamousjoeg
R.I.P. Red Hat

