

I.B.M. Withdraws $7 Billion Offer for Sun Microsystems - neilc
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/technology/business-computing/06blue.html?hp

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kiba
For some reason I have a bad feeling for this if it goes through. Now that
this offer is over, I feel relieved.

I supposed I rather have more companies than a few big fat companies.

~~~
andylei
The offer isn't necessarily "over". Withdrawing the offer is probably a
negotiating technique. Sun is trying to sell, and IBM is reminding Sun that
it's probably the only interested buyer.

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rbanffy
I will be delighted if Sun survives at all.

Still, I would love even more if Sun summons the will to bring back the
desktop Unix workstation. The x86 world we live in is lethally boring.

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krschultz
So who is more likely to be a thriving independent business in 5 years, Yahoo
or Sun? And which group of share holders will be more pissed off that the deal
didn't go through?

I'm going to bet Yahoo will still be around and Sun's shareholders will be
more angry.

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Eliezer
Of course! Yahoo and Sun should merge, and become Snafoo!

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msie
No! Apple and Sun. Then it could be S'napple!

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access_denied
That would be Sun, Netscape and Apple.

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quisxt
This feels like SGI 5 years ago :(

(except the Computer History Museum already has a nice home)

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numair
Sun is slowly but surely putting together a strategy to offer a private-label
alternative to Amazon's cloud - and the only offering that I find particularly
interesting. If IBM withdraws for this deal, I hope they try to placate
shareholders by providing an in-depth overview of how this strategy can create
significantly more value than $7 billion. Hopefully Sun starts to get really
aggressive about this, and even moves into offering a consumer-facing version
-- when coupled with the fact that the very creators of MySQL, ZFS, etc are at
their company, they are pretty much the only ones able to offer Amazon a run
for their money at the moment (something public investors seem to fail to
understand).

If the stock dips significantly on this news, wouldn't be too bad of a buying
opportunity. There is clear intrinsic value in Sun's support contracts and
assets that is being significantly undervalued by the market. That's my take,
anyway.

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neilc
_the very creators of MySQL, ZFS, etc are at their company_

The creators of MySQL _used_ to be at their company, anyway.

 _they are pretty much the only ones able to offer Amazon a run for their
money at the moment_

I'm not so sure; IBM, Microsoft, and Google all have the technology and the
personnel to be a pretty compelling alternative to AWS, although they've
failed to deliver so far. What does Sun have that any of these companies
don't?

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ensignavenger
And I breath a sigh of relief!

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knightinblue
Cisco is entering the market for server systems. Maybe they'll make an offer.

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notaddicted
I find this failure and the failure of Yahoo deal with Microsoft to reflect
poorly on the tech industry.

In both cases it is culture/innuendo getting in the way of making a practical
deal. The _us vs. them_ group conflict mentality. Also unreason. This type of
luxurious thinking will be beaten out of the industry by competition
eventually.

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patrickg-zill
I have to say I am relieved ... Sun needs to focus on three areas in addition
to their hardware:

1\. Java - already ubiquitous (ish), Sun gets money for support and software

2\. OS and pieces of OS - Sun gives away Solaris, ZFS, MySQL etc., but in
return they get support contracts and such

3\. Storage (hardware and software) - Storagetek is still selling, and they
have SAM-QFS, Honeycomb, and their flash-based iSCSI/CIFS/NFS stack

4\. Hardware - Sell me a SPARC T1 or T2 system for under $1000 please, and get
your volumes up and people familiar with their performance.

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bitwize
According to my sources, basically all of the truly cutting-edge fab
techniques exist only at Intel factories. I don't think Intel is inclined to
start manufacturing SPARCs under contract, meaning that x86 is the only CPU
arch on the upper end of the power scale that can be manufactured cheaply
enough to meet the price point you want.

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sutro
If the deal does fall through, I doubt Schwartz can survive as CEO.

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TheJacka1
All this over 5 cents?

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bigbang
I guess bid withdrawal is just a standard negotiation technique to piss the
shareholders and force the board, like Yahoo/MS and I believe Oracle/BEA

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seldo
Yeah, this whole situation reeks of the Yahoo/MS deal -- lots of testosterone
and people leaking negotiation status to see what it does to the stock price.
Ugly.

The difference, of course, is that IBM doesn't really need Sun, it just sees a
good company at a good price, or it thought it did.

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eru
Why is this a difference? Does MS need Yahoo at any price?

