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Actually, I wouldn't have been surprised if IBM (if it had purchased Sun) had dumped Sun's hardware division. It was losing money hand over first, and IBM was
by tytso 14y ago
Actually, I wouldn't have been surprised if IBM (if it had purchased Sun) had dumped Sun's hardware division. It was losing money hand over first, and IBM was doing a pretty good beating Sun with its hardware offerings. Between IBM's x86, Power, and Mainframe hardware product lines, it really wouldn't need sparc. So the only question is how quickly IBM would have been able to transition what was left of Sun's hardware business to IBM's x, p, or z series machines.
As a result, that's probably why Oracle was willing to pay more than IBM. Both IBM and Sun wanted to be able to make sure they could continue to use Java --- and preserving the freedom of action against lawsuits was I'm sure high on both company's minds. But Oracle could also find a good use for its hardware division, where IBM probably would have tried to sell it off.
- flomo 14y agoWell, platforms like Solaris/Sparc are never just dumped. No matter who ended up with it would be milking it all the way down, making it that much more expensive & obscure every year, until the users finally say uncle. Generally that's when the customer wants a new CRM or something and gets two birds with one stone. That's why it would have been disastrous for Oracle if IBM got them. Everytime a Sun customer ordered a new stick of RAM, the IBM software sales team would have been circling around. (Note: I'm sure there's some niches where Sun hardware is very strong, but those are only going to get narrower over time.)