[Info-vax] OT: IBM Offering $9-10 Per Share for Sun

[Neil Rieck]

On Apr 4, 5:26 am, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
> David J Dachtera schrieb:
>
> > Neil Rieck wrote:
>
> >>IBM Reportedly Offering $9 to $10 Per Share for Sun
>
> >>http://www.dailytech.com/IBM+Reportedly+Offering+9+to+10+Per+Share+fo...
>
> > Hhhmmm... Well, since HP just inked a deal to distribute and support
> > Solaris, I guess that would make rivals IBM and HP business partners.
>
> > D.J.D.
>
> Maybe this thing ends with some surprise:
>
> HP dumps HP-UX on itanic (and itanic altogether) and sells Solaris on x86
> IBM dumps AIX on Power and sells Solaris on Power (after having
> incorporated some AIX goodies)

My following thoughts are not based upon any hard data.

1) It was my belief that POWER enabled IBM to stay involved in
"enterprise" while they dumped their PC business to Lenovo. If true,
they will not dump POWER (but I'm not so sure about SPARC, UltraSPARC,
etc.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER

2) HPaq killed off their pre-merger chips in favor of Itanium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PA-RISC (nothing new since 2005)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Alpha (nothing new since 2004)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium (nothing new since 2007)

If Itanium development has been stalled at Intel because they are
concentrating on markets which will help them through the current
economic down turn, that leaves HP with three operating systems (HP-
UX, OpenVMS, NonStop) with not much of a future. If I was in HP upper
management, and if I gave a damn about HP's future five years down the
road, I would start a Skunk Works to get these three OSs ported to
x86-64.

(HP supports Solaris which does run on x84-64)

p.s. For years Steve Jobs denied rumors that Apple products would be
based upon Intel chips. Then in 2005 we learned that he had been
running a Skunk Works for more than 5 years to do just this. Job's
peers at HP should take note.

Neil Rieck
Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/OpenVMS.html