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

[Arne Vajhøj]

Neil Rieck wrote:
> 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.)

IBM will keep Power and AIX around for many many years.

But I have no doubt that x86-64 and Linux is the long term strategy
for IBM.


> If Itanium development has been stalled at Intel because they are
> concentrating on markets which will help them through the current
> economic down turn,

I don't think Intel is stalling Itanium because of the recession - they
are stalling Itanium because it does not sell enough.

>                      that leaves HP with three operating systems (HP-
> UX, OpenVMS, NonStop) with not much of a future.

True.

Long term - no current software has a future.

But those 3 are on the endangered species list.

>                                                   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.

That is one option.

But it seems much more likely that they will want to just keep them
alive long enough to get everyone on Linux.

Arne