Comments on: My 8 predictions if IBM acquires Sun Microsystem

By: Best Forex System

Best Forex System — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:25:48 +0000

Thank goodness we are not living in the 50s era and gadgets are getting compact with more storage :)

By: Wolfie

Wolfie — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:21:01 +0000

Solaris is a superior UNIX distro and IBM would be nuts to can it. I have worked in finance for 2 years and Solaris is everywhere, it is more stable than any other OS I have ever worked with.

With MySql so pervasive in e-commerce I can’t see this being killed either.

By: J.T. Wenting

J.T. Wenting — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:03:15 +0000

1) won’t happen. It’s more likely to get canned.
2) won’t happen. It’s gonna be much more tightly integrated with WebSphere, probably to the point where it can’t be effectively used outside of the context of WebSphere (like Visual Basic and ASP.NET with Visual Studio).
3) IBM does only lip service to open source. It will be marginalised.
4) Most Sun products will end up axed. The rest will be merged into existing IBM products.
5) Possibly. But then it’s no more than a buzzeword to describe what many, including IBM, have been doing for decades.
6) PowerPC. SPARC is an outdated hardware architecture that has outlived its usefulness.
7) WebSphere is central to everything IBM. They might take some of SAS’s features to improve WSs user interface, but little else.
8) probably the main real thing IBM will get out of it is indeed Sun’s customer portfolio.

If this happens, expect free standalone Java distributions from Sun/IBM to disappear rapidly, tight integration with WS to be pushed to the extreme.
The desired end result being to push JBoss and other competitors that don’t have their own JDK out of the market, and eventually those as well as IBM changes the language standard to tie it completely to the WebSphere platform in ways that make it utterly incompatible with those competing products.

By: Allen

Allen — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 05:11:36 +0000

Re #4: Solaris will be canned.

Doubt it. AIX and Solaris both have to contend with linux and I think Solaris has the edge in that it runs on intel. They will both be kept around and they will converge on some weird Linux-like amalgam. It will be very interesting.

Like others have said, OpenOffice will endure. At the very least it annoys MS.

By: foo

foo — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:17:07 +0000

@Michele:

> #4 Netbeans will be merged with Eclipse: it will become an Eclipse perspective (to buy in those used to it) and in 1-2 major release it will become just another Eclipse distribution. Which, I think, it’s a good thing.
Netbeans as Eclipse distribution? It sounds IMPOSSIBLE to me

> #7 Glassfish is doomed. One less AppServer in the market…
glassfish is the REFERENCE IMPLEMENTATION of JEE

By: Michele

Michele — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:23:08 +0000

#1 and #4: I won’t bet my house on MySQL, though: IBM already has too much databases… maybe it’ll just throw it to the community to mantain…

#4 Netbeans will be merged with Eclipse: it will become an Eclipse perspective (to buy in those used to it) and in 1-2 major release it will become just another Eclipse distribution. Which, I think, it’s a good thing.
OpenOffice’s for-pay version will become the next Symphony release.
Glassfish will probably become the next ‘Websphere developer edition’ and slowly die
Will Websphere learn something from the Sun staff? we can only hope.

#2 SWT is IBM’s brainchild. It’s here to stay. JavaFX it’s crucial for Java to have a chance in the RIA space.

#3 OS will definetly become more ‘enterprisy’. Try to sue again, Microsoft…

#6 SPARC will go the way of the Alpha…

#7 Glassfish is doomed. One less AppServer in the market…

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:51:51 +0000

Interesting predictions. I have been thinking that IBM should by Sun for a number of years now.

For prediction #2, IBM already has there own JVM (J9). Sun does not ship a Java version for AIX of z/OS so IBM has their own.

#6 PowerPC. I don’t think SPARC has a chance.

#4 IBM uses Open office in their Symphony suite. I think they might spin of mysql though.