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In a deal that would significantly bolster IBM's position as the world's largest server maker, the Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that IBM is willing to pay $6.5BN in cash to acquire Sun Microsystems.
Quoting "people familiar with the matter" Journal reporters Matthew Karnitschnig, William M. Buckley and Justin Check write:
"It is unclear whether the negotiations will result in a transaction, but if the deal does go through, IBM is likely to pay at least $6.5 billion in cash to acquire Sun, the people said. That would translate into a premium of about 100% over Sun's closing price Tuesday of $4.97 a share on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Any transaction would strengthen IBM's position against Hewlett-Packard Co., the largest company in the information technology industry. It could be the largest acquisition in IBM's history, surpassing the acquisition of Cognos Inc. last year."
The Journal reporters are also careful to add a disclaimer: "People familiar with the matter cautioned that while talks are under way, a transaction might not occur."
Both IBM and Sun are closely involved in SYS-CON's upcoming 2nd International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, being held March 30-April 1, 2009, in New York City.
Dr Kristof Kloeckner, CTO of Enterprise Initiatives and VP of Cloud Computing Platforms, IBM Software Group, is presenting a keynote address on March 30 in which he will review the conditions under which cloud computing can deliver its promise of flexibility and cost savings in the delivery of IT services to the enterprise.
Dr Kloeckner will discuss the importance of dynamic infrastructures and service management for both public and private clouds, cloud service life cycles, and integration between public clouds and enterprise services. He will also talk about the standards required for interoperability between clouds and application scenarios that demonstrate the use of cloud computing in an enterprise context for a smarter planet.
Then the following day, April 1st, Sun's Sr. VP of Cloud Computing, David Douglas, will be keynoting on how enterprise IT operations can take advantage of the emerging world of multiple clouds to achieve the cost and flexibility advantages that cloud computing allows while maintaining control of their IT infrastructure.
They are joined in the event's keynote lineup of major industry thought leaders by Dr Werner Vogels, VP & CTO of Amazon.com.
Cloud Computing Expo 2009 East is a three-day event, which is being held at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. It features a top-notch lineup of speakers from the leading industry players of the main layers of the Cloud ecosystem - the infrastructure players, the platform providers, and those offering applications and services. The lineup includes, among others:
Dr Werner Vogels - VP & CTO, Amazon.com (Keynote) Dr Kristof Kloeckner - VP of Cloud Computing Platforms, IBM (Keynote) Davis Douglas, Sr. VP, Cloud Computing, Sun (Keynote) Vik Chaudhary - VP of Corporate Development, Keynote Systems Peter Coffee - Director of Platform Research, Salesforce.com Russ Daniels - CTO of Cloud Services Strategy, HP Doug Tidwell - Senior Software Engineer, IBM Ajay Anand - Director of Grid Computing, Yahoo! Martin Ingram - VP of Strategy AppSense Prasad Rampalli - VP, Digital Enterprise Group, Intel Brian H. Prince - Architect Evangelist, Microsoft Ronnie Thomson - Sr. Vice President of Engineering, Quark Tim Crawford - Director of IT Operations, Stanford University David Bernstein - VP & GM of Cloud Computing, Cisco Glenn Brunette - Chief Security Architect, Sun Sajai Krishnan - CEO, ParaScale Ken Oestreich - Vice President, Egenera Stephen Elliott - Vice President of Strategy, CA Warren Wilbee - Director of ISV Evangelism, Microsoft Lucian Lipinsky de Orlov - Director of Business Strategy, VIRTERA Patrick Kerpan - CTO, CohesiveFT Jim Rymarczyk - Chief Virtualization Technologist, IBM Thorsten von Eicken - CTO and Co-Founder, RightScale Owen Garrett - PM and Technologist, Zeus Scott Sanchez - Chief Technology Architect, Unisys Scott Wiener - Co-Founder & CTO, Cloud9 Analytics Jeff Bauer - Creative Director, Forbes.com Anthony Arrott - Special Assistant to the CTO, Trend Micro Stuart Charlton - Chief Software Architect, Elastra David Bressler - Principal Architect, Progress Software Clod Barrera - Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technical Strategist, IBM Tien Tzuo - CEO, Zuora Raghavan Srinivas - Technology Evangelist, Intuit Brian Zanghi - President & CEO, Kadient John Trembley - Vice President, Xeround Ranjith Ramakrishnan - Co-Founder & CTO, Cumulux John Barr - COO & VP Engineering, Yieldex William Fellows - Principal Analyst, The 451 Group Kevin L. Jackson - Director of Business Development, Dataline Bob Quinn - Founder, Chairman & CTO of 3Leaf Systems Pau Garcia-Mila - Founder, eyeOS David Linthicum - Editor-in-Chief, Virtualization Journal Bryan Wade - Director of Channel Partnerships, ExactTarget Bill McColl - Founder & CEO, Cloudscale Omer Trajman - Director of Field Engineering, Vertica Systems Jon Pyke - Chief Strategy Officer, Cordys Daniel Beveridge - Director of Virtualization Strategy, VIRTERA JP Morgenthal - IT Architecture Consultant John Gauntt - Founder, Media Dojo Ed Sullivan - Founder & CEO, Aria Systems Raghavan Srinivas - Technology Evangelist, Intuit Brian Zanghi - President & CEO, Kadient Simon Wardley - Software Services Manager, Canonical Omer Trajman - Director of Field Engineering, Vertica Systems Michael Hill - VP Enteprise Initiatives, Sales, Services & Business Development, IBM Mike Jordan - Senior Software Architect, Ohio Dept. of Transportion Prof Rich Wolski - University of California, Santa Barbara
You can follow the Event - and those planning to attend - by connecting to the Event on LinkedIn, or following it on Twitter.
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Well, so did Oracle, and they're Silicon Valley based, too.
HP may seem better suited for some aspects of Sun, e.g. server, storage or MySQL. On the other hand, they probably still fight with their own acquisition of many times ill-fated and unlucky EDS (who have quite a couple of failed and often Billion $ losing projects under their belt ;-) so they may not be in a better position than IBM either regarding credit-rating or real cash deposit...
Also Java despite EC membership in the JCP may not be called HPs largest asset. They may write games for Desktop and Mobile with it, probably even some tools, but IBM on the other hand contributed almost an equal part of Sun's own JDK ever since than Sun did;-) Not to mention strategic IBM investments in Java via Eclipse, WebSphere and many other brands.
The server side might speak for HP, but the overall picture does for IBM.
HP might end up F**ing up Java more than Sun almost managed to do recently. While IBM may be able to save it given the experience of a tight-controlled, yet mostly independent and well-contributed Open Source community like Eclipse.