Apple buying Sun Microsystems "is" interesting
Infoworld postulates
Both Apple and Sun have UNIX OS. Apple and Sun have always had a cordial relationship. I'd hate to see Sun get torn to pieces by some Windows flogging hack of a company.
Even despite the tough times Sun still delivers some pretty cool stuff (dtrace, ZFS, kickass storage products)
The could be the hardware equivalent of Filemaker.
Quote:
I thought I had a novel idea when I told a friend this weekend that Sun and Apple could make an interesting pair. However, it seems that this isn't a novel idea after all. In 2006 it was reported that Sun had tried to acquire Apple once and considered a merger with Apple on two other occasions.
How the times have changed. Apple, now with a 25 times higher market capitalization than Sun, would be in a slightly different bargaining position.
Sun is trading at approximately $3 billion, which is slightly above their cash and near-cash balance of $2.6 billion. The likelihood of Sun making it through this global recession as a standalone company is, frankly, not a sure bet. So who would make for a good suitor? Apple, HP, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and Red Hat (merger?) come to mind.
I thought I had a novel idea when I told a friend this weekend that Sun and Apple could make an interesting pair. However, it seems that this isn't a novel idea after all. In 2006 it was reported that Sun had tried to acquire Apple once and considered a merger with Apple on two other occasions.
How the times have changed. Apple, now with a 25 times higher market capitalization than Sun, would be in a slightly different bargaining position.
Sun is trading at approximately $3 billion, which is slightly above their cash and near-cash balance of $2.6 billion. The likelihood of Sun making it through this global recession as a standalone company is, frankly, not a sure bet. So who would make for a good suitor? Apple, HP, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and Red Hat (merger?) come to mind.
Both Apple and Sun have UNIX OS. Apple and Sun have always had a cordial relationship. I'd hate to see Sun get torn to pieces by some Windows flogging hack of a company.
Quote:
Of these, I think Apple is most interesting (maybe not the best fit, but the most interesting).
Both vendors have deep experience in hardware at different ends of the product spectrum. As such, there would be minimal real overlap across product families. Sun's Systems business (servers and storage) would be a great way for Apple to get deeper into the enterprise.
Of these, I think Apple is most interesting (maybe not the best fit, but the most interesting).
Both vendors have deep experience in hardware at different ends of the product spectrum. As such, there would be minimal real overlap across product families. Sun's Systems business (servers and storage) would be a great way for Apple to get deeper into the enterprise.
Even despite the tough times Sun still delivers some pretty cool stuff (dtrace, ZFS, kickass storage products)
The could be the hardware equivalent of Filemaker.
Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qbRW5p-faI
Just thought it may be a more cost effective way to attack the Enterprise.
They have the OpenOffice suite too. Apple seems to want to go their own way with their iwork software but the compatibility is very much lacking. Sun also own MySQL now.
It sounds like a good pairing to me. I'm not sure that it would benefit Apple so much as Sun but I think it would be wise of Apple to protect them given the tech that Apple could benefit from.
They have the OpenOffice suite too. Apple seems to want to go their own way with their iwork software but the compatibility is very much lacking. Sun also own MySQL now.
Yeah I had totally forgotten about MySQL. They also have some virtualization stuff that looks promising.
Since Apple and Sun are basically at polar opposites in focus the match is intriguing from a few perspectives.
Storage
It was only a few years ago that they bought StorageTek and their current storage lineup is pretty solid.
I like the new Unified Storage Systems
Software
Java
StarOffice
Dtrace
Solaris
xVM
ZFS
MySQL
Servers
Plenty of options here
I think the interesting part isn't necessarily based on a single product but rather a potential synergy between the two companies. If Apple purchased Sun I'd expect Sun would simply become an Apple subsidiary and would become the Enterprise arm of the company.
OS X Server would be made to run on the Sun servers natively or in VM. One hidden benefit would be Sun gaining Apple's expertise in supply chain and operations. Outsiders tend to think Apple is all spit and polish but they have become quite adept at operational efficiency despite their rather narrow focus.
I don't think this acquisition is as crazy as some people make it. There was once a time where HP was reeling from the Compaq merging and it took a bit more focus from Mark Hurd to right the ship and play to the strengths. Apple absorbing Sun would be far easier in my opinion.
Sun's enterprise presence has been diminishing for years. If Sun does go under or bankrupt their enterprise presence will diminish to where Novel is now, almost zero, even if Apple buys their assets. If Apple want's to make any in-roads in the enterprise they should buy Novel and port it to OS X. Novel has been doing directory based work for longer than MS and, quite frankly, MS has ripped off a lot of ideas from Novel.
Most of the arguments on here point at Sun's benefit from being bought by Apple. Apple doesn't benefit at all in my opinion by buying Sun. If Sun goes under, worst case, Apple can just absorb Sun's engineers. Most all of Sun's software is open source anyway so it's not like they'd have some great new billion dollar revenue source. But I do agree with the first post and say that Sun will not last much longer.
Open Sourced but the good stuff is copylefted either GPL or CDDL.
Sun has a lot of scalability technology that Apple does not. It's a good fit for the two companies to dominate what's left of the unix market and have a product portfolio from laptops up to big ass servers.
Sun's biggest problem is that it lost its elan a while back and pony boy isn't really bringing it back IMHO. As much of an open source proponent that I am, Sun really has a borked strategy. It can't afford to go the same way as IBM...who had nothing to lose really in backing Linux and open source.
Sun's enterprise presence has been diminishing for years. If Sun does go under or bankrupt their enterprise presence will diminish to where Novel is now, almost zero, even if Apple buys their assets. If Apple want's to make any in-roads in the enterprise they should buy Novel and port it to OS X. Novel has been doing directory based work for longer than MS and, quite frankly, MS has ripped off a lot of ideas from Novel.
Novel...ugh. That company is even worse than Sun and I've never been much of a fan of Novel stuff.
They have the cash to do a big deal without having to issue debt or stock to finance the deal.
Like Sun there are many tech companies selling at multi year lows that make deals possible.
Adobe's current market cap is 12 billion.
Open Sourced but the good stuff is copylefted either GPL or CDDL.
Exactly. Apple can't make any money from either and there is no market share to gain. So, what's left? Even though Apple has contributed a kings ransom to WebKit there's no evidence that they'll contribute the same to other open source projects.
I just doubt the rumor
The leadership in Telecoms market is worth more than $ 10 billion with a recurring services/support revenue that will create an instant "hot" competitor. IBM would be green with envy and HP will get very very nervous. Apple should go for it. The Telecoms world would certainly welcome Apple and the brand value it brings.
Combined, they have the potential to triple or quadruple their size within 10 years. Lets do it Steve!.
Exactly. Apple can't make any money from either and there is no market share to gain. So, what's left? Even though Apple has contributed a kings ransom to WebKit there's no evidence that they'll contribute the same to other open source projects.
I just doubt the rumor
How much money has Apple made from Safari? There's plenty of evidence of Apple supporting open source projects.
Webkit
LLVM
Zerconf (Bonjour)
CUPS printing
GCC
OpenDirectory
ZFS
Apple contributes to the open source projects that they see long term value in. They absolutely love LLVM and Webkit is their champion as well. They have given back to GCC even though LLVM and CLANG will take that mantle very soon.
Apple is the BASF of computer companies now. They take technology that's available to open source and polish it and present it in a way that makes that product marketable.
"The extra mile is rarely crowded"
Apple goes that extra mile and that is what differentiates them from the also rans.
What a *Perfect* match up!. Sun has an established Enterprise market and around 40-50% of the Telecoms market. This will give Apple some serious BackOffice heavy-weights. And get this, Sun is AMD friendly with its Opteron servers.
The leadership in Telecoms market is worth more than $ 10 billion with a recurring services/support revenue that will create an instant "hot" competitor. IBM would be green with envy and HP will get very very nervous. Apple should go for it. The Telecoms world would certainly welcome Apple and the brand value it brings.
Combined, they have the potential to triple or quadruple their size within 10 years. Lets do it Steve!.
Apple ownership of Sun doesn't compromise Apple in any way but it certainly would allay investor fear into Sun's future. I could see Apple applying some of the cutting they did to get Sun's product line cleaned up and profitable.
Sun is still more relevant than say sgi was in their final heyday. Let's face it...Apple is more consumer facing than ever. Their current actions and trajectory do not seem to put them on a path to the Enterprise market.
Let's face it servers are becoming heterogenous boxes. Even today you can't really call some servers a Windows Server or UNIX Server or Linux Server. Virtualization consolidates these NOS into one big processing platform.
Last but not least it's been clear that today Apple does not have the bodies available to branch out like they should. The iPhone sucked engineering talent away from other projects causing delays. Apple doesn't have the engineering bandwidth to really attack other markets. Sun still has a plethora of UNIX veterans. I love to imagine what type of collaborative fruit would come from cream of the crop from these two companies getting together and exchanging ideas.
Last but not least it's been clear that today Apple does not have the bodies available to branch out like they should. The iPhone sucked engineering talent away from other projects causing delays. Apple doesn't have the engineering bandwidth to really attack other markets. Sun still has a plethora of UNIX veterans. I love to imagine what type of collaborative fruit would come from cream of the crop from these two companies getting together and exchanging ideas.
Apple has to ease-off on the server team and core OS gurus. Their controlling manner will not keen the bright brains that Sun has and the R&D team. Yeah, their years of experience in servers, grid, clusters, zfs etc etc are very valuable and need better product focus into Apple's product range gradually. I think Apple would be silly if they would not consider this potential "take-over" seriously considering they are sitting on $26+ billion dollars of cash.
Exactly. Apple can't make any money from either and there is no market share to gain. So, what's left? Even though Apple has contributed a kings ransom to WebKit there's no evidence that they'll contribute the same to other open source projects.
I just doubt the rumor
I guess the point is that Sun still owns the rights to all this technology and they can do any proprietary enhancements to it that they want. Just like Apple can with OSX vs Darwin.
WebKit is LGPL/BSD so Apple can keep Safari proprietary. Only webkit core enhancements need be released back. Given it's a fork of KHTML made by Apple means that they are the primary contributors and controls it's destiny. Someone might fork webkit (like Nokia did...dunno if that's still alive) but it's hard to steal control from Apple.
I doubt the rumor too. I don't think the corporate chemistries match.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG??
*cough*