Ideas International Releases Report on Technology Implications of a Merger between IBM and Sun Microsystems
Report Outlines Likely Scenarios, Impact on IT Industry and Implications for IT Managers
April 9, 2009 – Sydney, Australia
Ideas International (ASX:IDE), the leading global supplier of comparative intelligence on enterprise IT infrastructure, the leading global supplier of comparative intelligence on enterprise IT infrastructure, today released its report on possible future directions for IBM’s systems strategy, based on its uncertain bid to acquire Sun Microsystems.
The research presents four scenarios
for how IBM might evolve its systems
strategy, depending on whether the Sun
acquisition goes through or not. The
scenarios consider a variety of internal
and external forces confronting IBM as
it tries to optimize its platforms for
growth, profitability, and strategic
market position. The analysis focuses on
the challenges that IBM would face in
consolidating Sun’s seemingly
incompatible platform hardware and
competing software if the acquisition
succeeds, and how the integration of
Sun’s technology and subsequent
migrations would affect a number of
strategic platforms used for commercial
data processing worldwide.
“Considering the wide reach of IBM and
Sun system platforms, and the overlap in
their use cases, many customers and
application workloads could be affected
by the subsequent reorganization if the
agreement goes through,” said Tony Iams,
author of the report and Senior Analyst
in the IDEAS New York office.
“While rumors and speculation abound
regarding the progress of the
acquisition talks, the very fact that
IBM and Sun seriously pursued this
agreement raises fundamental questions
about what the IT industry landscape
might look like in the future” added
Iams.
He continued “If IBM succeeds in
acquiring Sun, it will benefit from an
unprecedented range of virtualization
tools for helping customers migrate
between hardware platforms with the
least possible disruption. But if IBM
does not acquire Sun in the end, it will
face renewed challenges to develop a
system software stack that can both help
secure the profits of its proprietary
systems, and extend them to the
increasingly critical x86 server market.
That challenge is what we have focused
on in the report.”
These convergence scenarios are covered
in the full IDEAS report, entitled The
Mating Ritual of IBM and Sun: Some
Outcome Scenarios,
which can be
downloaded free of charge from the IDEAS
website at http://www.ideasinternational.com.
Available for Interview:
Tony Iams, SVP and Senior Analyst –
New York, USA
Stephen Bowhill, CEO – Sydney, Australia
About Ideas International
IDEAS is the leading global supplier of comparative intelligence on enterprise IT infrastructure. Servicing both IT vendors and large-scale IT users, IDEAS’ products focus on: servers; storage; virtualization and consolidation; and software and infrastructure services. IDEAS’ online products are backed by expert industry analysts who can also deliver specialized advisory and consulting services.
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