Some things for IBM To Think About Over The Weekend
It seems likely that IBM will make its formal offer to Sun shareholders in the coming week. Clearly, there’s going to be some rather substantial “rationalization” as a result of Sun being acquired by IBM. IBM is in the driving seat, and it’s easy for people to get distracted by their own personal agendas in a process like this. The problem for IBM is – it’s by no means a slam dunk that it will be able to convert Sun customers into IBM customers. Why? Because customers have many technology choices; and the truth is that many of these are superior to IBM’s offerings. Here then, are a few things for IBM’s management to think about when it comes to integration planning and killing Sun technologies…
- Do you think that smart Solaris developers will entertain the idea of migrating to AIX?
- The answer is that they won’t. They will prefer either Linux, or Windows, or Mac OS X.
- Do you think that smart Swing and JavaFX desktop and mobile developers will entertain the idea of migrating to SWT?
- The answer is that they won’t. They will prefer to focus their time on JavaScript web apps, Flex/Flash apps, iPhone apps and .NET apps instead
- Do you think that smart Glassfish developers will entertain the idea of migrating to Websphere?
- The answer is that they won’t. They will prefer to focus their efforts on JBoss instead.
- Do you think that smart MySQL developers will entertain the idea of migrating to DB2?
- The answer is that they won’t. They would prefer to focus their efforts on PostgreSQL.
I won’t go on. You get the idea. The point is this: one of the things that IBM will get when it buys Sun is a bunch of technologies that smart developers really like. The Sun technology stack of Solaris, MySQL, Glassfish, Java Swing/JavaFX, and the Netbeans IDE is incredible. Sure, IBM can kill as much of this as it wants. However, if it isn’t rather careful, it won’t benefit from doing so. Rather, it will push dollars into the hands of others such as Microsoft, Dell, Adobe, Apple, and RedHat; and cost IBM folks their jobs down the line.
I will end this entry with a message to the folks at IBM that are about to wield their axes. It’s the same message I once gave to someone who was about to make a big mistake on a Friday afternoon during a rationalization exercise I was part of years ago, and it goes like this… The people you fire will leave the company and get on with their lives. You, however, are staying – so this is all your responsibility now; and you are just about to screw everything up and destroy the opportunity. When people understand what you have done, it’s your job that will go next. So, if I were you, I’d take the weekend to think very carefully about whether you really think you’re doing the right thing, or just satisfying a misguided personal agenda. It’s not too late - there’s still time to fix this…
In that case, I got a phone call first thing Monday morning to say that, on reflection, they’d changed their mind and decided to fall into line with my views. However, I’m not optimistic this blog will have an analogous affect on IBM, given I have zero influence there 
But hey, it was worth a try…
asfasdfasdfasf wrote:
Regarding the UI component, either the Swing community will take over Swing and get it away from IBM, or the entire focus will shift to Mac / Linux. Linux’s UI isn’t pretty and the developer base seems not to “get” the idea of UI at all really. Apple gets UI and is increasingly popular with end users. If Apple has any sense, they’re popping the corks in Cupertino and looking forward to a enormous influx of talent into the pool of desktop applications developers.
You’re quite right that no one is going to change to SWT. Or Eclipse as a development environment for that matter.
Another place you might hear champagne corks popping is Prague, where IntelliJ just saw one of its free competitors blow up in a Big Blue sky.
Posted 05 Apr 2009 at 2:07 pm ¶
simon wrote:
The big issue with SWT is it strongly suggests that senior IBM Java folks have *seriously* bad judgment when it comes to architecture decisions… to the point where it indicates they don’t even understand the *problems*, let alone have the ability to come up with great solutions.
Posted 05 Apr 2009 at 10:20 pm ¶
Mike Azzi. wrote:
Hi Simon, I don’t know if you heard, but the deal is off, and thank God that it is off. Thank you Scott McNealy! What a relief! I say. I have been agonizing over this ever since it was announced. I hope this deal never sees the light, for the Java community sake, and for all the great things that Sun makes sake. I want to take this opportunity to make a plea to Sun’s board: Please don’t sell Sun short, give it a year or so, and let Sun completes this process of reinventing itself one more time. I truly believe that Sun has a very good chance of pulling it off, and hitting it big again just like they did in during the internet boom. This time though salvation will come in two words: Cloud Computing. Here’s why. Sun has been having a really tough time figuring out a successful business model to capitalize on their valuable open source software assets. The traditional support license model only works in a limited fashion, and especially not for companies as large as Sun. But open source, and Cloud Computing offer the perfect combination for a successful business strategy. On one hand you have the economy of scale as far as development costs, and on the other hand you have the economy of scale as far competitive pricing, and value addition. In addition Sun has the best stack there is for an exceptional cloud computing platform, from storage, all the way up to the app server. All they need is to execute, provide cloud solution services, and more importantly partner with some of the cloud providers out there.
Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 4:29 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Yes – seems that things have very much cooled between IBM and Sun for the moment. I didn’t like the deal either. Whether Sun can remain independent now, though, and keep on with its current plans, I’m really not sure. I suspect it can’t.
Posted 06 Apr 2009 at 5:19 pm ¶