When I wrote about IBM’s potential interest in acquiring Sun to gain control of Java, I forgot about the Solaris factor. But this was mentioned in yesterday’s Times article about the acquisition, and I have seen it mentioned other places as well.
What I forgot about was Red Hat and Linux. IBM sells a lot of Red Hat Linux. After Red Hat acquired JBoss in 2006 they began competing with IBM’s WebSphere division, which must have put strain on their partnership around Linux. IBM started hedging its bets with Novell’s SUSE Linux, but open sourcing Solaris would give IBM its own alternative to Red Hat Linux.
Add that to the potential for gaining control of Java and you have two pretty compelling reasons for IBM to acquire Sun. Of course there are probably any number of other factors, but these strike me as the most strategic.
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