Yeah, I don't think the risk is IBM pursuing distractions like
getting back into desktop/laptop hardware. IBM gets FOSS, enterprise
and cloud systems enough to know where Red Hat's core strengths are,
and what they bring to the company. The real risk is that $34
billion is a huge investment for a company the size of IBM, so the
pressure will be enormous to look for "efficiencies" to help pay
some of that down. The corporate culture at IBM is different enough
from Red Hat's that if they don't appreciate the more subtle things
that made Red Hat successful, like its support and technical
expertise, they could screw that up.
I think Cringely is probably spot-on when he says Oracle won't like
this, and I don't know how it'll respond or what it's options are.
It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft responds. They've already
made moves in a similar direction (e.g. Github acquisition), but I
expect there might be more, including a closer partnership with, or
buyout of, Canonical.
On 10/30/2018 08:44 AM, Kevin McGregor
wrote:
Well, IBM doesn't make desktops or laptops any more
(sold the business to Lenovo), so I don't think that's an
option.
Cringely
seems fairly accurate.
My first reaction was: good for IBM. Not so sure about RH.
One commentary I saw said something about buying a company
that gives
its main product away for free. That hasn't been true for a
VERY long
time, so mainstreamers will continue to be confused,
apparently.
The biggest distraction this could create is if IBM decides
that this is
a great time to try again to push desktops or laptops with
preinstalled
Linux.
On 18-10-29 09:10 PM, Kevin McGregor wrote:
> Red Hat stock is up 47%.
>
>> On Oct 29, 2018, at 18:30, Bill Reid <billreid@shaw.ca> wrote:
>>
>> Here is Cringely's take on it:
>> https://www.cringely.com/2018/10/29/red-hat-takes-over-ibm/
>>
>>> On 2018-10-29 5:46 p.m., Hartmut W Sager wrote:
>>> IBM to buy RedHat for $34 billion. Comments? (I
anticipate an avalanche of comments.)
>>> Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331
--
Gilles R. Detillieux E-mail: <grdetil@scrc.umanitoba.ca>
Spinal Cord Research Centre WWW: http://www.scrc.umanitoba.ca/
Dept. of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences,
Univ. of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB R3E 0J9 (Canada)