[RndTbl] IBM to buy RedHat

Gilles Detillieux grdetil at scrc.umanitoba.ca
Tue Oct 30 10:50:38 CDT 2018


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.
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 7:43 AM Scott Toderash 
> <scott at 100percenthelpdesk.com <mailto:scott at 100percenthelpdesk.com>> 
> wrote:
>
>     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 at shaw.ca
>     <mailto:billreid at 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 at 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)

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