Re: IBM in talks to buy Sun

From:
Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:11:46 -0700
Message-ID:
<5oWdnYjmZdGYOl_UnZ2dnUVZ_qHinZ2d@earthlink.com>
Nigel Wade wrote:

Lew wrote:

Lew wrote:

This may come as a surprise, but IBM does a huge amount of work in Java.

Nigel Wade wrote:

I know, but would they be actively interested in moving Swing forward, or

just

happy to let it stagnate in its own backwater?

We can speculate until the cows come home.


We have other concerns.

Our servers are Sun hardware. Our main filestore is a Sun FC RAID with about
14TB of disk. Our backup solution uses a Sun tape library driven by Networker.
Everything is on maintenance contracts with Sun. So of much more pressing
concern to us is if IBM were to buy out Sun would they honour existing Sun
maintenance contracts.


I've worked for several computer manufacturers, so I've seen maintenance
contracts from the other side:

1. They provide a nice, stable, predictable revenue stream even during
economic downturns. A company facing reduced demand for its products and
services is likely to decide to put off upgrading its servers. On the
other hand, short of bankruptcy, anyone who has already paid for a 14TB
disk farm is going to want to keep it working.

2. They provide a permanent foot in the door. The people doing the
maintenance get to visit the site and chat with the people in charge of
the system. They are likely to know when that disk array is filling up,
or the servers are getting overloaded, and a purchase is brewing.

I think IBM is likely to view your maintenance contract as a nice, juicy
asset to nurture, not as something to throw away.

Patricia

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