Could Sun swallow Red Hat? Or vice versa?
In the midst of reading Paul Rubens' well-reasoned "Linux vs. Unix Values Evident in Red Hat, Sun Market Valuations," I was struck by this thought:
Who might buy Red Hat is a game that can be played endlessly, and just about everyone who is anyone has been mentioned in the past--Microsoft, Dell, Google, Oracle, you name it. So what about another name that's been mentioned less frequently in the past: Sun?
Much of Red Hat's business is selling support services for open-source software, which is an activity Sun would like to be doing more of. Sun's pretty much got the cash, and such a move might get its share price moving north again.
At one level, it's a ludicrous idea, but on another...perhaps. Neither company has a lot of cash to burn, but the combination of the two could be potent: Red Hat's dominant Linux distribution (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and JBoss middleware, coupled with Sun Microsystems' deep bench in Java, Open Storage, MySQL, and more.
The pairing would arguably make more sense in the absence of Sun's hardware business, but it's an interesting thought. I doubt that it would happen. Red Hat no doubt feels that it would be burdened by taking on Sun's baggage, and Sun likely wouldn't see much added value from Red Hat's still relatively small $600 million in revenue.
As an outsider, too, I like the two companies as two open-source companies, pushing hard against established, proprietary incumbents to open code, reduce margins, and drive innovation.
Yet my curiosity is piqued. What do you think? Is it a momentary lapse of reason or a seed of a good idea?
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Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
I hope they stay separate.
If the dream is to have a super powerful, pure play corporate advocate for open source, then it seems best to hope that Sun will spin-off its hardware division and merge the software group with Red Hat. That's not likely. Why? I don't think that Sun's management believes that its hardware (and particularly storage) platform is a liability. And what about OpenSolaris? If Sun can make headway and keep Unix systems out there, there's one less reason to need Red Hat's offerings.
IMO, Red Hat needs more strategic pieces. Sun needs to execute with those it has.
Apple if it desires the Enterprise would be a better candidate to buy Sun Microsystems from business viability and etc.
That said, Sun pushes "their" solutions heaviøy (with partners like Liferay or without) as reference implementations, and JBoss has a hefty customer base unllikely to switch.
> operating system. Why dilute it with alien hardware?
Because Apple barely has a toehold in the Enterprise -- whereas Sun is huge.
And what alien hardware? Sun is into Intel/AMD in a big way. The build quality is comparable.
Sun provides Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Imagine if OS X were added to that mixture. Bingo.
Maybe replace the FreeBSD/Mach parts of OS X with Solaris parts, and you'd have a dynamic combo.
Sunny Guy
P.S. Sorry if I double posted by accident.
- by idfubar February 6, 2009 11:26 PM PST
- One can dream...
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