More on IBM+Sun from Landman

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Joe Landman, who always brings a deep perspective to the business analysis of HPC goings on, commented yesterday on the latest news in the Sun/IBM possible merger. You should read the whole thing, but I found that this bit resonated with me

IBM logoDo remember, IBM is not an HPC company, they are a business machines and services company. The services part is profitable for them, and ways to grow it would be good for them. HPC is rounding error to their bottom line. As it is for Sun. IBM is a strong player in HPC due to some very cool internal IP they use, and their ability to leverage external IP without so much of an ego issue. Sun hasn’t quite mastered that last portion.

Sun logoMy bet is that IBM is looking at them from a services/market expansion/competitor take down scenario. Because that is where IMO, the value of Sun is … not in its hardware (insert the “its a bad idea to try to out-Dell Dell” comment here).