Gary Barnett's Blog

This morning IBM announced that it has acquired Cast Iron Systems, for an undisclosed sum. Cast Iron Systems a 75 person strong “cloud integration vendor”. I’m at IBM’s Impact 2010 conference, and have mulled this one over with James Governor and Neil Ward-Dutton already (James has already blogged on this here and Neil here. I don’t have much to add to either Neil or James, but – never the less…

• This is a really good move for IBM as it establishes IBM as the de facto leader in Cloud integration
• This gets IBM some really good mid-sized clients and a mid-sized client-friendly business model
• Cast Iron offers significant value to IBM’s customers by radically simplifying the process of integrating cloud-based apps like SalesForce.com, google docs and a host of others either with eachother or with “non-cloud” apps like SAP.
• The number of different API’s and, indeed, API approaches adopted by different SaaS and Cloud players makes it a real pain to integrate them – Cast Iron makes it possible to link SAP with SalesForce.com in seconds rather than days or weeks
• While this is an excellent addition to IBM’s integration portfolio, it has also added (yet) another way to specify how two applications interact which places the onus on IBM to help customers decide which approach/technology to use

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Oracle’s recent strategy day presented a union filled with love and romance, but despite the apparent confidence, Oracle’s strategy misses some important points. Jonathan Steel and I spent some time mulling it all over and here’s our initial take.

This post may be read to the strains of the wonderful Ella Fiztgerald singing “There may be trouble ahead”.

Having slogged through the marathon that was the Oracle-Sun announcement day, we’re left with two immediate impressions:
1.They took a heck of a lot of time to say so little
2.Oracle’s back to the future pitch, while nothing like as badly thought out as some people say, just isn’t going to cut it.

If you’re in a hurry, here are the headlines:

• The back to the 60’s mantra is both more and less nuanced than you might think
• But the integrated stack pitch simply isn’t well enough thought out
• There are two killer reasons why the “single stack” pitch fails: Innovation, and Focus
• Ultimately Oracle’s hardware strategy is simply not convincing enough
• Oracle’s software strategy is much more coherent but Sun brings a mixed bag
• The absence of a services story is the elephant in the room

We’ll be thinking, talking and writing in much more detail about this – so if you’re interested in knowing more, drop me a line – gary@bathwick.com

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If you’re busy here’s the summary;

• A good move by IBM
• the acquisition builds on IBM’s portfolio in a number of respects
• Lombardi gains access to IBM’s partner community
• Lombardi’s partners gain access to IBM’s sales channel
• Lombardi’s customers gain too
• But of course there’s overlap…
• To get the most IBM needs to do some hard integration
• The billion dollar question (which came from James Governor) is Lotus Live..

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HP and 3Com Corporation have announced that HP is going to acquire 3Com at a price of $7.90 per share in cash (valuing 3Com at $2.7 billion).

In a nutshell:

• Of course this move means HP’s competitive position against Cisco is improved significantly
• And yes, Cisco’s postion vs HP is improved by their alliance with EMC
• I think this will be good for Cisco, HP, and end-user organisations
• Will Cisco buy a services company in the next 12 months? Hmm
• There is evidence that we all have a LOT to learn about selling networking stuff
• Some strong commentary from a proper Cisco watcher..

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I’ve had a number of conversations with clients on this topic over the past few months, so it made sense to write a note.

If you’re pressed for time :

• It’s sad, and all that, but Sun had it coming : Sun’s performance meant that acquisition was inevitable
• There’s a hard road ahead for Sun employees as Oracle moves to meet the commitments it’s made to shareholders : Once the deal goes through, expect 12-18 months of turmoil within Sun
• There are major opportunities for IBM and HP, while Sparc isn’t yet a “burning platform” there’s a definite smell of smoke in the air
• While there’s no doubting Oracle’s success in software, the company is unproven in hardware and Oracle has plenty of  challenges to focus on over the next five years without adding the saving of a hardware business to the list
• Sun brings a mixed bag of software assets, with a danger that they’ll provide more disruption than revenues
• It’s unlikely that Oracle will “mess up” Java
• It’s unlikely that Oracle will spike MySQL and if it tried to MySQL would survive
• The EU will delay, but not prevent the transaction : That is unless Ellison gets bored with waiting

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IBM has announced its intention to acquire a SaaS email and calendaring provider called Outblaze. The announcement is here.

This is an important announcement for two quick reasons – firstly the outblaze technology can bring added functionality to IBM’s Bluehouse platform, and secondly it signifies that IBM is pretty committed to investing in its  “big play” in the online collaboration space.

I reckon 2009 and 2010 are going to be busy years in terms of acquisitions – Steve Mills (the chap who runs IBM’s software business) has a track record of smart purchases, and while I don’t expect him to go crazy with the corporate credit card, I reckon there’ll be a few bargains that he just won’t be able to pass up in the coming two years.

I’m expecting to hear lots and lots on Bluehouse from IBM at the upcoming Lotusphere 2009. It’s very much something to watch…

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As we’ve now had a little more time to mull.. there are a few more considered reactions to the Oracle / BEA and Sun/MySQL news.

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So, BEA and Oracle have come to a price both can agree on – I did blog this a while ago, and after destroying my wordpress install have managed to lose the original post.

So when I say “Well I reckoned that $20.00 a share was going to be the magic number, but hey I was pretty close given it went for $19.38!” It’s ok to say “You lying little scamp, you’re just saying that…”

But I did. Honest!

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Two major announcements to comment on today (Sun and MySQL, and Oracle and BEA)- but they both merit separate posts.

Sun has acquired MySQL AB the Swedish software company behind the eponymous (well without the “AB”) open source database. for what the press release describes as “approximately$1 billion”.

This move is of real interest to me since I’m currently writing a “MySQL and VB.NET” how to guide (see my development blog for the first installment).

I think that on balance this is good news. Of course there are caveats – Sun has a mixed record when it comes to acquisitions – but provided that they keep faith with the user base (and I think that they will) and can keep a few of the key MySQL engineers (and I think that they can) MySQL will continue to prosper.

There are couple of other “wrinkles” two key database vendors own bits of technology that are pretty “core” to MySQL; Oracle owns InnoDB (one of the core database engines that MySQL uses), and IBM owns Solid (another storage engine). But both Oracle and IBM should be smart enough to know “not to go there” when it comes to horsing with something as popular with the community as MySQL.

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/* PLEASE NOTE – This Post has been recovered from a previous back-up of the Thinkovation Blog */

News just out that Oracle has made a bid for BEA, offering $17 dollars a share – which represented a premium of 25% over the company’s closing price yesterday. The bid values BEA at close to $7billion.

BEA’s reaction has been (predictably) to say the offer is too low – And I think they”re right, but the board has come under pressure to sell up from a few shareholders, notably the investor-activist Carl Icahn who has build up a stake of 13.2 percent.

Personally I think the offer is too low – I think $20 would make a nice round number…

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