[rescue] Sun is purple - not blue....

[Scott M]

Sun purchased StorageTek for 4 billion.  IBM is getting StorageTek too. 
A lot of StorageTek libraries were, and still are, connected to IBM machines. 
Some worried that if libraries started shipping with Sun labels on them, 
people might hesitate to buy.  I think Sun kept the StorageTek name on the 
libraries minimize this problem, if the problem ever actually existed. 
The StorageTek people who work at Sun probably don't have to worry too much. 
 
As for people in other areas of Sun, well... 
IBM will examine all the assets looking for duplicated capability and start 
cutting there.  When HP purchased Compaq (and DEC), they had HP-UX and Tru64 
(Digital UNIX).  Similar capability, so Tru64 was eventually eliminated. 
IBM will have two processors:  POWER and SPARC.  Hopefully the people who 
work on SPARC can be integrated.  However, Fujitsu has done a superior job 
with SPARC64, so not sure.  The E15K was launched many years ago, so not 
sure what will happen on the large systems side of things, if anything. 
IBM will have two UNIXes:  AIX and Solaris.  Solaris 2.5.1 ran on PReP 
architecture PowerPC machines, so Solaris could be ported to POWER again. 
However, does IBM want to go this direction?  Sun has a lot of really smart 
people working on the Solaris kernel and supporting software, but can all 
those people be utilized somewhere with the chant of "Linux, Linux!, LINUX!!" 
getting louder and louder for the last 10 years?  I realize that for the 
datacenter, a commercial UNIX that is a lot older and has a less volatile 
source code base is much preferred.  Of course, if you're looking for age 
and stability, why not just buy a mainframe running z/OS? 
That's it!  I'm going to take all my Sun Solaris machines to the recycler, 
and go get a mainframe.  Problem solved! 
 
Scott M