While I was out too late to ponder the more profound implications of Sun’s most recent M&A activity at this early hour (The initial announcement call was at 5 AM PT. Yes, 5. Like I’m getting up at 5 for anything. what am I, some kind of dairy farmer? ;), my initial reaction hearing the deal is simple: it seems like a highly logical deal that plugs an important hole in the Sun portolio. Seems like my colleague and I are – unusually – on the same page on this one 😉 My positive take on the news is fueled in part by a single conversation I had with a Sun SI and reseller perhaps six or eight months ago, who told me that while he thought the Java Enterprise Suite had a lot of promise and had made some headway within his customer base, they regularly lost on deals (in some cases not making the shortlist) because they lacked a native integration suite component (the old Fusion assets notwithstanding). Debating the merits of such a customer stance is pointless; the simple fact is that customers wanted integration capabilities in bundled fashion, and Sun in theory will now be able to provide that. I add the “in theory” modifier to acknowledge the reality that there is integration work yet to be done, but I must say I’m finding some of the post-deal analysis and commentary amusing. There are some questioning the deal on an execution basis, citing past failures of Sun from an M&A standpoint – which frankly is fair enough. But to posit that the deal might not make sense b/c execution will be a challenge? I don’t get it – when is M&A of this size not a challenge of execution? Anyhow, I’m sure other commentary will center around how the acquisition provides a foundation for bigger and better things such as SOA build outs, but I’ll leave that to them for now. Time to shower up and head over to this morning’s keynote.
As an aside, I’ve posted pics from yesterday to Simon Phipps JavaOne2005 group on Flickr here, and I’d like to thank a.) all the Sun bloggers for being such excellent hosts yesterday evening (talked to these folks quite a bit, in particular), and b.) Scott Sanders (of FeedLounge and Apache fame) for making the trip over to the Thirsty Bear to meet up. Would that I could have hung out with you guys longer, but duty called.
