IBM acquires Red Hat
41–50 of 1001 posts
Re: IBM acquires Red Hat
#42If IBM has one brain cell left, they'll pull a NeXT/Apple merger and let Red Hat executives start running the combined company.
That is the one path to a real future for IBM instead of its slow decline into complete irrelevance.
Re: IBM acquires Red Hat
#43Hearing this, nothong else than a big f word comes out of my mouth.
Re: IBM acquires Red Hat
#44Ay ay ay... if this is true then everything from RH is gonna get fatter, slower and more expensive.
Add a bit of WebSphere here, a bit of Domino there and voila. It'll then be ready for 'resource action' (aka layoffs).
Jokes aside, RH is an engineer-focussed business - IBM is an accountant-focussed business. There's just NO way these two cultures are going to work well together.
Re: IBM acquires Red Hat
#45Remember when NeXT bought Apple with Apple's money? If there's meaningful Red Hat leadership being put at the helm at IBM as part of the deal, it might not be hideous news. But if it's the usual acquisition, well I cannot imagine more incompatible cultures than IBM and Red Hat, integration seems very unlikely.
Re: IBM acquires Red Hat
#46If IBM has one brain cell left, they'll pull a NeXT/Apple merger and let Red Hat executives start running the combined company. That is the one path to a real future for IBM instead of its slow decline into complete irrelevance.
That's a positive scenario but I don't see Ginni Rometty relinquishing control voluntarily. The IBM board has given no signs of dissatisfaction with her performance.
Re: IBM acquires Red Hat
#47RedHat can be replicated. Not cheap, and it will take a few years. What do I mean? Well, IBM will slaughter this goose very quickly. Customers will experience vendor hate to a high degree. But, RH is based on open source. A replacement, open source friendly, can fork RHEL at any time.
Ubuntu looked like it was taking over last time I paid attention. Every new cloud thing touted its pre-configured Ubuntu images, for example. Even Microsoft started with Ubuntu with WSL. Maybe that's why a still multi-billion dollar company decided to cash out even as Linux seems to be making inroads. People used Red Hat for the same reason they used IBM: it was corporate, understood corporate needs, and knew how to…
Red Hat is a lot more than the distros, isn't it?
Re: IBM acquires Red Hat
#48Can the shareholders block this somehow?
Sure, those are the ones having to sell their shares to IBM, but IBM would pay a premium and before anouncement discuss with key investors.
Re: IBM acquires Red Hat
#49The only positive side I can think of is that, Microsoft did not buy RH before IBM does. This is a threat to OSS, sadly. Maybe Google or Amazon will buy Canonical soon?
Microsoft would have actually been better. They're at least still a product development company. IBM at this point is just consultants and their sales ilk. They'll gut Red hat.
Second that.
Half a year ago I was still at RedHat, and we were joking around with colleagues, that either the big bet on OpenShift/kubernetes starts paying off, or somebody buys us.
We joked that Microsoft under Satya Nadella would actually be quite a good fit :D
Re: IBM acquires Red Hat
#50If this happens, I see older engineers targeted by IBM as they have done over the for "cost savings" as part of the acquisition.