Oracle buys Sun – To Provide Integrated Hardware, Software, Services around Java

In just over a week after talks between IBM and Sun Microsystems collapsed, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison stepped in to close one of the biggest deals ever in IT. On Monday, Oracle announced that it will take over Sun in a friendly bid priced at $9.50 per share, valuing Sun Microsystems at just over $7 billion USD. The deal was a bright spot on Wall St. where the overall market was down over 250 points at close. Analysts are suggesting that this could lead to a 40-70% cut in jobs at Sun, whose financial problems obviously spurred the deal.

Like Silicon Graphics in bankruptcy again and now merging with Rackspace, Sun has been unable to recover from the dotcom bubble of 2000-2001. The biggest problem appears to be that Sun was unable to redesign and manufacture next-generation servers without falling behind other hardware companies and chip makers, nor were they able to monetize sufficiently their software platforms. Thus, the gains for Oracle are huge – the Java programming language, the MySQL database platform, and the Solaris operating system, all owned by Sun are the foundation of the internet in many instances, old and new.

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Making the Change – MS Office to OpenOffice.org

After years of working with Microsoft Office, and most specifically Word, as my primary word processor and office document management program, I have finally switched over to Open Office from Sun this month. Like most other decisions of this type, it is too bad I waited so long. The circumstances were that I had a project with a requirement to create nearly 50 pages of flowcharts & wireframes diagramming the architecture of a site under development, but I didn’t have a copy of the Vizio program installed. I was using an old copy of Microsoft Office, and still running XP on my desktop, basically because I saw the newer versions of Vista & Office to be bloated and over-intrusive. I used some of the Garrett IA conventions to draw the flowcharts for the site in Illustrator, and then exported it as a .png file into Word.

For a nice archive of downloadable shapes for building wireframes, see:
http://www.jjg.net/ia/visvocab/

I had two versions of Office installed, and decided to use the text box drawing facility of Word 2007 to build the wireframes for the site. Sadly, over the last two weeks, my computer’s performance had been slowing. I defragmented the hard disk and about two days later the disk crashed – it looked like a bad sector. After running CheckDisk utility, the computer booted up again, still slow, the sector had recovered. I decided it was a good idea to replace the main hard drive, and spent the weekend rebuilding the desktop. In the process, I lost my ability to edit .docx files, and the wireframes were due on Monday. So, I began looking to convert the .docx files to Open Office files for translation and republication.

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Prospective Satyam Bidders May Include IBM – L&T, Tech Mahindra Confirmed

So many analysts, reporters, and bloggers are trying to link IBM to the bidding for Indian IT giant Satyam, whose disgraced CEO Ramalinga Raju (currently in jail) admitted to cooking the books and defrauding the company of over $1 Billion USD. This last week, Reuters released an article quoting the Economic Times in India, stating that IBM was in the bidding for the company and conducting due diligence in the second round of the sale process being overseen by a former Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court. Within 24 hours, Reuters released a second article denying IBM was in the bidding for Satyam, while the ET has stood by their story and repeated it in other articles. Some reports have stated that a law firm is representing IBM in the deal, a degree of separation that may lead to the attribution calls in both reports.

Yet, some are saying IBM doesn’t need Satyam with its 50,000 employees and IT staff that form the outsourcing backbone of the majority of the world’s Fortune 500 companies. IBM already has around the same number of employees in India currently, making it with Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Cognizant, and Satyam one of the top IT outsourcing service providers in the country. Analysts say Satyam’s potential liabilities, from a class action shareholder suit against Raju for destroying stock value and a lawsuit by Upaid for fraud / copyright issues could be problematic, to the tune of over $100 Million in liabilities. Bidders for the company have been unable to review the full accounts of Satyam, as the investigation into the accounting fraud is still ongoing. Clients have canceled accounts with Satyam, and the company has taken a bridge loan to cover operational costs until a new buyer is found. What advantage to IBM, then, in purchasing the company with so many problems?

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