IBM: The new development powerhouse?

The proposed merger between IBM and Sun Microsystems, as first reported last week by the Wall Street Journal, may well fizzle out before the buzz dies down -- but let's hope not. Nobody wants to see Sun's technologies disappear, and of all the possible endgames for the company's years-long decline, a merger with IBM is about the best we could hope for.

If the deal goes through, Sun gains Big Blue's powerful sales force, filling the most obvious gap in its expertise of late: the ability to part customers with their money. What's more, given the considerable overlap between the two companies' customer bases, a merger with IBM would ensure that the bulk of Sun's technology portfolio would remain under one roof.

But IBM stands to benefit, too. The most interesting part of this deal is not what it will mean for any specific Sun products or technologies, but how it could reshape the competitive landscape of the IT market. Not only would acquiring Sun deal solid blows to several of IBM's key rivals -- including EMC, HP, and Oracle -- but it could also leave IBM as the leading supplier of tools and technology for enterprise software developers, hands down.

The new king of Java
From IBM's perspective, the crown jewel of Sun's technology portfolio must surely be Java. Big Blue has made massive investments in Java over the years, and it markets the technology aggressively on every hardware platform it sells, from desktop to mainframe.

Acquiring Sun would make IBM the clear leader in Java technology, as it would become the caretaker of the open source reference implementation of the JRE (Java Runtime Environment). It would also gain GlassFish, Sun's open source reference implementation of Java EE. At Sun, these are top-line products. At IBM, however, they would likely become entry-level offerings -- gateways to IBM's WebSphere product stack.

From a competitive standpoint, this would be a great move for IBM. For starters, it would allow Big Blue to compete more effectively with Red Hat, whose JBoss application server is often seen as a low-cost, open source alternative to proprietary Java EE stacks, including WebSphere. More importantly, if the team that invented Java were to find a new home at IBM, it would draw considerable attention away from Oracle, whose own acquisition of BEA in 2007 was seen as a strong bid for the top spot in the Java market.

How Sun's tech fits into IBM's strategy
But Java isn't the only technology at Sun that could be of interest to IBM. For example, MySQL would make a fine entry-level offering for IBM's database division. In fact, considering that Sun had no real expertise in the relational database business when it acquired MySQL last year, in hindsight I can't help but wonder whether the real motive behind the purchase was to make Sun a better acquisition target for IBM or Oracle.

Furthermore, by acquiring Sun, IBM would gain control of NetBeans, Sun's alternative to IBM's preferred Eclipse Java IDE. On the one hand, that could be bad news for NetBeans fans if IBM chooses to shelve the project in favor of Eclipse. On the other hand, consolidation in the IDE market would allow IBM to present a unified front against its biggest rival in the space, Microsoft's Visual Studio.

Other Sun technologies could bolster IBM's positions in its existing markets. For example, Sun's storage business could give IBM the extra momentum it needs to edge out HP and gain the Number Two spot behind market leader EMC. And Sun's high-end server products would dovetail nicely with IBM's own business in that area.

The real wild card in this deck is Solaris. IBM has said in the past that it has no plans to become a Linux vendor, preferring to delegate that job to Novell and Red Hat. By the same token, it seems unlikely that it would want to devote much energy to maintaining Sun's also-ran Unix. Still, there are powerful technologies in Sun's code that IBM could potentially mine for use in Linux.

The new face of the IT market
In a recession, consolidation is inevitable. As economies shrink, so do markets. What's worth considering, however, is how these changes will ultimately impact customers. When the dust clears from an IBM/Sun merger, I suspect we will see something new: the emergence of a "Big Three" enterprise software vendors.

Microsoft will continue to dominate the desktop, and will maintain a strong presence in the workgroup and small-business server markets.

Higher up the food chain, Oracle will continue to lead the enterprise applications space, battling mainly with SAP on the high end and with Microsoft on the low end.

A merger between IBM and Sun, however, weakens Oracle's position at the high end of the application server market, while simultaneously weakening Microsoft's position at the low end. It gives IBM a new, developer-friendly database offering for customers who don't want the complexity of an Oracle or DB2, and it further strengthens IBM's position as a leading provider of developer IDEs.

All in all, this move would solidify IBM's role as "the developer company." As small tool vendors fall by the wayside, IBM will increasingly become your one-stop shop for software development tools and custom application solutions -- backed, of course, by the full assistance and support of IBM Global Services.

In other words, if this merger goes through and you're an enterprise developer and you're not an IBM customer now, get ready -- because you soon will be. Better bring your wallet.