If you missed to follow the news, here’s how I saw the events, chronologically:
- 18 March 2009 – Rumor says, that IBM is looking to buy SUN. Both companies refused to comment the rumor.
- 25 March 2009 – Paul Otellini, Intel’s CEO commented, that “Sun was shopped around the Valley and around the world in the last few months” and “A lot of companies got calls or visits on buying some or all the assets of the company ”, due to unfavorable financial prospects.
- 02 April 2009 – Rumor says the price of the deal was set to around $7 billion, ($9.50 per share). For comparison, SUN was worthed $200 billion in 2001.
- 05 April 2009 – The deal is off, after IBM tried to reduce the price to $9.40 per share, according to the rumors.
- 09 April 2009 – Niel McAllister perspicaciously presumes what is about to happen.
- 20 April 2009 – Without much noise and rumors both companies (Oracle and SUN) together issued press releases on their web sites: Oracle Buys Sun and Oracle to Buy Sun. They’ve reached a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire SUN. The deal is valued at approximately $7.4 billion (or $9.50 per share), which corresponds to IBM’s initial offer (see above). The contract is subject to Sun stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
- 21 April 2009 – Steve Ballmer and (supposedly) IBM are very surprised by the deal. Rumor says, IBM wanted to reduce the price after the initial negotiations were closed.
In most comments over the acquisition SUN is categorized as a hardware (server) manufacturer, but in fact it is much more than that. This is the company that created the most popular programming language, Java Community Process, Open Office, Open Solaris, ZFS. The only thing that Oracle are famous about is their truly extraordinary database, but that is it. Well, also with their remarkable inability to provide good Java-based platform for software development. That is why I fully agree with Paul Otellini (see the link above):
I’d rather have Sun be independent I guess.