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Good move or bad? I think IBM massively overpaid (nearly 1/3 of their own market cap, in a cash deal), and basically made the Red Hat stakeholders an offer they couldn't refuse.

Future of Red Hat? The claim is that Red Hat will continue to operate independently. We'll see how long that lasts.

Future of AIX? IBM could kill AIX off, and make some money selling consulting services to people who need to migrate from AIX to RHEL as a result.

So many questions... some of which hit close to home (and pocketbook) for me personally, since I currently work for another IBM business unit.

Whatever decay happens, I predict it will happen in slow motion.

I'd love for the AIX rolling upgrade strategy to make it over to RHEL-type distros.

I don't see this ending well. In fact, I see it ending similarly to the Intel-McAfee buyout: everything's fine for a couple of years, then the ambitious MBAs try to carve their mark in the new toy, then the political winds change in the boardroom, the ones who led the deal go away, their replacements want to chase after some other unicorn, and Red Hat gets thrown to the wolves.

It hasn't been a good couple of months for the Linux world.

McAfee's still here, and Red Hat is likely going nowhere.

IBM may hold the reins, but Red Hat has a diverse set of stakeholders.

I think it's all gonna hinge on how long IBM is willing to wait for a return on their $34 billion investment. When they get tired of waiting the honeymoon will be over.

Looks like IBM is having a yard sale to raise some quick cash, to help pay for the Red Hat deal: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/te ... 979988.cms

So HCL is buying Lotus Notes? (Among other things)

Yup! Blast from the past...

As someone who used Lotus Notes for both email and internal apps, I'd have to ask: Who's paying whom to take on Notes?

just brew it! wrote:

Yup! Blast from the past...

Your forum sig says it all.

Airmantharp wrote:

McAfee's still here, and Red Hat is likely going nowhere.

IBM may hold the reins, but Red Hat has a diverse set of stakeholders.

Not anymore. IBM is the the stakeholder now. They landed smack in the middle of corporate America.

For the most part, IBM's interests will align with the previous stakeholders---at first. Ubuntu and a few other distros have been eyeballing the enterprise market, so they can't piss off their customers too much.

I expect IBM to leave Red Hat alone for a while. IBM Mothership will write proprietary code and sell consulting services to migrate AIX customers. After that works, they may eventually do something with their big iron too (who knows?).

arunphilip wrote:

As someone who used Lotus Notes for both email and internal apps, I'd have to ask: Who's paying whom to take on Notes?

LOL

TheRazorsEdge wrote:

I expect IBM to leave Red Hat alone for a while. IBM Mothership will write proprietary code and sell consulting services to migrate AIX customers. After that works, they may eventually do something with their big iron too (who knows?).

RHEL is already available for the z-series mainframes, and has been for a while: https://www.redhat.com/en/store/red-hat ... =RH0416249

TheRazorsEdge wrote:

Not anymore. IBM is the the stakeholder now.

IBM owns Redhat- but part of that is their established customer base, which have invested in Redhat themselves and thus are included as 'stakeholders'.

arunphilip wrote:

As someone who used Lotus Notes for both email and internal apps, I'd have to ask: Who's paying whom to take on Notes?

The bunch was so large that HCL didn't even notice there's Notes hiding in the middle.

Wirko wrote:

arunphilip wrote:

As someone who used Lotus Notes for both email and internal apps, I'd have to ask: Who's paying whom to take on Notes?

The bunch was so large that HCL didn't even notice there's Notes hiding in the middle.

All kidding aside, some (most? all?) of ongoing Notes maintenance and development was been contracted out to HCL anyway. They're already familiar with the codebase, so if anyone was going to take it over instead of just letting it die, they were the most logical choice. I guess they still see some potential value in the platform.

just brew it! wrote:

RHEL is already available for the z-series mainframes, and has been for a while: https://www.redhat.com/en/store/red-hat ... =RH0416249

I meant a longer-term project that offers something more than Linux guest status. I don't know enough about the big iron market to suggest what their customers might want.

Airmantharp wrote:

TheRazorsEdge wrote:

Not anymore. IBM is the the stakeholder now.

IBM owns Redhat- but part of that is their established customer base, which have invested in Redhat themselves and thus are included as 'stakeholders'.

You're right, for now. That's not what I was getting at, though.

If you can't write checks frequently with a lot of zeroes at the end, IBM doesn't care about you for very long. As long as Red Hat remains autonomous, it's not an issue. But how long do most subsidiaries keep their freedom?

I doubt IBM will piss off RHEL customers right away. I think it'll be a good 5-10 years, but it's coming.