It amazes me when a company in decline plays hard ball with a goliath and walks away from a deal. This morning it was reported that Sun Microsystems is walking away from a friendly offer from IBM.
It is really not a seller's market for an systems environment that is on the decline. After early success for JAVA just before the dotcom bust, Microsoft slowly but surely built its .NET framework. As a result, Sun lost market share in this arena. For the most part, Sun's server business is an attractive asset for any suiter, as reported by Business Week.
Does anyone have flashbacks of Yang (Yahoo) playing hardball and walking away from a Microsoft offer, just before the markets began to head south?
And so…where is Yang now?
To ensure the survival of Sun, I believe that IBM will attempt to resume talks with Sun. IBM has made previous acquisitions that complimented its service offerings. Sun looks like a good fit. IBM just needs McNealy to be a bit more open-minded about the offer price.
