[Beowulf] Oh.. IBM eats Red Hat

Prentice Bisbal pbisbal at pppl.gov
Tue Oct 30 07:35:44 PDT 2018


On 10/29/2018 07:40 PM, Douglas Eadline wrote:
>> How well has Linux been supporting IBM's POWER processors? I would
>> imagine pretty well, since the Linux community always seems eager to run
>> on new hardware.
>>
>> Could it be that the Linux community hasn't been quick enough in
>> accepting IBM's contributions to Linux to support POWER, so IBM decided
>> to buy the largest member of the community to fix that?
>>
>> Or, could it be that IBM didn't have enough Linux expertise in-house to
>> support POWER on Linux, so they decided to buy a lot of expertise?
>>
>> What do you think?
> Those alleged problems could have been solved for far less than $34B

Yeah, after I posted that, I read more on the topic, and the whole cloud 
thing was cited repeatedly. I just find it hard to believe IBM is going 
that way, as it seems antithetical to the direction they moved in a few 
years ago: selling off the x86 business because they wanted to get out 
of the commodity computing arena where there was too much competition 
and low margins and move into more specialized high-margin products. I 
consider cloud computing to be the ultimate form of commodity computing.

And yes, those problems could have been solved for less than $34B, but 
how quickly and easily? It's not uncommon for one business to buy 
another to address a deficiency quickly, rather than building their own 
team from the ground up.

--
Prentice
>
> --
> Doug
>
>
>> Prentice
>>
>> On 10/29/2018 02:43 PM, Jörg Saßmannshausen wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> it is not only that, but I saw something about Mellanox today as well.
>>>
>>> Not good news in my humble opinion. :-(
>>>
>>> All the best
>>>
>>> Jörg
>>>
>>>
>>> Am Montag, 29. Oktober 2018, 07:42:48 GMT schrieb Tony Brian Albers:
>>>> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-red-hat-m-a-ibm/ibm-to-acquire-softw
>>>> are-company-red-hat-for-34-billion-idUSKCN1N20N3
>>>>
>>>> I wonder where that places us in the not too distant future..
>>>>
>>>> I've worked for Big Blue, and I'm not sure the company cultures are
>>>> compatible to say the least.
>>>>
>>>> /tony
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing
>>> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
>>> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>> _______________________________________________
>> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing
>> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
>> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>>
>> --
>> MailScanner: Clean
>>
>>
>



More information about the Beowulf mailing list