The computer hardware and software businesses have seen some strange bedfellows of late (Apple switching to Intel processors, Corel pledging to support an open-source document formats, etc.). That continued yesterday as hardware giant IBM announced that it will begin offering its customers Sun's Solaris Unix operating system. The development is significant because IBM has long made its own version of Unix and is also a big proponent of Linux.
I can see some potential profit in this for Sun but it does absolutely nothing to clarify its business plan which has been an absolute mess of contradictory offerings and changes of plans. Could this deal be a foreshadowing of things to come for the company?
