Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
If I were Oracle, I'd look at offering a bundle: Oracle 11 itself, Linux for it to run under, customized for the task, and VirtualBox to virtualize it, preconfigured for Oracle/Linux instances. Install it on the bare metal, and Poof!, you've got a running virtualised Oracle setup, ready to expand. Oracle costs enough that I'd assume my customers weren't interested in spending more than they had to on the hardware to run it.
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Oracle already have the bare metal in Sun's SPARC 2; it was one of the big reasons they acquired Sun in the first place...one-stop shop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
A former employer ran Windows, Solaris, and Linux (with some legacy Netware they were working on getting rid of.) Their public facing web servers ran on Windows 2003 server with IIS. I asked the guy responsible for them about security concerns, and his response "I keep them fully patched", then put his hands together and moved his lips in a pantomime of heartfelt prayer.  |
The opposite of my employer's IT guy who, upon my mentioning Linux, visibly shuddered as if I offered him raw liver.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
They're flush with cash, but I really don't see the ROI in buying Novell. If they did, I'd expect the reason to be indirect: throw a spanner into someone else's works by preventing them from buying it.
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Nooo, Ballmer would never be that spiteful. </sarcasm>
At closing Friday, Novell stock was trading at about US$6 a share. From Bloomberg:
The company rejected a $5.75-a-share takeover offer in March from hedge fund Elliott Associates LP, saying it undervalued the company, and it has since been considering alternatives including the possibility of a sale.
[MKM’s head derivatives trader Etai] Friedman cited MKM’s software analyst, Aaron Schwartz, who estimates that a deal to sell Novell may be struck at as much as $8 a share, valuing the company at $2.8 billion. That’s 36 percent above the stock’s average price over the past 100 days; the software company hasn’t closed above that level since October 2007. The stock could fall to $5.75 a share if there is no deal, according to Schwartz.
Source: Bloomberg.
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With the above being the case and a failed deal being a requisite for MS to even get on the field, the resulting $5.75 stock price would make it a $2B deal for MS. They could keep what they want and spin off what they don't (or don't have the rights to) since the idea appears to be to break Novell up in the first place, thus making back some of that initial outlay. You'll recall Google bought YouTube (for $1.65B) and hasn't made dime one from it directly, but it was a hell of a strategic move in light of Google's sweetheart deal with Verizon allowing Google-related traffic preferential treatment on VZW's network; part of the ROI on Novell could easily come from playing the spoiler as you suggest. I think that if Ballmer & company wanted to, the hard part would be getting it past the board; they could justify/rationalize the rest.
In a related situation, it appears the corporate trainwreck known as SCO is
trying to capitalize on this, since their tenuous hold on Linux was through Novell.