Big news on the technology horizon, and here at iTKO we are watching the development with much interest: See Reuters' "IBM in talks to buy Sun" story, among many other stories on it.
Network World's Denise Dubie caught several analyst insights in their coverage of the emerging story, "Could IBM be Sun's savior?"
Also check out eBizQ's discussion board if you care - lots of the usual suspects we talk to in SOA/BPM/enterprise architecture chiming in over there. Here was my (quick) comment on the topic:
"Yes I think it will happen, and from my development perspective, while we might like healthy competition and choice in vendors, it is better a strategic move now than a fire sale for Sun later. IBM practically owns enterprise computing, and they have gone out of their way to own a big chunk of the Java world with it.
Sun has tried very hard to attract developers, lately, open sourcing as much as they could - but open source is a hard space to compete in because it doesn't generate cash! By hugely funding Eclipse, IBM spoiled the IDE market for Sun and a number of other players.
Still this will be an interesting development to watch, as we are talking about a boatload of innovations and 2 very different cultures that would need to be folded together here."