EMC should bid for Sun !

I have been really busy with on-site client work for a few weeks, and have numerous clients with 31st of March deadlines, busy busy, but I have been wanting to respond to Pie's posting: Documentum and the Search for Search for over a week now.

However then we get the "IBM to buy Sun" bombshell...... :-)

All good fun eh. So I thought I would tackle both issues with one posting. Why ? Well as you can see from the 'provocative' title, I don't think EMC should buy a search engine, I think they should buy Sun Microsystems.

Firstly in direct response to Pie, EMC don't 'need' to buy a search engine, they can put some resource and investment into the open source Lucene search engine, which Pie does mention in his post. Now having said that there are a lots of search engine vendors out there, so there is bound to be some good technology to snap up if they wanted to.

But why not invest more strategically - and buy Sun ? What would they get, well lots of synergistic product lines, and things they dont currently have;

• Storage: Not just the Sun storage hardware, which may or may not have technology which could add value to EMC's storage products (I am not a storage geek so I don't know), but also software - even Solaris and its ZFS file system

• Server hardware: Why shouldn't EMC have a line of servers including some serious CPU technology to go with their storage hardware? Sun could be regarded as the progenitor of current cloud computing and its 'big iron' would be great for Mozy and other EMC cloud initiatives.
  

• MySQL: All future versions of Documentum developed to run on their own RDBMS platform ? Again I am not a database geek either, but I do know that Oracle is generally considered as the best platform for Content Server, so would MySQL cut the mustard?
  

• Java: Well, EMC are "the worlds sixth biggest software company" so why not own Java ?

• Portal: Either Sun Portal or LifeRay (OK, LifeRay) - a great investment for a full 'soup to nuts' information management environment, a portal to sit over Content Server and CenterStage

Well, I know its probably got a 'cat in hell's chance' of happening as we say in Yorkshire, but its fun to postulate the theory. I did see a tweet yesterday suggesting the author had a good source which had sugested Oracle and HP might put in a joint bid for Sun, HP for the hardware and Oracle for the software. Personally I think it would be better for the industry if Sun's tech was not swallowed by either IBM or HP. As for the software, many are suggesting IBM would not be a good owner for Java - I am not so sure on that front, but you can see why Oracle might want to get its hands on both Java and Solaris.

So, come on EMC, get your cash and impress us all, buy the company and do innovative things with the tech !