It’s ironic but fitting that executive bonuses, a subject that’s ignited popular anger against the very companies in Sun Microsystems’ core customer base on Wall St, helped kill Sun’s future.

It’s been reported that a disagreement between IBM and Sun over post-acquisition packages for both chief executive officer Jonathan Schwartz and chairman and co-founder Scott McNealy helped sink a deal that sources last week told The Reg was imminent.

Did Sun’s total package kill the IBM deal? • The Register

Sun Microsystems share price has plummeted this week following the breakdown of IBM’s takeover talks. The board rejected an offer of $9.40 per share and terminated their agreement to negotiate exclusively with IBM.

Sun has been looking for a buyer for several months. The company has struggled for a few years and is in the process of cutting 6,000 jobs. Most analysts agree that it has never fully capitalized on its core technologies such as Java. During the mid-1990s, Java was touted as being the only development platform needed for desktop and web applications, but performance issues, licensing confusion, and the success of competing technologies contributed to its sedate uptake in the market.

Where Next for Sun Microsystems?

The big IBM-Sun (JAVA) news has come and gone; so far without an outcome. It’s going to be ugly for Sun. A situation like this is absolutely fatal to an organization. The wheels of employee defection and revised customer spending plans are set in motion and there is little that can be done to stop them. Sun’s senior management and the board probably have no idea how much has already happened in the last two weeks. So if they understand the urgency to find a solution for shareholders is an open question.

Right after the IBM-Sun deal fell through, speculation turned to Red Hat (RHT). The reason for this is that we are at a perfect time for open source companies and solutions. Budgets and spending are under huge pressure and all the growth seems to be at lower price points. The netbook craze is a good example of this. There are designs out there that promise formidable performance with HD video and high end graphics at “stupidly cheap prices”, according to eager customers. This has become a motif in many areas of technology adoption and growth.

Sun Still Stands Out on the Open Source Deal Horizon — Seeking Alpha

With rumors of a takeover by IBM swirling around him, Sun Microsytems’ chairman Scott McNealy tried to pitch a room of customers this week on the idea that Sun is a wily innovator whose software and hardware are far less costly than proprietary solutions from Oracle and, yes, IBM. But McNealy had little to offer loyal customers with Sun’s legacy Sparc hardware.

McNealy touted Sun’s vision of cloud computing and the folly of “best of breed” to about 200 customers and partners. “Frankenstein was best of breed, and every time he keels over, IBM comes in with $100,000 shock paddles,” McNealy said. Sun’s goal “is to get you out of the kitchen. We build data centers; you do whatever you do,” adding that “building a data center out of 40 different parts is last year’s strategy.”

Sun’s McNealy touts open source, bashes Oracle and IBM

An acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc. by IBM might have its good points, especially for Sun’s long-suffering shareholders. But IT users and analysts have concerns about the prospective deal that can be summed up in two words: uncertainty and fear.

While Sun is a diminished company these days, it remains influential, thanks largely to its open-source products and the massive development communities that have built up around them — Java and MySQL in particular.

Now, with IBM and Sun reportedly engaged in acquisition talks, there are questions about what IBM might do with those technologies.

Outcome of acquisition talks uncertain for IBM, Sun — and customers

OIN members include important players like IBM, Philips and Sony. On the other hand they also include Novell, whose original patent cross-license with Microsoft drives the controversy over Big Greens claims to own the Linux operating system.

TomTom tells Ballmer tear down this wall | Open Source | ZDNet.com

via CrunchBase

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has put forward a compelling argument as to how Sun will monetize open-source software.

Fortunately, he may never need to, as it seems all-but-certain that IBM will acquire Sun, perhaps as early as this week, according to sources familiar with the matter.

In a nutshell, Schwartz argues that chief information officers decide to pay for for value, and value is more than just software. Schwartz seems to be suggesting that open source makes a great complement to a larger systems business, and/or that for mission-critical tasks, CIOs will pay to ensure that a company stands behind the code.

IBM wouldn’t benefit from Sun’s open-source plan | The Open Road – CNET News

IBM’s chances of being a major player in the era of cloud computing would be enhanced by a merger with Sun, says BusinessWeek.

IBM can also afford the $6.5BN acquisition that is apparently being discussed since it has $13BN cash hoard, notes BW Senior writer Steve Hamm.

In his report published today, the day after Sun announced its Sun Open Cloud Platform at an event in New York, Hamm writes that “IBM would be taking a risk by purchasing Sun…with no assurances that Sun’s cloud offerings will take off,” but he also stresses that a Sun acquisition “would give IBM a better entree into another segment of the nascent market: providing technology to the companies that operate cloud data centers for large consumer-oriented Web services such as Facebook and Google’s YouTube.”

IBM-Sun Pairing Would Help IBM Get into the Cloud: BusinessWeek | Open Source Magazine

IBM is in talks to acquire Sun Microsystems, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Sun has struggled to revive its financial prospects in the wake of declining interest in its Solaris operating system and associated hardware. Open source has been the big bright spot for Sun, but Sun’s ability to recoup hardware losses with free software has been suspect.

IBM could fix that. IBM knows how to make money from software, and it could lend a hard-edged pragmatism to Sun’s open-source idealism.

IBM + Sun = Perfect for open-source monetization | The Open Road – CNET News

SINGAPORE–Local institute of learning, Republic Polytechnic, has partnered IBM and Red Hat to groom IT professionals with expertise to meet rising adoption of open source software and mainframe virtualization.

The institute has launched a new course that provides training on IBM’s System z mainframe based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

At a media briefing Wednesday, Eden Liew, RP’s deputy principal overseeing corporate services, said up to 150 students and 75 industry professionals are expected to be trained over the next three years.

S’pore students get taste of mainframes, Linux : News : Business – ZDNet Asia