IBM is buying Blade Network Technologies (BNT) and people are bemused beyond belief, especially a correspondent who wishes to remain anonymous but is close-ish to IBM.
He thinks that the BNT purchase might be “Juniper on the cheap” and if so is “totally stupid.”
He characterises IBM CEO Sam Palmisano as a CEO who “doesn’t collect companies.” Instead he pursues “margin expansion with modest revenue growth,” and is “getting out of commoditising markets.”
He says “IBM has been building multi-processor systems for three decades, so [is] more than capable of glueing stuff together for low latency without having to buy anyone, at a development cost.” Also “IBM spending time on [IEEE 802.1]Qbg can only be to help commoditise this space.”
In the Z11 mainframe area it is “beyond curiosity why would anyone care who manufactures the LAN switch inside its cabinet.”
IBM’s networking strategy has been poor. O
