John PescatoreFrom a security perspective, Oracle acquiring Sun is mostly about Identity and Access Management – Earl Perkins and Gartner’s IAM team will be putting out a First Take with our official position. From the larger security market perspective, mega-deals like this always have ripple effects:
- Herd mentality – there will likely be copycat mergers, as merger-itis seems to spread pretty quickly as the initial culprits spin the press about how revolutionary the new combination will be. Generally, the copycat mergers have an even worse track record than the first wave.
- Eye off the ball opportunities – there is nothing less nimble than two large companies in the throes of merging. Lots of opportunities for competitors (large and small) to jump in and rip out chunks o’ flesh.
- Brain drain and the new startup echo effect – The top talent will be given incentives to stay around for at least a year, then will leave. Around 2H 2010 Gartner will get a lot of briefing requests from acquirer/acquiree veterans who are starting up the companies they always wanted to see. Its like flowers blooming, nourished by the ashes of the previous company.
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Deborah Volk April 20, 2009 at 5:10 pm
John,
The brain drain ripple effect is interesting. Here’s our take on the portfolios of two companies and how we see the rationalization: http://tinyurl.com/cnjc6l
2 links for 2009-04-20 • Bare Identity April 20, 2009 at 8:01 pm
[...] Security Thoughts: Oracle Acquiring Sun (tags: sun oracle acquisition gartner) [...]
3 Christian May 2, 2009 at 1:14 am
We should talk about the impact of this merger on cloud computing… Does Ellison go from being a doubter to a believer?
http://cloudstoragestrategy.com/2009/04/oracle-leaps-into-the-cloud-with-sun.html
And IBM is denied it’s “open cloud”….
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