In the field of politics it is said that there is no permanent enemy or a friend what is permanent is your interests and these words stand true even in the field of business. Just a few days back I told you how Sun and IBM were involved in a cold war over licenses and I thought that the situation could get out of hand in the time to come but now both the companies are joining hands on the front of server technology which can threaten the position of HP. Jonathan Schwartz, Chief Executive of Sun termed this union as a 'comprehensive relationship' representing a tectonic shift in the market landscape.

What does this collaboration mean for the customers? It signifies that Sun solaris operating system will run on IBM servers and customers running Sun servers will be able to switch to hardware of IBM without requiring any need of rewriting programs. This partnership could cause Sun losing out its customers to IBM and it could only gain if it charges service subscription from customers running OS on IBM hardware.

I think Sun and IBM are looking forward to repeat their success of the 90's when both the companies came together to popularize Java which reaped immense benefits but in the current situation I don't feel there is any possible chance of repeat of their earlier success even though both the companies are looking forward to collaborate for some ten to fifteen interesting market opportunities. Let's see what fruits this association leads to this time.