Harry,
Back in January when I first started buying IBM Puts, I posted that I believed that IBM's "bread and butter", their mainframe business, was vulnerable. With the announcement of clustered PCs just over the horizon, it seemed to me to be only a matter of time before several OEMs would be eyeing this market. While I was not as clever as Bill Fischofer to see that CPQ would team up with Tandem, I did expect something like today's announcement was enevitable as lower end PC, and workstation vendors, teamed up prior to envading the enterprise market. Therefore I view today's announcement to be the first to break the log jam. Other mergers, I believe, are almost sure to come. IBM's installed mainframe business is just too vulnerable and too tempting a prize for others not to join in. Consequently, I look for more acquisitions to come as OEMs fortify themselves with mergers before assaulting the enterprize market. Perhaps, HP/Gateway, or HP/NCR, SUNW/DEC, or Samsug/Acer/NEC?. To mention just a few.
Regards,
Jules |
