If the board has any courage they will do what happened when NeXT and Apple merge - they would let Red Hat executives start running the combined company, this is the only exit out of the death spiral.
Frankly, no other options exist for us at IBM and if this does not happen we'll just continue our accelerated slide into complete irrelevance.
I feel a lot of empathy for the RedHat employees. Good news is I would guess you have about 12-18 months before things will become so intolerable you will want to leave. Name a decent size acquisition IBM has not ‘blue washed’ into irrelevance? I am sure the IBM accountants are drooling over the possibility of selling RedHat HQ in downtown Raleigh and moving everyone out to sterile cubes at the IBM location in RTP. With so many RAs there is tons of space. Ask HR about the force move policy and if they will be using that to lower headcount.
To any Red Hat employee who may be reading this: polish up your résumé and get out just as fast as you can. You're welcome.
Long live AIX... I think customers will switch to Canonical Ubuntu or SLES in droves...
I feel so bad for the Red Hat folks, they have zero idea what's coming.
Red Hat will be the new Solaris under IBM.
LOL.
Red Hat is so screwed.
I can totally see that happening at IBM. Yeah.
Not that fast, this just came in:
Rometty told CNBC that the deal should not be interpreted as part of any plan for her to transition out of her position as CEO at IBM.
"I'm still young and I'm not going anywhere," she told CNBC.
See it for yourself:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/28/ibm-to-acquire-red-hat-in-deal-valued-at-34-billion.html