High-Tech Industry Consolidation Continues

SAN FRANCISCO, APRIL 1, 2018 – Tsunami waves of consolidation continue to break against the software industry, as MicroCiscoYahooOraclesoft announced a US$2.4 trillion takeover of IBMhpSAPemc. Meanwhile, Apple Telephone & Telegraph agreed to merge with GoogledellSUNokia in a deal worth $3.7 trillion.

“This is a fantastic day for consumers everywhere,” shouted Steve Ballmer, chairman of MicroCiscoYahooOraclesoft. “Ever since the last anti-trust restrictions were lifted from our company yesterday, we began looking for new ways to innovate and bring more choice to customers. This acquisition goes a long way toward bringing us closer to Bill’s dream of ‘information at your fingertips across the road ahead at the speed of thought,’ or as I like to say it, IAYFATRA@TSOT.”

While critics swiftly charged that the MicroCiscoYahooOraclesoft move is all about increasing its share of Internet-based advertising, comments from a pay-for-praise analyst hint at a bigger target: mainframe consolidation and positioning Big Iron as next-generation smart clients. Noting that current mainframes rival mobile phones in size, the ability to combine the technologies in new, exciting ways creates powerful synergies, said Ivan A. Suckup, director of The Suckup Group.

“Imagine a pocket-sized IBM mainframe running Microsoft operating systems and Oracle databases, combining HP’s consumer marketing prowess with SAP’s business back-end integration, EMC’s storage technology, Cisco’s connectivity and Yahoo’s leading-edge ad-delivery platform,” Suckup said. “If they can only solve the cooling problem, and get more than three milliseconds of battery life from the fuel cell, this will truly be the killer platform of the future.”

The Suckup Group recently placed MicroCiscoYahooOraclesoft into its Golden Sector of Industry Innovation & Leadership™. “They’re our best client,” gushed Suckup, “and they subscribe to every one of our overpriced services. However, that in no way is related to our upgrading our honest, impartial recommendation to ‘Buy all their stock that you can afford, even if you have to clean out your kid’s college fund and take out another mortgage on your house.’ ”

In related news: Two months after MicroCiscoYahooOraclesoft completed its controversial acquisition of Red Hat, questions linger about the accidental loss of all of Red Hat’s source code, revealed only last week. “Whoops,” said Darl McBride, director of open-source strategy at MicroCiscoYahooOraclesoft. “Don’t know how that happened. Pity all the backup tapes were destroyed, too.”

McBride pointed out that MicroCiscoYahooOraclesoft’s Server Customer Open Source program, or SCOsource, will offer Red Hat Enterprise Linux users discounts to license Microsoft’s Windows Server 2016 through May 15. After that, the company will remotely disable all Red Hat Linux installations. “We suggest you read the fine print,” McBride suggested, “and give up Linux before it’s too late.”

“We agree with that,” agreed The Suckup Group’s Suckup.

AT&T Goes the Distance

On a roll since its 2015-2017 acquisitions of Sony, The New York Times, Starbucks, Disney and Wind River, Apple Telephone & Telegraph surprised Wall Street by agreeing to be purchased by software giant GoogledellSUNokia for $3.7 trillion.

“The combination of our companies will be an unstoppable force for doing no evil,” said Eric Schmidt, chairman of GoogledellSUNokia. “We already have the world’s largest server farms, the most mature direct-sales model, the most online advertising, the best Android-powered handsets, the best embedded operating system, and the most complete logs about everything you do on the Internet. Plus, with gJava, you can write everything once, and run it everywhere. With AT&T’s resources, we’ll have even more amazingly cool handsets, the hottest personal computers, the most reliable wireless network and the most compelling content for you and your family, at home and at work. GoogledellSUNokia truly is the happiest place on Earth.”

Steve Jobs, chairman of AT&T, will remain on as honorary spokesmodel and chief platform evangelist for the combined company, to be named GoogledellSUNokiAT&T. During Macworld 2018, webcast from San Francisco’s Moscone Center last month, the normally recalcitrant Jobs had hinted that something big was brewing.

After unveiling the iPod notouch — the first music player with direct audio/video brain-feed capabilities — Jobs said “Something big is brewing.” At the time, analysts believed he was promoting the new AT&T Friends and Family Plan, which gives you 600 anytime iTunes movie rentals along with unlimited TV episode downloads nights and weekends, if you sign up for a two-year WiMax contract. For a limited time, each new subscriber also receives a Duetto Visa card, a Magic Kingdom three-day pass and home download of the Sunday Times. Severe penalties apply for early contract termination.

Perhaps Jobs had more than Mickey Mocha in mind, said Suckup of The Suckup Group, which recently placed both AT&T and GoogledellSUNokia into its Golden Sector of Industry Innovation & Leadership™. “When Jobs smiled after asking ‘Just one more thing: Don’t you love Google?’ at the end of his keynote, clearly something big was brewing,” Suckup said.

While GoogledellSUNokia’s Schmidt declined to discuss specific plans until the merger is rubber-stamped by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Union, he did say, “Someday soon, every phone will be an iPhone,” and hinted that one could expect to see Dell PCs, Sun servers and Nokia handsets appearing for sale in every iBucks location.

“Turning every Apple retail store into a Starbucks coffee shop, and every neighborhood Starbucks into an Apple store, was inspired,” said Suckup. “Getting a fresh iced latte from the iBucks Genius Barista while you download some tunes, upgrade your RAM, do your homework and work through some technical issues with GarageBand — that’s the ultimate in 21st-century convenience.”

Suckup continued, “If that level of service is extended to supporting Windows Panorama Edition 2017, that could give MicroCiscoYahooOraclesoft the much-needed opportunity to reclaim some market share from the iMac. Hey, that’s another reason to buy some stock.”

Stay Tuned

The three remaining high-tech companies that have not yet been acquired or merged — Novell, Borland and Salesforce.com — are reportedly thinking about it.

Retired software engineer I.B. Phoolen invented Web services, Scrum, penicillin, recursion and, most recently, ALGOL 68. Read his blog at ibphoolen.blogspot.com.