IBM's Own Geronimo

In what must be a harbinger of things to come, IBM announced today its acquisition of Gluecode, an open source provider of the Geronimo (Apache) application server and portal management software. To those who still can't get their minds around open source - revenue models and such - this acquisition will be perplexing in the extreme. What did IBM buy, anyway, given that most of what Gluecode sells is open source, available to all for free?

This misses the point. As with any industry (technology-centric or not), acquisitions are as much about customer base (likely not IBM's modus operandi here), expertise (bingo!), and leadership (product, market, or otherwise). I believe IBM simply wanted a strong foothold in a growing open source project, especially given Apache's traction in other areas of the enterprise (e.g., web servers). They bought into Gluecode's leadership in Geronimo (through its employees who work on the Geronimo project).

I doubt the acquisition required IBM to give up much (or any) cash, so it's a win for IBM, and gives Gluecode liquidity. Nice all around.

Except maybe for Red Hat, which persists in its Quixotic quest down the JOnAS road. IBM hasn't been cutting Raleigh any favors lately.

And, on a parting thought, it's funny to me how much Gluecode has changed over the past year. When I spent a day with Winston (then CEO) and his team a year or so ago, they were a portal/business process management company. Geronimo was just a dull gleam in their eyes at that point, but I remember Winston telling me they were thinking of picking up some expertise in that area. One year later, Gluecode's website is awash in Geronimo (announced in July 2004), and light on the very products/technology that make up its history (Portal/BPM). It's interesting how quickly the company should change its emphasis...until you see who its hires have been in the past year, which makes all the difference (in an open source world) as to where the company could claim its strongest leadership.

Source of the code, not source code.