Purchased for $3.9 billion at the height of the tech boom in 2000, AT&T just sold off Sterling Commerce to IBM for $1.4 billion in pocket change.

"Sterling Commerce offerings strongly complement IBM's middleware portfolio. By acquiring Sterling Commerce technology and its large trading partner network, IBM anticipates it will be able to deliver powerful new cross-channel solutions to its clients. In addition, Sterling Commerce technology will complement IBM's industry-focused software offerings, enabling the addition of capabilities to IBM's frameworks supporting the retail, manufacturing, communications, health care and banking industries."

IBM Agrees to Acquire Sterling Commerce from AT&T for $1.4 Billion

ok.

#1 titles are getting very dramatic. :).

#2 ibm increases price of everything it acquires.

For example - they acquired ILog rules engine and suddenyly prices went up by 3 to 7 times and on top of that IBM's usual way of messaing up a good product has started too. they now call it websphere rules engine. Webspehre has such a bad rapo among the smart java community. why would you do that ?

They call it the WebSphere Rules Engine? I'd be less surprised if it was called the IBM Rational WebSphere Application Rules Engine for Architects. That would go more along with their trend.

IBM sells to clients with big pockets, so they endorse it, and then they sell it for significantly more dollars. And the people they sell it to are the ones that can afford it. They've got a nice business model like that.

C'mon, the headline? Now that was clever. Cleaning up? A bath? The dual meanings in there and mixed metaphore? That's headline poetry if you ask me.

Currently the Websphere name is added to all the server products whether or not it has much to do with Java or application servers.  I was told once by an IBMer that they employ a guy full time just to come up with names and acronyms.  I don't know if that's true but it sure seems possible.

That's how IBM operates. Having gone through that process in the past, that's how the strategy works. IBM sales guys are good at saying "it costs a lot because it is a great value". Those who buy ibm software and services are used to high prices. JRules is still a great product. It's too bad the pricing puts it out of the range of smaller companies and projects.

I guess its more about acquiring customers of the original company rather than the technology. I feel that many times the conversion to "IBM Stack" of these customers is more profitable than the actual acquisition itself :-)