"Sun would be an atypical acquisition for IBM, which usually focuses on assets and strength," said Scott Crawford, managing research director for Enterprise Management Associates. "IBM's acquisitions typically support an already known strategy and I don't think this one would fall under that category."

Crawford also said the alignment of IBM and Sun products has to be evaluated from an IT perspective. "There is not a direct overlap in the Unix space so does that mean an end of life for Solaris and SPARC? That would be an imposing question for many users."

While others agree that open source projects and corporate software will not seal an IBM union with Sun, they feel there are nuggets of value in the Sun portfolio.

"If IBM were to buy Sun there would be no question about who owns Java," said one insider close to Sun who asked to remain anonymous. "The Java brand is important because it is one of the predominant platforms; it is how software is built. All the application servers run Java."

The insider said Sun's other projects could be hidden gems for IBM, including the new hybrid storage project called (FISH: Fully Integrated Software and Hardware).