It is unlikely that IBM would scrap the work it has done over the past few years to weave Symphony into its Note/Domino collaboration tools and its emerging collection of social networking software.

In addition, Sun is the primary sponsor of OpenOffice.org and the primary contributor of code to the project, a role IBM would have to assume.

IBM already has an established middleware (WebSphere, DB2) and tools business where Sun could add little value.

IBM and Sun also have competing directory technology and identity management tools.

Sun's MySQL database technology is hot in the Web 2.0 world and presents an opportunity for IBM in terms of its datacenter strategy, but clearly it overlaps with DB2 from an enterprise perspective.