IBM in talks to purchase Sun

IBM is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems as early as the end of this week. Current information puts IBM's bid over Sun's market cap at $6.5B.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123735970806267921.html

I'm interested to know how this could impact the RIA world as we know it. IBM currently has it's hand in the Dojo toolkit as well as a recent acquisition of ILOG and their Adobe Flex data visualizations, Elixir.

Research done by Gartner (MarketScope for AJAX Technology and RIA Platforms) and popular opinion shows, Adobe Flash/Flex as the front runner with Microsoft Silverlight and others in a positive position and Sun's JavaFX positioned showing promise.

Side note: RIAs are more important than they have been in the past; illustrated when Forrester published information on RIAs going mainstream as a first-Class application development option (Inquiry Spotlight: Rich Internet Applications, Q3 2008). There's more of a focus on AJAX libraries and platforms as well as Browser plug-ins as suitable technologies for web applications. If the technology is more suitable the question then becomes how costly is it to develop? Take into consideration the efficiency gained from tooling, the efficiency developing the technology, and availability of developers for each platform and go from there.