Reports emerged on 18 March from the Wall Street Journal that IBM and Sun Microsystems (Sun) had entered into talks about a potential acquisition. By 7 April it was reported that talks between IBM and Sun had broken down. On 20 April, Oracle announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sun at USD$9.50 per share in cash; a transaction valued at approximately USD$7.4 billion, or USD$5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt. The acquisition of Sun by Oracle surprised many, including Microsoft’s own Steve Ballmer. This Briefing Note contains Longhaus' observations in relation to the changing ICT industry landscape in terms of enterprise application software development and deployment.