Sun's announcement that it plans to buy SeeBeyond has gone down well with local SeeBeyond users spoken to by Computerworld last week.
In a statement, IRD national IT manager Don Burns said: "Given our longstanding relationship with Sun and our recent decision to purchase SeeBeyond's products, Inland Revenue sees the Sun acquisition of SeeBeyond as positive, as it will enable increased opportunities for the provision of integrated solutions to support Inland Revenue's business direction."
IRD last year selected SeeBeyond to provide the platform that will underpin its upcoming enterprise technical architecture and said that SeeBeyond's ICAN 5 suite would be used to integrate IRD's legacy systems with off-the-shelf products.
Another SeeBeyond user, who did not want to be named, says he thinks the acquisition "will be great" for SeeBeyond. "It will leverage some of Sun's technology and open-source strategy and it will be good for both of them," the user says.
SeeBeyond Australia–New Zealand sales manager Rob Erskine, who was formerly New Zealand general manager and is based in Auckland, is upbeat. "There's not a lot I can say, but personally, I think it's very positive. Sun is a major entity in the IT world and alignment with them is positive."
SeeBeyond has had a strong working relationship with Sun since October, when a partnership between the two was announced, he says.
There are no plans to change the local staffing of SeeBeyond's local operations as a result of the buy, Erskine says.