Oracle to buy Sun for 7.5 billion

[Full of Win]

http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/20/technology/Oracle_Sun/?postversion=2009042008

:eek: wonder what this means for ZFS and Apple, if anything.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Business software maker Oracle Corp. said Monday it has entered into a definitive agreement to buy server builder Sun Microsystems in a deal worth $7.4 billion.

Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) said it will buy Sun (JAVA, Fortune 500) common stock for $9.50 per share in cash, a 42% premium from Friday's closing price of $6.69.

After accounting for Sun's cash and debt, the deal's value is $5.6 billion, the companies said.

The Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle said it expects Sun to contribute over $1.5 billion to its operating profit this year, and over $2 billion in the second year.

On a per share basis, Oracle expects Sun "to be accretive" to its adjusted earnings by at least 15 cents in the first full year after closing. The deal is expected to close this summer, Oracle said.

The announcement comes after Sun reportedly rejected a $7 billion buyout offer from IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) earlier this month.

"The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry," said Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, in a statement. "Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up."

Oracle said it sees "strategic customer advantages" to owning two of Sun's most popular software products: the programming language Java and the Solaris operating system.

"This is a fantastic day for Sun's customers, developers, partners and employees across the globe," said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's chief executive. "Joining forces with the global leader in enterprise software to drive innovation and value across every aspect of the technology marketplace."

The deal is subject to Sun stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. To top of page

[edesignuk]

Holy crap. Oracle!?

[Lone Deranger]

Oracle.... not Apple then.... :(

[pilotError]

Bad news for everybody.

Oracle has a nasty habit of picking the pieces of a company apart and then selling off the worthless carcass that remains.

Wow... The antitrust commission should just shoot this one down...

[sreedy]

Be interesting to see what happens to mysql , and Java for that matter.

[iJawn108]

oracle :\ lame

[twoodcc]

Be interesting to see what happens to mysql , and Java for that matter.

very interesting.

[ChrisA]

I was pretty excited about the IBM deal. But if this deal with Oracle goes down it's pretty much the death of Sun.

[cube]

I was pretty excited about the IBM deal. But if this deal with Oracle goes down it's pretty much the death of Sun.

You have it backwards.

[cube]

http://www.oracle.com/sun/sun-faq.pdf

[Saladinos]

It never really made sense for Apple to buy Sun. Most of their products (things like Java and Solaris) would have simply been scrapped because Apple didn't need them.

Apple does need to bring in server expertise, and on that front Sun would be ideal. Unfortunately it wouldn't justify the $7Bn price tag. Maybe Apple will be able to hire people leaving Sun due to the acquisition, or maybe they're just not going to concentrate on the corporate and server markets.

[mmccaskill]

Goodbye Solaris, SPARC, VirtualBox and Java. Now all Oracle needs to do is buy RedHat(JBoss). Could kill both at the same time.

[BornAgainMac]

MySQL should either die or get a real backup tool. Dumping your database or doing cold backups is not a good backup method compared to using Oracle's RMAN utility.

SPARC will probably meet it's end too.

[Doctor Q]

As a database programmer, a member of the Oracle developer program, a MySQL user, and a Solaris user and administrator, I'm surprised at this deal and very very interested in how it plays out.

SPARC will probably meet it's end too.Why do you think so? That's a mighty big part of what Sun is. I can understand spinning off MySQL, but not jettisoning Sun's core businesses or Sun's own technology.

[twoodcc]

i really hope mysql stays

[ravenvii]

Goodbye Solaris, SPARC, VirtualBox and Java. Now all Oracle needs to do is buy RedHat(JBoss). Could kill both at the same time.

Not necessarily. Solaris has been open sourced as OpenSolaris. VirtualBox is open source. Java has been open sourced.

Those projects will live on as long as there's open source developers willing to continue developing it.

[Doctor Q]

i really hope mysql staysYou might be interested in the comments by analyst Jon Brodkin (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9131848), who thinks MySQL may do just fine.

[Evangelion]

I wonder what this means for Suns hardware-business... It would be a shame to see of die. Another thing that interests me is what this means for Linux. Oracle is a big supporter of Linux. I wonder if Oracle is going to start making bits and pieces of Solaris available for Linux.

[Small White Car]

I saw this earlier today and I don't think I can improve on it, so I'll just leave you with the link:

http://twitter.com/Tony_D/status/1566396942

[Prom1]

Be interesting to see what happens to mysql , and Java for that matter.

Indeed!

Wonder how this will affect Blackberry and other J2ME licensees?! I know SUN's trouble along with Microsoft's has been the reason for the delay in MIDP3.0 or JSR 271. Wonder how J2ME as a whole will continue or die or evolve into Java FX?

Goodbye Solaris, SPARC, VirtualBox and Java. Now all Oracle needs to do is buy RedHat(JBoss). Could kill both at the same time.

I thought Sparc was already dead.

Holy crap. Oracle!?

^ LMAO ... Motorboat! ;)

[Pika]

I use MySQL for my forum board database. Is this going to change? Like the time when Adobe bought Macromedia?

[BTW]

If Oracle is smart they'd take all the software and sell-off the hardware business to the likes of IBM, HP, Dell, or even :eek: Apple. I'm sure Larry and Steve are still buds. ;)

[Darth.Titan]

http://www.oracle.com/sun/sun-faq.pdf

You guys really should read this before asking some of these questions. There is some good info here. Besides, this is not exactly a done deal just yet...

[hooch]

I thought Sparc was already dead.




Sparc chips are very very good chips imo. We are in the process of ordering two 5240s with the T2 chips to consolidate about 20 servers down to two. Should really save the company money on power consumption and Oracle licensing. Solaris containers are really cool and I am still a bigger fan of Solaris than Linux. I know I am in the minority, but I just don't see the lovefest with moving everything to linux.

[tyr2]

To me this make so much more sense than the IBM deal. Hopefully it secures the future of Solaris, Oracle have clearly wanted their own OS for some time and Solaris is the perfect opportunity. Having a hardware arm as well enables Oracle to sell a 'database to disk' solution, if they get this right this can be a really good sell.

As to SPARC I'm not sure. The T2 processors are really excellent and if Rock ever sees the light of day then SPARC really might start capture some mind share again.

Oracle are well invested in Java as well, so I'd hope it has a bright future.

Who knows what'll happen to MySQL, there's a market for it but how big it is in the long term really remains to be seen.

[bobbleheadbob]

Oracle is the Devil. Hope the SEC shoots this one down, but unfortunately don't see that happening. :(

[OldMike]

I think I prefer an Oracle acquisition of Sun as opposed to an IBM acquisition. IMO, Sun's technology has a greater chance of surviving with Oracle. Solaris has always been the premier platform for Oracle. I can't see Oracle killing off Solaris, since it is far superior to Linux. I think we will see Oracle backing off of Linux a bit and concentrating once again on Solaris now that they actually own it.

I'm not sure what they will do with the SPARC and x86 hardware platforms. It would be a huge move for Oracle to get into the hardware business, and it will be interesting to see what they do in light of today's economic conditions. I'm impressed with Sun's hardware offerings, both their SPARC servers and x86 Servers. Prices are not bad and their LOM and Remote management is excellent and built in, as opposed to being an add on like the rest of the server vendors. I would really hate to see Oracle kill off Sun's hardware, and I don't think it will happen. It seems that Oracle wants to offer a complete solution and now they have all of the pieces.

As for MySQL, I'm also optimistic about its future in the hands of Oracle. I don't think it is going to go away, but I would guess that future development will begin to stray away from features that would seem to be too competitive with Oracle. MySQL has such a large user base, that there is no way Oracle is going to turn its back on future potential Oracle customers. I think they will position MySQL as the entry level database server for non-critical data, and push Oracle as the enterprise data solution. It will be interesting to see how much (if any) work goes into MySQL in the future in regards to scalability and high availability....

I think it was a smart move on Oracle's part for acquiring MySQL. I really believe that Open Source databases like MySQL and Postgres were going to give Oracle and SQL Server a real run for their money in the near future. The open source databases are continually adding enterprise level features and I think Oracle was going to start having a real tough time convincing people that there was any extra value in spending the huge sums of money on an Oracle database.

For me, I think that the biggest loss that may come of this may be the end of the NetBeans IDE. I prefer it greatly over Eclipse, but I remember a few years ago Sun and Oracle were having a little dispute over NetBeans/Eclipse and I just don't think its going to get any support from Oracle. I at least hope they can cannibalize the best features and hopefully use it to make improvements to Eclipse.

This acquisition makes sense, but was a surprise to me. I was expecting Cisco to try to swoop in and make a grab.

As far as Apple is concerned, I'm hoping morale may be low at Sun right now, and hopefully Apple can cherry pick some their best and brightest :D

[JFreak]

Excellent news. MySQL has been suffering under Sun but now it is possible that Oracle actually makes it a good product (eventually). Someone already mentioned backups, and that's what Oracle knows the best; hopefully they implement a decent tool for the open source community as well.

Oh, well... You can always hope.

[SFStateStudent]

I wonder how many thousands of employees are packing everything up at this point.....:(:(:(:(

[JFreak]

I think I prefer an Oracle acquisition of Sun as opposed to an IBM acquisition.

Me too

Solaris has always been the premier platform for Oracle. I can't see Oracle killing off Solaris, since it is far superior to Linux. I think we will see Oracle backing off of Linux a bit and concentrating once again on Solaris now that they actually own it.

Premier platform means premier price as well. It will continue to be so, which means Oracle can only sell that platform so much. Linux will still be the key r&d platform for Oracle, and THE platform most customers will choose, due to price.

Since 10g and "grid computing" it has been the Oracle way to move from large singular servers to multiple small servers/desktops and I don't see that changing now. Solaris will only be a nice addition to the product line and as they tout being able to offer "total" systems. Perhaps they're going to lower price as well? We'll see.

I would really hate to see Oracle kill off Sun's hardware, and I don't think it will happen. It seems that Oracle wants to offer a complete solution and now they have all of the pieces.

Don't worry, it's not going to happen. But don't expect more choices :)

As for MySQL, I'm also optimistic about its future in the hands of Oracle. (...) I think they will position MySQL as the entry level database server for non-critical data, and push Oracle as the enterprise data solution.

Yes, perhaps. They already have the free XE that has been crippled from the same code base as their flagship, but the big question is do they want to be giving it away? MySQL would fit perfectly for the free product in the palette; it's just that they should integrate APEX to the MySQL if they ditch XE...

[JFreak]

Oracle is the Devil.

No. Oracle is the #1 reason why Microsoft's products cannot rule the world. Imagine database choices without Oracle and you would be depressed soon enough.

[snowleopard48]

I am so worried about apple.... :(:eek:
Soon the world will be owned by o®icle!!!! :eek::eek:

[edesignuk]

I am so worried about apple.... :(:eek:
Soon the world will be owned by o®icle!!!! :eek::eek:Why? :confused:

Apple aren't falling apart at the seems.

[JFreak]

I am so worried about apple.... :(:eek:
Soon the world will be owned by o®icle!!!! :eek::eek:

This does not affect Apple in any way. It is only bad for IBM as they also were trying to buy Sun recently. And it would probably be bad for HP as well, because now it is likely Sun hardware will get more sales, compared to HP storage solutions that Oracle has been using lately.

[Doctor Q]

Perhaps MySQL will be renamed Oracle Lite.

[JFreak]

Perhaps now my employee finds me time to go to an Oracle course to complete my OCP certification :)

[Shookster]

The move will put an end to long-running rumors and speculation that Sun may acquire Apple or vice-versa.

Cue the speculation that Oracle will buy Apple or vice-versa :rolleyes:

[BrokenChairs]

Goodbye Solaris, SPARC, VirtualBox and Java. Now all Oracle needs to do is buy RedHat(JBoss). Could kill both at the same time.

Yeah, now that I've started experimenting with VirtualBox, I wonder how long before things change. I don't know anything about Oracle, but by the replies, it's not good.

[addicted44]

I don't understand why people feel that Oracle spent 7B! :eek: to simply kill off all of Sun's products.

This is a great acquisition for Oracle, and it can do a lot more with the products Sun had lying around than Sun was. The couple of products that might get nixed (probably passed onto someone else to develop) are low priority items like Virtualbox.

I expect Oracle to continue supporting all the major products, including MySQL.

[squeak]

Oracle + Sun as an integrated solution seems like a more logical move than
IBM + Sun. Cisco is going in the integrated direction as well and as companies
compete we'll probably see more of this type of initiative to provide all-in-one solutions. Sun has been laying off people quarter by quarter for a long time, and it's probably better than a trickle down to nothing like SGI.

Apple + Sun would have been encouraging -perhaps- 10 years ago and we'd probably be living in bizarro world now if that had happened.

It will be interesting to see if the hardware unit of Sun will be spun out as something new or parted out to some other entity. Oracle isn't as vicious as
some other overarching software companies - however innovation suffers when there are less and less competing forces.
Alas, years ago, I had a small Spark on my desk and a huge screen- an amazingly powerful workstation for its time.

[Popeye206]

Personally... I don't think it's the end of the world. Sun has been slipping for years and needs someone like Oracle to revive what it can from the product line.

Thank god Apple and Sun never merged! That would have been the end of Apple! All Apple needed was some direction and focus... they got that from Mr. Jobs... they would have gotten buried in Sun.

[johnnj]

I agree with those who said this makes more sense than the IBM deal.

My living is made managing an Oracle Financials environment which runs on top of Solaris/SPARC hardware.

This being the case, what I care about is:

1. Support for my enviroment will continue unchanged
2. There will be a hardware upgrade path which doesn't require platform change or major reworking of our customizations.

Although Oracle has been pushing their linux products (and have an "indestructable" linux or whatever they call it), it's my understanding that Solaris is still their bread and butter platform. Solaris on the SPARC platform. While x86 lingers on I don't think it's really gained much traction in this space. Perhaps that will change.

This being the case, if this deal goes through and structures the integration in such a way so that it will benefit its own products and customers, then my concerns will be alleviated.

I don't see how this affects Apple in the least. I would have never considered Xserve to be remotely in the same class as even the crappiest contemporary SPARC server and the last time I used a Sun workstation as a regular desktop was almost 10 years ago. Maybe in the science market where SPARC desktops running custom unix code there might be some Apple-Sun competition, but I'd see this new situation as favorable to Apple, since I wouldn't think that Oracle would even want to get into the dirty business of competing on the desktop level.

What it comes down to is this: overpriced software+overpriced hardware=perfect together

John

[freddiecable]

my thought too - why would apple want to buy Sun? or reversed?

It never really made sense for Apple to buy Sun. Most of their products (things like Java and Solaris) would have simply been scrapped because Apple didn't need them.

Apple does need to bring in server expertise, and on that front Sun would be ideal. Unfortunately it wouldn't justify the $7Bn price tag. Maybe Apple will be able to hire people leaving Sun due to the acquisition, or maybe they're just not going to concentrate on the corporate and server markets.

[JFreak]

Solaris on the SPARC platform. While x86 lingers on I don't think it's really gained much traction in this space. Perhaps that will change.

I think not. SPARC is great and they have invested lots to Linux (on x86) so perhaps they in fact are trying to "kill" the Solaris/x86 as paid platform and leave it to open community instead.

[Evangelion]

I wouldn't be one bit surprised if Oracle sold Sun's SPARC-business to Fujitsu. I really don't see Oracle becoming a hardware-vendor.

[illitrate23]

Jobs showed that locking the software to the hardware and focusing relentlessly on building a perfectly integrated system aimed at the customer, was the superior approachhe showed you that 20 years ago!! what, have you only just noticed???

[kastenbrust]

This is good news, especially for Apple, now lets hope Sun's server dominance completely collapses and allows Apple to get in their with their updated ZFS capable Servers with Microsoft Exchange support.

It makes sense for Oracle because they need Suns server and customer base however since Oracle dont really know anything about this sector i dont think they're going to go very far with this deal.
Those people who are saying its bad for antitrust should look at this as the only hope of knocking away Microsofts server dominance.

[scottishwildcat]

Bad news for everybody.

Oracle has a nasty habit of picking the pieces of a company apart and then selling off the worthless carcass that remains.

Wow... The antitrust commission should just shoot this one down...
On what grounds? There's not much overlap between Oracle and Sun. Even MySQL has a mostly-different target audience from Oracle's DB.

I'm a Sun employee, and IMHO this probably means a better future for Sun's technologies than an IBM acquisition would have done. (Or, for that matter, no acquisition at all, once it became apparent that we were courting possible buyers). But it certainly remains to be seen how many of those technologies Oracle actually want to develop, and how many will be tossed over the wall to have open source communities decide their fate.

[kastenbrust]

and how many will be tossed over the wall to have open source communities decide their fate.

no offence as your a Sun employee, but isnt that what makes most Sun technology actually successful?

[Evangelion]

This is good news, especially for Apple, now lets hope Sun's server dominance completely collapses and allows Apple to get in their with their updated ZFS capable Servers with Microsoft Exchange support.

What "server-dominance"? Sun does not dominate the server-business. They are pretty big in hi-end servers, but Apple and Xserve does not compete there in any shape or form. It's just totally different market from what Apple competes in. and no, bolting ZFS on the Xserver is not enough to make them competitors to Sun-hardware.

Those people who are saying its bad for antitrust should look at this as the only hope of knocking away Microsofts server dominance.

Microsoft doesn't really dominate the server-market. Linux is pretty big there, and the big-iron UNIX (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX etc.) still dominate the hi-end market, with Linux having a bigger and bigger role there as well. Supercomputers are totally dominated by Linux. MS is the biggest singular player in server-OS'es, but they do not dominate the market.

[uaecasher]

hope they don't kill mysql :(

[kastenbrust]

What "server-dominance"? Sun does not dominate the server-business.

Sun is the 3rd biggest player in the server market with 15% of the market share, if that isnt dominance then i dont know what is?!? :confused:

It's just totally different market from what Apple competes in.

Not disagreeing there, but wait 5 years, Apples already trying hard to make inroads into the server market, and is upgrading its existing server range and introducing a new range of larger servers soon.

Microsoft doesn't really dominate the server-market.
MS is the biggest singular player in server-OS'es

Oxymoron?

To be honest all this debate depends how you define servers and what you use them for.


hope they don't kill mysql :(

Oracle bought Sun to make cash cows out of their few successful products, not kill them.

[Evangelion]

But it certainly remains to be seen how many of those technologies Oracle actually want to develop, and how many will be tossed over the wall to have open source communities decide their fate.

It's not like there is a set of communities out there that will go over the "discarded" Sun-tech, and decide their fate. Sure, some projects might use some of that stuff, and some might go un-used. But there's nothing stopping Sun-employees and clients from forming a new community that will look over those technologies.

And it's not like the OS-communities are required to maintain all the code that corporations decide to open-source. They will use it if it helps them, but if it doesn't, they will not waste their time with it.

I sometimes get a feeling that many companies make bunch of code open source, and then expect the various communities to start working on it just like that. But it doesn't quite work that way.

In the end, it's up to Oracle/Sun to decide the fate of the unneeded technologies, not open source communities. Sure, if they think that they have no need for them, it would be great if they were open sourced. But that does not guarantee that someone is going to pick them up and start working on them. What it does is that it gives them the opportunity to do just that. But it's not guaranteed.

[Evangelion]

Sun is the 3rd biggest player in the server market with 15% of the market share, if that isnt dominance then i dont know what is?!? :confused:

If you are third biggest player in the market with 15% market-share, you do not "dominate" the market. Not by any stretch of the imagination. If you were the biggest and you had something like 60+% market-share, then you might be.

Not disagreeing there, but wait 5 years, Apples already trying hard to make inroads into the server market, and is upgrading its existing server range and introducing a new range of larger servers soon.

Apple has been selling servers for quite some time now, and their market-share has remained below 1%. I don't see anything in the future that is going to change that.

Oxymoron?

Um, no? Just because you are the biggest, does not mean that you "dominate" the market. Server-business is such that no single player dominates it. MS has about.... what, 30-40% market-share? that's a big share, sure, but they do not dominate the market. Do you want to see domination? Look at MS's share in the desktops. Server-business is sufficiently fragmented to make sure that no single player dominates it. Not even the company with the biggest market-share.

Toyota is the biggest car-maker in the world. Does that mean that they "dominate" the market? No they do not.

[Konstanty]

Wonder what effect, if any, this could have on Open Office.

[applecultvictim]

That was my pondering too.

Imo they should make open office, closed office, put a good team of engineers on it, revamp it and sell it at fractions of ms office prices while agressively marketing it and offering training on it, so that we finally see someone putting the nail on that money grabbing vampire that is ms office.

[pilotError]

I wouldn't be one bit surprised if Oracle sold Sun's SPARC-business to Fujitsu. I really don't see Oracle becoming a hardware-vendor.

Oracle and Sun have business dealings in the way back time machine error (Thinking Machines). Oracle took a lot of their early Parallel computing and Data Mining from that effort. Sun took the hardware portion of that effort. I'm sure there has been some pretty long term patent sharing from that as well.

I have to agree though, I don't expect Sparc to last all that much longer...
Sparc has been the last of the independent chipmakers in the datacenter other than Intel and IBM. Even HP gave up on Alpha, which I thought was a big mistake.

Wonder what effect, if any, this could have on Open Office.

I would think Larry "the Ego" Ellison would love to Ninja the crap out of Ballmer and use it just to piss him off. I don't see it going anywhere. It might actually get better support being an Oracle Product.

Oracle is Evil. They are unavoidable though, since they have the DB market pretty locked up. Sybase comes in a distant third for Large Datacenter Class databases. IBM is a vendor locked solution.

I think the biggest issue here is that Oracle Sales are a bunch of slimy douchebags. I don't think you'll find many who'll disagree with that statement.

[0racle]

Be interesting to see what happens to mysql , and Java for that matter.
MySQL was forked (several times IIRC) as soon as Sun aquired MySQL AG. A large number of Oracles development, Application framework and management tools are written in Java, so that's most likely not going anywhere either.

OpenOffice.org pretty much runs as its own entity already so there isn't much Oracle needs to do there.

No, the problems are Solaris and Sun's hardware, neither of which Oracle has any immediate need for. They have partnered with HP for hardware for a while, and made that relationship closer recently and they have moved form Solaris being the premier Oracle DB platform to development being done on Linux and then ported from there.

[applecultvictim]

Sparc has been the last of the independent chipmakers in the datacenter other than Intel and IBM. Even HP gave up on Alpha, which I thought was a big mistake.


Excuse my ignorance, are there any non independent chipmakers?

[DELLsFan]

Bad news for everybody.

Oracle has a nasty habit of picking the pieces of a company apart and then selling off the worthless carcass that remains.

Wow... The antitrust commission should just shoot this one down...

Hmm ... I was hoping the rumors about Apple and Sun might come true. Maybe if the economy had been better, Apple might have been willing to spend some of that cash reserve on an acquisition like this, but not today.

I'm not sure about antitrust issues. Is there no one competing with Oracle? :confused:

[libertyforall]

I am still waiting for the Apple connection, after all, Larry Ellison is one of Jobs' buddies -- and of course Apple's adopting ZFS... I think we might see some big Apple Server hardware in the future, somehow via an Oracle/SUN partnership -- it's at least a more likely possibility now...

[pilotError]

Hmm ... I was hoping the rumors about Apple and Sun might come true. Maybe if the economy had been better, Apple might have been willing to spend some of that cash reserve on an acquisition like this, but not today.

I'm not sure about antitrust issues. Is there no one competing with Oracle? :confused:

Apple would probably be a good fit for Sun, but not the other way around. Apple has done really well in the Consumer market, but Sun is a Datacenter type of company, clearly not Apples forte'.

In terms of synergies (yes, another way overused word), Sun is a good fit for Oracle software wise. Not sure what they are going to do about the Hardware divisions. My guess is that it will be packaged up and sold off after some amount of time.

[Eric S.]

I thought Sparc was already dead.

There is a substantial installed base of sparc servers; sparc will not disappear for several years at least. But I think it's a real possibility that Oracle will sell off the sparc business, and Fujitsu would be the most likely buyer.

This is good news, especially for Apple, now lets hope Sun's server dominance completely collapses and allows Apple to get in their with their updated ZFS capable Servers with Microsoft Exchange support.

If Sun dominated the server market it wouldn't be a dying company or an acquisition target.

Apple will never go anywhere in the enterprise business unless it makes its future product roadmap more transparent. Companies want to see a strategy they can plan their business around for several years, not software and hardware schedules that are kept secret up to the moment of release. And most enterprises are going to be leery of trusting their datacenter needs to a company that puts its main emphasis on consumer electronics in any case.

[jettredmont]

How's this for connecting to Apple:

1. Oracle just this month shipped support for new-fangled MacTel hardware (previously, if you wanted to use Oracle with OS X you had to find a run-down old G5 in a garage sale). As sad as that sounds, it places it on the forefront of top-tier RDBMS vendors in supporting Apple.

2. As a result, Apple is set to finally see some movement on their XServe lines (I personally know a ton of customers of my company who are raring to place Apple hardware orders just as soon as we support the new Oracle platform on non-ancient hardware).

3. Sun was, is, and may continue to be a significant (certainly on the same scale or higher than Apple, I believe) player in the rack-mount server hardware market.

Will Oracle continue to support Mactel hardware moving forward? Or, will such support shift from a borderline diversion to wholly competitive to their own businesses?

[cg0def]

If Oracle is smart they'd take all the software and sell-off the hardware business to the likes of IBM, HP, Dell, or even :eek: Apple. I'm sure Larry and Steve are still buds. ;)

Apple will never buy the hardware division. If anything they need the software one but that's really not for sale. Actually noone will buy the hardware division alone. It would be interesting to see if Oracle can become the next big blue. They are more or less the de facto standard for financial db and now you will also be able to buy the machine and the OS from them. MS has a lot to loose from a deal like this but time will tell.

This was already mentioned but just to clear some of the confusion up
http://www.oracle.com/sun/sun-faq.pdf

[pilotError]

Excuse my ignorance, are there any non independent chipmakers?

Sorry, poorly worded... Your really down to IBM and Intel controlling the worlds majority of datacenter chips. Even HP has gone Intel for their line up of products. They gave up both PA Risc and Alpha development for Intel. MIPS died a painful death and those went into their Tandem Non-Stop's.

Intel isn't really one of those big innovators. They have time to market down, and can really beat IBM to the punch, but in terms of pure innovation, IBM and even AMD as well as ARM have been giving them a beating.

It's only lately that Intel has come back to displace AMD's dominance for the last couple of years. That was mainly by incorporating QPI (borrowed that from AMD) and die shrink as well as optimizations. Itanium has been pretty slow out of the gate, but has actually morphed into a decent platform with Itanium2. I just don't think it's enough to survive long term though.

[jayducharme]

Not necessarily. Solaris has been open sourced as OpenSolaris. VirtualBox is open source. Java has been open sourced.

Open source and public domain media has been re-privatized before (i.e: MS buying the Bettmann Archive). And I don't like the statement that Sun is "ripe for cost-cutting." That sounds like a slash-and-burn mentality, ignoring the incredible contributions that Sun has made. Where there's no appreciation of a company's history during an acquisition, that company is often gutted.

Oracle is as committed as ever to Linux and other open platforms and will continue to support and enhance our strong industry partnerships.

This sounds good on the surface. But business decisions can force companies to abandon their magnanimous plans. There's a lot more money to be made for Oracle if Sun's technologies are privatized. Personally, I hope it does all stay open source.

[Breckenridge]

I hope that this purchase will not effect the java licensing and hopefully openoffice will remain open!

[Eric S.]

And I don't like the statement that Sun is "ripe for cost-cutting." That sounds like a slash-and-burn mentality, ignoring the incredible contributions that Sun has made. Where there's no appreciation of a company's history during an acquisition, that company is often gutted.

You're right - this was a deal made for the benefit of shareholders, not for company history and not for the best interest of the employees.

Sun is over 20% owned by Southeastern Asset Management. In recent months they had decided that their Sun investment was not going to pay off and they needed to cut their losses. When the IBM deal fell through, they engineered the deal with Oracle and let Sun's board know that if the board didn't take it they would put in a new board who would. Sun's legacy founders and executives had no choice in this matter.

[cube]

Apple would probably be a good fit for Sun

Sun has nothing to do with Apple. Apple is closed and fashion-oriented.

[Full of Win]

What will become of My Little Ponytail?

[cube]

I'm not sure about antitrust issues. Is there no one competing with Oracle? :confused:

What antitrust? Oracle will just become a good IBM now.

[cube]

No, the problems are Solaris and Sun's hardware, neither of which Oracle has any immediate need for. They have partnered with HP for hardware for a while, and made that relationship closer recently and they have moved form Solaris being the premier Oracle DB platform to development being done on Linux and then ported from there.

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/018363

"The Sun Solaris operating system is the leading platform for the Oracle database, Oracle’s largest business, and has been for a long time. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle can optimize the Oracle database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris."

[synth3tik]

I don't like Oracle at all. Sun micro systems is to valuable to give to Oracle.

[cube]

All the people who understand Sun would like it to remain independent. But if you have to sell it, who are you going to give it to? Who will fully maintain Sun's values and technology?

[zz5555]

If Oracle is smart they'd take all the software and sell-off the hardware business to the likes of IBM, HP, Dell, or even :eek: Apple. I'm sure Larry and Steve are still buds. ;)

Why they heck would they do something that silly? The HW part of Sun makes a _lot_ of money. It's the SW that loses us money (yeah, I work for Sun). From Oracle's public statements (and that's all the information I have), it appears that one of the main reasons Oracle is buying us is to get the HW part.

[Niiro13]

Oracle buys Sun? I've never even heard of Oracle >_<.

[cube]

Imo they should make open office, closed office, put a good team of engineers on it, revamp it and sell it at fractions of ms office prices while agressively marketing it and offering training on it, so that we finally see someone putting the nail on that money grabbing vampire that is ms office.

That's called StarOffice.

[belvdr]

Why they heck would they do something that silly? The HW part of Sun makes a _lot_ of money. It's the SW that loses us money (yeah, I work for Sun). From Oracle's public statements (and that's all the information I have), it appears that one of the main reasons Oracle is buying us is to get the HW part.

But Oracle has done just the opposite. Everything is practically given away, and the margin is high on their database and application software.

This has worked well for them, and I doubt they'll flip positions based on Sun (and how their revenue has dropped). Honestly, I fail to see why Oracle would keep some of Sun's storage arrays or their servers. The server hardware is expensive from an R&D standpoint, and Oracle just isn't in the hardware business full throttle. Sure, they can use the storage and tape libraries, but the servers are a no-go. There's a reason why Oracle develops primarily on Linux these days then ports to other operating systems.

[cube]

But Oracle has done just the opposite. Everything is practically given away, and the margin is high on their database and application software.

This has worked well for them, and I doubt they'll flip positions based on Sun (and how their revenue has dropped). Honestly, I fail to see why Oracle would keep some of Sun's storage arrays or their servers. The server hardware is expensive from an R&D standpoint, and Oracle just isn't in the hardware business full throttle. Sure, they can use the storage and tape libraries, but the servers are a no-go. There's a reason why Oracle develops primarily on Linux these days then ports to other operating systems.

Forget about Oracle as a software company. This is a transformational acquisition. They become a one-stop shop for IT solutions. The only thing comparable is IBM.

[belvdr]

Forget about Oracle as a software company. This is a transformational acquisition. They become a one-stop shop for IT solutions. The only thing comparable is IBM.

I don't think that's going to happen really. I believe that would divert their attention from the existing main stream products and would cause issues with cash flow. Their RDBMS software is second-to-none and I don't think it is worth the risk to become a hardware player.

There are other Sun software specialties where Oracle can get a big boost.

[cube]

I don't think that's going to happen really. I believe that would divert their attention from the existing main stream products and would cause issues with cash flow. Their RDBMS software is second-to-none and I don't think it is worth the risk to become a hardware player.

There are other Sun software specialties where Oracle can get a big boost.

They are not only selling software. They are also selling services. The hardware is needed to compete against HP and IBM.

And the Oracle/Sun FAQ states that they are "100% commited to customer satisfaction". And Sun's customers won't be satisfied if the hardware is left to die.

[scottishwildcat]

no offence as your a Sun employee, but isnt that what makes most Sun technology actually successful?
Depends on your definition of success. Open source software has certainly been a successful way to get Sun technology into many new hands, just like iPods have been a successful way to get Apple products into many more hands than Macs ever did. But it's certainly not where most of Sun's revenue comes from.

Contributions from Sun to its open source projects like OpenOffice, Java, Netbeans, dtrace and ZFS, in general, still greatly outweigh those contributions that come from outside Sun. So if Sun/Oracle was suddenly to decide to stop any involvement with, say, OpenOffice, and turn it over entirely to the community, all I'm saying is that development would inevitably slow way down for a while, and may stop altogether if there weren't enough people interested in doing the work to keep it alive.

Disclaimer: Just to make it clear, I have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of what Oracle expects to do with OpenOffice or any other open source project should the acquisition be completed, so this is pure speculation on my part :)

[Doctor Q]

Forget about Oracle as a software company. This is a transformational acquisition. They become a one-stop shop for IT solutions. The only thing comparable is IBM.I think that's a key goal: being able to delivering the whole package, a database server ready to go and fine-tuned for an enterprise operation. It matches the trend toward outsourcing I.T. operations (which waxes and wanes if you wait long enough) will let Oracle meet competitive challenges, and maybe even get their foot in the door at shops that use Sun systems but not Oracle software.

I don't think that's going to happen really. I believe that would divert their attention from the existing main stream products and would cause issues with cash flow. Their RDBMS software is second-to-none and I don't think it is worth the risk to become a hardware player.
There's always a risk of moving ahead, a risk of getting behind, and a risk of staying in the same place. For better or worse, Oracle is making their move by acquiring a major hardware maker. Now we get to see what they do with it.

And the Oracle/Sun FAQ states that they are "100% commited to customer satisfaction". And Sun's customers won't be satisfied if the hardware is left to die.
I'm afraid that any sensible business would make that promise at the time of an acquisition, to avoid scaring customers away, no matter what is planned down the road.

[iPhoneNYC]

Oracle stepped in so quickly after IBM I wonder if they had time to do a full accounted of Sun's worth. IBM kept lowering their offer so one wonders if this a good deal. Apparently, Sun rejected the lower IBM offer because it didn't have enough cash for the executives to fly away with...

[cube]

This is a real bargain. The market does not understand Sun's true worth.

And here we go:

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2009-04/sunflash.20090421.1.xml

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2009-04/sunflash.20090421.2.xml

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2009-04/sunflash.20090421.3.xml

[belvdr]

This is a real bargain. The market does not understand Sun's true worth.

Good OS, some overpriced workstations, and decent servers, but support has gone in the crapper. I noticed a huge difference in support when Sun bought StorageTek. Given that, I think the market is dead on, as any product is only good as the support for it.

And here we go:

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2009-04/sunflash.20090421.1.xml

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2009-04/sunflash.20090421.2.xml

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2009-04/sunflash.20090421.3.xml

Still, it's not an Oracle RDBMS. I guess Oracle could sell this to the little guys, but it is still nowhere close to Oracle in any sense. Maybe Oracle could pump a bit of their feature set into MySQL.

[cube]

Nothing compares to the Oracle DB, of course.

[belvdr]

They are not only selling software. They are also selling services. The hardware is needed to compete against HP and IBM.

True, but who says Oracle is wanting to go up against the big hardware vendors on a hardware basis only? HP sells hardware but doesn't really step into the software services that Oracle offers.

Oracle may just want a small portion of Sun's hardware business and not develop those monstrous servers. It seems it didn't work well for Sun.

And the Oracle/Sun FAQ states that they are "100% commited to customer satisfaction". And Sun's customers won't be satisfied if the hardware is left to die.

How many companies do you know of that state they don't care about customer satisfaction, especially during an acquisition?

[bobr1952]

Well since Oracle is the only bright spot in my dismal choice for IT stocks I bought in the late 90s--I guess I have to wish them all the best! Maybe I'll finally get something out of the Sun shares I have.

[cube]

They are buying with cash.

[PinkyMacGodess]

I don't see this as being particularly positive for Sun. Yes, it saves them from bankruptcy but I don't think that Oracle will be able to pull it off...

[PinkyMacGodess]

And, yippee!!!

We bought Sun servers last year... (grumble grumble)

[cube]

They don't call the Oracle team an 'Acquisition Machine' for nothing.

[ALUOp]

Sparc chips are very very good chips imo. We are in the process of ordering two 5240s with the T2 chips to consolidate about 20 servers down to two. Should really save the company money on power consumption and Oracle licensing. Solaris containers are really cool and I am still a bigger fan of Solaris than Linux. I know I am in the minority, but I just don't see the lovefest with moving everything to linux.


I agree, very few people realize this.

[mags631]

I don't like Oracle at all. Sun micro systems is to valuable to give to Oracle.

No one gave Sun to Oracle. Oracle is buying them and the market essentially set the price.

[PinkyMacGodess]

Sun also came up with what they call their 'blackbox project' which is an entire server farm mounted in a large shipping container which can be dropped off and wired up for disaster recovery. A company can get their IT assets back running quickly and they could even be used for foreign countries too.

I got a chance to tour a couple of them and was impressed.

I'm sad to see them go. Just like Cobalt when Sun ate them...

[Eric S.]

Oracle stepped in so quickly after IBM I wonder if they had time to do a full accounted of Sun's worth. IBM kept lowering their offer so one wonders if this a good deal. Apparently, Sun rejected the lower IBM offer because it didn't have enough cash for the executives to fly away with...

They may say it took three days but this deal has been in the works since the IBM deal fell through. Sun's books were already prepared from the negotiations with IBM, so that probably didn't take long. Compensation for the executives may have been a sticking point for IBM, but the bigger issue was the potential antitrust action. Sun wanted IBM to go to the mat for the deal if the government tried to kill it; IBM wasn't willing to give assurances on that point. An Oracle/Sun deal doesn't pose the same risk of antitrust action. The government will look it over but it's unlikely they will try to stop it.

[mags631]

This is a real bargain. The market does not understand Sun's true worth.

$7.4B is nearly 18-19 times 2008 earnings ($.4B).

[cube]

$7.4B is nearly 18-19 times 2008 earnings ($.4B).

That's the kind of thing shortsighted people look at.

[scottishwildcat]

$7.4B is nearly 18-19 times 2008 earnings ($.4B).
Although FWIW, about $2B of that is just to cover the cash that Sun has in the bank, so they're really only paying around $5.5B for Sun's actual "stuff". With apologies to anyone blinded by my financial terminology :)

[Eric S.]

$7.4B is nearly 18-19 times 2008 earnings ($.4B).

And if Sun had lost money in 2008, it would be a negative multiplier!

Oracle is buying Sun's intellectual property, future revenues from existing contracts, and the expertise of its technical staff. Plus don't forget that Sun has a considerable amount of cash in the bank plus owns a good chunk of real estate and physical plant, all of which really reduce Oracle's investment in the deal.

[Imhotep397]

Sun was not worth $7B in in it's prime it's definitely not worth anywhere near that much now. I doubt they'll be able to undercut too many people and considering Apple has a pretty significant head start it will be interesting to see if Oracle even attempts to expand the hardware market.

[theBB]

I don't understand why people feel that Oracle spent 7B! :eek: to simply kill off all of Sun's products.
Because that's what Oracle did when it bought PeopleSoft. When my company wanted to buy PeopleSoft's HRM software from Oracle, they told us that they were steered away from that suite. They got the impression that Oracle was slowly killing it.

[katorga]

With Sun server, storage, OS and java, Oracle could release an appliance database platform. Plug in and go, and add disks as you grow.

Still almost all of Sun's software will get killed off (ouch for those who bought Sun's Identity Manager). Most of the hardware sales will dwindle away. MySQL and Virtualbox will probably return to community forks or fade away.

[mags631]

And if Sun had lost money in 2008, it would be a negative multiplier!

Oracle is buying Sun's intellectual property, future revenues from existing contracts, and the expertise of its technical staff. Plus don't forget that Sun has a considerable amount of cash in the bank plus owns a good chunk of real estate and physical plant, all of which really reduce Oracle's investment in the deal.

Fair point about the assets, but their profit margin is not impressive and Sun's share price consistently underperformed the S&P and the S&P Computer Hardware indices in each of the last 5 years. Few companies are going to a premium for any company in this market, so I don't find it surprising that Sun is not getting a great price given its historical performance.

Although FWIW, about $2B of that is just to cover the cash that Sun has in the bank, so they're really only paying around $5.5B for Sun's actual "stuff". With apologies to anyone blinded by my financial terminology :)

Oracle is also assuming the liabilities on Sun's balance sheet ($5.6B).

[OldMike]

How's this for connecting to Apple:

1. Oracle just this month shipped support for new-fangled MacTel hardware (previously, if you wanted to use Oracle with OS X you had to find a run-down old G5 in a garage sale). As sad as that sounds, it places it on the forefront of top-tier RDBMS vendors in supporting Apple.

2. As a result, Apple is set to finally see some movement on their XServe lines (I personally know a ton of customers of my company who are raring to place Apple hardware orders just as soon as we support the new Oracle platform on non-ancient hardware).

3. Sun was, is, and may continue to be a significant (certainly on the same scale or higher than Apple, I believe) player in the rack-mount server hardware market.

Will Oracle continue to support Mactel hardware moving forward? Or, will such support shift from a borderline diversion to wholly competitive to their own businesses?

Ok, I'm confused here. I don't see anything on Oracle's site about Oracle 11g and OS X - are you talking about one of their other products? Can you post a link?

Oracle released Oracle 10g Release 2 for Mac OS X on Intel, a while ago. I've been watching to see if they would come out with 11g for OS X, but I'm not very optimistic. The last I heard was it was in the works, but that was around 2 years ago!

If anyone has any other info about this, I would love to hear it...

[BTW]

Apple will never buy the hardware division. If anything they need the software one but that's really not for sale. Actually noone will buy the hardware division alone. It would be interesting to see if Oracle can become the next big blue. They are more or less the de facto standard for financial db and now you will also be able to buy the machine and the OS from them. MS has a lot to loose from a deal like this but time will tell.

This was already mentioned but just to clear some of the confusion up
http://www.oracle.com/sun/sun-faq.pdf

Actually, Apple would have a lot to gain from getting the Sparc engineers and patents that could be applied to their consumer division.

They'd also benefit their Mac offerings with tech from Sun's vast server engineering knowledge. Power management, disk subsystem design, and even manufacturing processes all might improve quality in Apple's product lines.

[belvdr]

With Sun server, storage, OS and java, Oracle could release an appliance database platform. Plug in and go, and add disks as you grow.

They did this before and failed. They started it again (http://www.oracle.com/database/database-machine.html) even before this announcement using HP hardware.

I can only see SMBs who would want this. Any DBA worth his/her salt isn't going to like a black box running the database. It simply doesn't work well over the various needs of applications.

[Cvstos]

The new company needs to be called Sun Oracle. I mean really, this stuff writes itself.

[deconstruct60]

An Oracle/Sun deal doesn't pose the same risk of antitrust action. The government will look it over but it's unlikely they will try to stop it.

IBM would have been more entangled at multiple levels, but the Application Server Market issue will likely just as difficult for Oracle as it would have been for IBM. Oracle AS + BEA + Sun JES/Commerical Glassfish is probably a bit over 50+% of the commercial java J2EE server market. Thrown in the fact that Oracle would now "own" Java (i.e., J2EE) and can you not see a potential monopoly problem?

When Sun owned Java and was only a very small player at being an app server vendor market, it didn't matter as much. Sun could somewhat regulate the major implementors but clearly wasn't making changes to block them.


It was going to be a potential problem with IBM too. (Websphere, being the largest share, + java ownership ) although with the Oracle + BEA share combination perhaps coming even or slightly ahead, not too sticky an issue. The stickier issues for IBM were very high end tape and mainframe storage. (the Sun StorageTek). A bit less so the Linux/Unix server market. (Linux, which essentially is "Unix", is growing fast enough that is one that wouldn't be as much of a blocker. )

Puzzled why folks think the DoJ danger would be MySQL. MySQL revenues are almost a footnote in the RDBMS market share numbers. That revenue isn't going to significant changes Oracle's revenue market share position at all.

[deconstruct60]

Apparently, Sun rejected the lower IBM offer because it didn't have enough cash for the executives to fly away with...

No, you have it backwards.

IBM reportedly balked at some of the "take over" provisions written into a large number of Sun managements contracts. It is one of those pissy takeover things. Most companies don't mind paying off the uppermost execs to go. However, if have to pay off most of the employees their about to thrown under the bus... then that is a "problem". They want to trim money off the acquisition price even though that is a separate matter ( paying stockholders versus paying employees.)

Sun's problem with IBM was that they wanted guarantees (probably backed up with money) that IBM would push through the antitrust contest that the government might have thrown up. Likely in terms of some multimillion "jilted at the alter" clause built into the acquisition agreement. If Sun dated IBM exclusively for 6-10 months and then got jilted they wanted to get paid. That was very reasonable request (especially since there were other suitors around... even though IBM believed otherwise. It should be blatantly obvious at this point as to who was correct on that point. ).

For instance the government might has said that StorageTek had to be peeled out of the acquisition. At that point IBM might possibly throw up its hands and just walked away. I don't see the Sun stockholder benefit in that. Neither did some members of their board.



Oracle has less overlap with Sun so possibly fewer folks will be let go (at least in at the upper levels of the non overlap areas. For example, there are no managers for server development at Oracle. No chip design managers, etc. etc. ), so probably not as large a financial problem for Oracle as it would have been for IBM Plus it likely was to Oracle's advantage to move extremely fast ( so Cisco and/or IBM couldn't jump back into the game easily.) So more willing to eat whatever would get hit with (sales, HR, business backend services overlap) just for expediency sake.

Not like Safra Catz isn't likely to wield an axe though. She openly stated was going to adjust Sun's profitability . That's likely not solely going to happen by putting everyone on travel restrictions. However, if the acquisition price jumped 400-500 million because the bidding war started back up that would be penny wise and pound foolish to bicker about the exit costs on folks likely going to toss anyway.

IMHO, Oracle is likely to phase down some of the Sun parts of the business they pick up if can't fit their profitability. The other possible option would be to keep parts of the hardware business in a subsidiary. Or just report them as an "independent" business. That way folks would still see the profit margins were still the same for the software part of the business. Oracle is more than a one trick pony. The balance sheet is complicated just like HP, IBM, GE and other huge, diversified tech companies.

[deconstruct60]

There is a substantial installed base of sparc servers; sparc will not disappear for several years at least. But I think it's a real possibility that Oracle will sell off the sparc business, and Fujitsu would be the most likely buyer.


If Oracle-Sun kills off Sparc then it is unlikely there will be any buyers. With Fujitsu and Sun splitting duties on chip designs and sharing processors SPARC could still walk forward long term. But one vendor of limited sign can't keep a line going.

Fjuitsu already has a Itanium server solution. If the Tukwila Itanium coming out this year is decent then that is an even bigger no-go. (can share more common parts with the x86-64 line and should cut some costs and boost performance since not on shared front side bus anymore. ) Intel and HP are going to keep that one going. Fujitsu by themselves competing against those two doesn't make alot of sense. Teamed with Sun that was more reasonable.

I can see Oracle keeping the T1/T2/Niagra line stuff going. What would be much more cloudy is any follow ons to Rock/V9 line. That line is over a year late and may have been just too big of a revolution. However, scouting threads and databases are probably a very good match. So could work.

I think the comments about "Sun servers" are myopically aimed at the biggest Sparc servers. The smaller ones have no problems with Oracle's grid approach.

As for Solaris x86. The Unified storage products critically depend upon it. http://www.sun.com/storage/disk_systems/unified_storage/index_v3.html. Can't see how Solaris x86 couldn't be possibly tagged as anything other than strategic for the hardware business.

The catch 22 on Solaris-x86 is that customers haven't deployed enough of it. Partially that was, IMHO, because lots of folks were running around stating "isn't Sun dead yet" ( just like folks would say "isn't apple dead yet" in the 90's). If the Sun mindshare can get off of that "they are dead" vibe they'd have more legs. Oracle buying them gives them that. Which should seriously help. Not sure why Oracle would want to throw away that cash flow and revenue. That would be dubious.

[iJawn108]

i hope this doesnt kill opensolaris, or any of my favorite sun apps like staroffice or virtualbox :(

[hooch]

If Oracle-Sun kills off Sparc then it is unlikely there will be any buyers. With Fujitsu and Sun splitting duties on chip designs and sharing processors SPARC could still walk forward long term. But one vendor of limited sign can't keep a line going.

Fjuitsu already has a Itanium server solution. If the Tukwila Itanium coming out this year is decent then that is an even bigger no-go. (can share more common parts with the x86-64 line and should cut some costs and boost performance since not on shared front side bus anymore. ) Intel and HP are going to keep that one going. Fujitsu by themselves competing against those two doesn't make alot of sense. Teamed with Sun that was more reasonable.

I can see Oracle keeping the T1/T2/Niagra line stuff going. What would be much more cloudy is any follow ons to Rock/V9 line. That line is over a year late and may have been just too big of a revolution. However, scouting threads and databases are probably a very good match. So could work.

I think the comments about "Sun servers" are myopically aimed at the biggest Sparc servers. The smaller ones have no problems with Oracle's grid approach.

As for Solaris x86. The Unified storage products critically depend upon it. http://www.sun.com/storage/disk_systems/unified_storage/index_v3.html. Can't see how Solaris x86 couldn't be possibly tagged as anything other than strategic for the hardware business.

The catch 22 on Solaris-x86 is that customers haven't deployed enough of it. Partially that was, IMHO, because lots of folks were running around stating "isn't Sun dead yet" ( just like folks would say "isn't apple dead yet" in the 90's). If the Sun mindshare can get off of that "they are dead" vibe they'd have more legs. Oracle buying them gives them that. Which should seriously help. Not sure why Oracle would want to throw away that cash flow and revenue. That would be dubious.

The thing is about their x86 line is that it doesn't have to be running solaris. They support Solaris, red hat and even windows:eek:. This is still a fairly new paradigm and I bet there are still a lot of people who don't know that. Where is the marketing? Where are the commercials? Our company was running all Sun for Unix and started to buy Dells for Linux. We are back to buying Sun for linux to keep everything standardized with our support contracts, vendors, etc. I don't see any reason why they would sell any of their hardware divisions. I do agree that their is a lot of politics involved though. People saying that "Sun is dead" when I feel they have the best line of products really does affect business. They really need to improve their marketing and that is something I would focus on if I were Oracle.

[deconstruct60]

True, but who says Oracle is wanting to go up against the big hardware vendors on a hardware basis only? HP sells hardware but doesn't really step into the software services that Oracle offers.


You do know that HP owns EDS?? You don't think EDS doesn't run/install Oracle DB/Peoplesoft/Oracle Apps/etc. for folks for a fee? Likewise IBM Services does the same thing? What do you think Oracle's Consulting and Advanced Support do for folks?

Oracle isn't talking about adding value "on a hardware basis only". They are talking about being a "single point of contact" for some significant piece of someone's business IT operations. Either as a system integrator (it comes out of the box like an XServe but with a full application stack so perhaps more like an iPod. ) and/or as the box's operator.

So it is about becoming primary contact point for the rest of the pieces of in the puzzle.




Oracle may just want a small portion of Sun's hardware business and not develop those monstrous servers. It seems it didn't work well for Sun.


It is doubtful that the very large servers and their non linear pricing were not profitable. IMHO, where Sun screwed up was in two points mainly to do with the smaller servers and machines. Plus a 3rd which probably was more about execution.

First, they didn't do a x86 line and/or hobbled Solaris-x86 for far too long. There was a period in early 90's when if Solaris-x86 had the price point it has right now and they had widely pushed it into the universities (at the "free" price point) that Linux wouldn't have gotten as hot as it did. Sun eyeballed SGI's expensive workstations and wanted that kind of markup too. That expensive workstation market evaporated. [ At least Sun had a x86 version. There was no other large Unix vendor that had a port. ]

Over the last 2 years Sun's x86 servers have had huge growth. In part because it is so small to start so not hard to do 100% when starting from scratch but they could have been in the game sooner. While HP and Dell are going to sell some Solaris-x86 boxes... they aren't going to push them as hard as Sun will.

Sun made the mistake of not doing x86 in part to protect the more profitable lines. Long term that is doom. That's like Apple not selling iMac so as to "protect" the margin on Mac Pros. Or not doing a iPod Shuffle to protect the iPod Classic.

Second mistake was related and that was doing "embedded"/"workstation" chips like the IIi/IIe/IIIi. So not only don't do an x86 workstation but come up with a chip that only would have to compete head-to-head with an x86 on price/performance. I know IBM has PowerPC and POWER split in the 90's but they had Apple on the PowerPC wave. In terms of units sold Sun wasn't going to do anything like Macs sold in terms of volume. And now forget it. Xbox and PS3 ... yeah right. Maybe better folks on the more server based SPARC cores would have let them get better stuff out the door quicker. Instead they were somewhat habitually late with all of their chips. A bit similar to the situation now where they have Niagra and Rock in development at the same time. Two slightly different approaches which costs alot to keep going in parallel.


The third thing was they paid alot for StorageTek. Even more (relatively speaking in terms of revenues/profits) for MySQL. Sun had money to whether the storms. They have burned through alot of it without huge payoffs. [ Nothing like the bang-for-buck they got out of buying Andy B's company and jumping into the top end game of midrange x86 servers. ]
Sun had $7 B and spent $4.1 on StorageTek. Similar issue, aiming more at big flush "mainframe" like accounts when the growth in storage is more rapidly growing at the smaller end of the pool. Now they have the unified storage systems and are leveraging flash in a leading edge way.

In short, seems like Sun often seem to try to get out of trouble by trying to head to markets where the profit margins were larger instead of dealing with trying to deliver something more effective where the competition was steeper. The "we'll just be slightly cheaper mainframes" approach. That doesn't work. Don't think Oracle is going to buy into that trap, but we'll see.

To tie back in with Apple. That whole "we'll just go to higher margins", no matter where the median price of computers are going, is a very similar trap. Similar effects too. Back in early 2000's Sun had tons of money in the bank; just like Apple has tons of money now. Long term though it was a bust to blow off the lower priced competitors over protracted period of time.

[deconstruct60]

Actually, Apple would have a lot to gain from getting the Sparc engineers and patents that could be applied to their consumer division.


Apple already bought a chip design firm for $200-400 million already who have a proven track record in the embedded ( ARM , PowerPC) space. SPARC never did crack the embedded market significantly. While the T1/T2 are energy effective for server processors, they are still orders of magnitude bigger power draws then stuff that goes into iPhones and iPods.

Apple has this area covered.



They'd also benefit their Mac offerings with tech from Sun's vast server engineering knowledge. Power management, disk subsystem design, and even manufacturing processes all might improve quality in Apple's product lines.

Sun has outsourced most of its manufacturing. At least some of it isn't done in China. But they aren't too much different. The vast majority of Apple's computers have a single disk drive.


It might be cool if Oracle-Sun does "Applications in a box" smaller servers if Apple just let them do them and perhaps dropped out of the XServe market. They have already done that with Promise providing the storage solutions. Could get a single vendor for storage and server if had picked Sun to do it. Apple would just need a MacOSX Server port on a box they did. (a pragmatic blocker being nobody is doing EFI servers. )

For the consumer machines though... just don't see it.

[Evangelion]

3. Sun was, is, and may continue to be a significant (certainly on the same scale or higher than Apple, I believe) player in the rack-mount server hardware market.

For all intents and purposes, Apple is not a player in the server-business at all. Yes, I'm exaggerating, but not much.

[iShater]

I was taken by surprise when I read the announcement, but I am also happy it wasn't IBM.

It will be interesting to see what will happen to NetBeans, MySQL, and the other technologies, but at least MS will still be kept at bay. :p

[kironin]

You might be interested in the comments by analyst Jon Brodkin (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9131848), who thinks MySQL may do just fine.

The comments in reply to that analyst comments are not nearly as encouraging.

[legacyb4]

If Oracle sits on MySQL development for too long, won't the open-source community simply fork it off and continue development (perhaps under a different name) anyway?

Shops like this come to mind:

Percona Labs (http://www.percona.com/percona-lab.html)

[pilotError]

If Oracle sits on MySQL development for too long, won't the open-source community simply fork it off and continue development (perhaps under a different name) anyway?

Shops like this come to mind:

Percona Labs (http://www.percona.com/percona-lab.html)

Oracle is like the Borg, the conquer and assimilate. They've done it with every database platform they've aquired. Look for MySql to support PL/Sql and the Oracle keywords and functions (It's pretty close already). Beyond that, it's a crapshoot. Maybe they may use it as their small to mid-sized database platform to compete with MS. I don't see them using it to undermine their Oracle Grid product. Oracle on Windows Server doesn't seem all that competitive.

[fab5freddy]

Does anyone here feel that Oracle buying Sun MicroSystems
and MySQL is going to be bad news for MySQL development
and the free market for Open Source Databases ?

[yg17]

Um, yeah. With 5.0, MySQL was finally becoming a free, viable alternative to Oracle (at least for smaller organizations). Now, with them buying it, who knows if we'll ever see any real advancement in features in MySQL to keep it up to par with Oracle; my guess is they will stick to fixing bugs and that's about it. This very well could be the death of MySQL.

[rdowns]

Link (http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090903/ap_on_hi_te/eu_eu_oracle_sun)


European Union regulators applied the brakes Thursday, launching a formal antitrust probe that shatters Oracle's goal of completing the acquisition this summer. The U.S. Department of Justice has already approved the deal.

The investigation is focused on whether Oracle will gain too much power in the market for database software, which underpins most things people do in business or on the Web. It helps companies manage and retrieve data they've stored, such as payroll or sales information. Typing in a search term, for example, forces a Web site to scour a database and spit out an answer.

In particular, EU regulators want to make sure Oracle will properly care for Sun's rival open-source database software — which is freely given away in hopes of selling other products to the users — or let it wither in favor of Oracle's proprietary software.

[Eric S.]

Link (http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090903/ap_on_hi_te/eu_eu_oracle_sun)In particular, EU regulators want to make sure Oracle will properly care for Sun's rival open-source database software — which is freely given away in hopes of selling other products to the users — or let it wither in favor of Oracle's proprietary software.

In other words, would Oracle behave as Microsoft has always done?