Sun and Oracle: End of a beautiful dream
Open source goes to work
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery
Sun Microsystems' soon-to-be ex-chief executive has been painting his company's acquisition by database giant Oracle in positive tones.
Jonathan Schwartz called the proposed $5.6bn deal a "fantastic day for Sun's customers, developers, partners and employees across the globe". It will also "redefine" important boundaries in IT by eliminating cost and complexity in an industry focused on components.
At least, that's what he appeared to be saying.
The only thing that's going to get redefined is everything that Schwartz and Sun have worked towards for five-plus years: platform independence, open systems, and affordability. but Sun was in no position to implement these grand ideas thanks to its inertia and bureaucracy
Unless there's a radical shift in strategic direction or management thinking at Oracle, and unless Oracle adopts Sun's woolly and academic ways of thinking and operating, what you're looking at is the death of the philosophy of benevolent big-company sponsorship of Java and open-source, and the death of big-company price competition.
Some have said that Oracle is a better fit than IBM would have been, because of the clash between IBM's stuffed-shirted East Coast mindset and the free-thinking experimentalism of Sun. But Oracle is not a dream marriage. Oracle is a tough place. It routinely evaluates the performance of staff and chops around 10 per cent. Acquired staff and products must also justify their place in this Dawnian environment or they'll get chopped or boxed.
For example, Oracle spiked its own Java application server having bought the rival WebLogic Server from BEA Systems, because WebLogic was the better application server. It canned development of BEA's WebLogic Workshop development environment.
Oracle will take the decisions Sun could not - and that's what'll have people at Sun worried. And while change should be welcomed, there's no way this should be seen as a bright new dawn for Sun customers or those who've come to believe in its actions on open source or Java.
The first thing you can expect from a Oracle acquisition is due diligence of the assets and a comparative analysis where Oracle has competing assets. Oracle will weigh up what's worth keeping and jettison the rest. The latter will be marked by end-of-lifing via support and maintenance, or releasing code to the community - where it will fade and die.
Oracle initially had teamed up with Hewlett-Packard to buy just Sun's software business - or, rather, parts of it: Java, Solaris and MySQL. That deal was blocked by IBM.
These three software assets remain at the heart of this deal, only this time Oracle is also getting Sun's server and storage business for an additional $3.6bn.
So, why Java? Java is strategically critical to Oracle's middleware, development tools, application server, and database support. Oracle has been a life-long believer in Java, which - running on Linux - provides the perfect answer to Windows and .NET from Microsoft. Java also means licensing from all those enterprise ISVs and device manufacturers.
Solaris is important to Oracle, too. More copies of Oracle's database run on Solaris than on any another operating system - a fact chief executive Larry Ellison helpfully pointed out on Monday. Ellison talked of tuning its database to Solaris, which will help keep Oracle in major accounts such as telcos, service providers, and banks and financial services that might otherwise have been flirting with Linux and its database or - worse - Linux and MySQL and Postgres.
Next page: Whither MySQL?
COMMENTS
RE: Troll Bryant. and RE: Re: MB rant
RE: Troll Bryant.
<Looking for any form of technical argument....> Oh, there is no technical argument, just more blathering and insults. A complete lack of technical facts or discussion? You must work for Sun sales.
".....Repeat after me Matt,..." Lol, I know you Sunshiners try that indoctrination stuff - "don't think, don't reason, just repeat after me" - but I've already had far better Sun salesbods than you try it and they failed, because we made them try and prove their claims, which they couldn't. Slowaris is only number one in profit and marketshare losses, and both will only accellerate as Larry guts Sun.
RE: Re: MB rant
"...."Oracle plans to grow the Sun hardware business after the closing, protecting Sun customers’ investments and ensuring the long-term viability of Sun products."...." <Yawn> Yeah, and the bit that expressly ties Oracle to a SPARC roadmap, to a future for Rock or T3, or even a Slowaris roadmap is....? Oh, there isn't one! Now, repeat what TPM put in his Slowaris 11 article: "So until this deal is done - or undone - it is hard to say when any Sun product, be it hardware or software, will appear."
Until Oracle release some roadmaps, which won't happen until after the purchase completes (and that's if M$ and IBM don't have fun throwing up some objections), nobody has any commitment to ANY Sun product. Until then, Sun's whole product range has just become vapourware (well, the few bits that weren't already!). Anyone considering buying any Sun hardware under that uncertainty is, in my professional opinion, frankly, a sucker.
/making the most of the Sunshiner comedy whilst it lasts!
Re: MB rant
"Any Sun hardware? Big, long silence. Nothing, nada, nil point!"
You lack the ability to read, I know, but even you could have read this from Oracle's FAQ on the deal:
"Oracle plans to grow the Sun hardware business after the closing, protecting Sun customers’ investments and ensuring the long-term viability of Sun products."
So, Oracle has said nothing about Sun Hardware? Nothing, nada, nil? Hmmm. You out do yourself Bryant.
Even the IBM PR machine IDEAS International thinks that Oracle is moving into the HW business for real "Oracle Really Entering the Server Hardware Business?"
http://www.ideasint.com/ra/ra.aspx?c=hbvIKRJkT8F/aY9mGoOTz4CBZTvCaaIsa46umWMZd8O3Rr6PtEnP/arQ==
Troll Bryant.
Wow Matt, you've excelled in this little posting frenzy, your posts are longer than ever. You either a very bored sales bod or else this whole Oracle/Sun aquisition has seriously rattled your cage. At least you've stopped posting about the hardware selloff, things are slowly sinking in.
I've never seen so many toxic posts since this kicked off (periodically I go fishing for you, just to see if you'll bite but your in a rabid snapping fury these days)
Your behaviour would almost be funny if it wasn't quite so sad that your so dammed serious about your HP loving! Just assure me you didn't re-mortgage to buy shares in HP recently? Did you? Tell me you didn't use the kids savings as well?
Any other reasons for the 1-2000 gibberish word replies that act to prop up HP position in life?
PS: A little hint Matt, HP "was" a favoured partner (note : past tense), I hope your bright enough to see that changed now with statements from Oracle such as "Solaris is the number one Unix"
Repeat after me Matt, "Solaris is the number one Unix, Solaris is the NUMBER ONE UNIX!"
Now where is that old post where you agreed with the T2 performance being better than AMD & Intel boxes, let me go-a-hunting...... Hee heee heeeee....... :-)
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