Oracle To Acquire Sun Microsystems
OK – it’s official. Oracle is to buy Sun Microsystems. My initial reaction is that I like this deal more than the previous IBM deal. Clearly, however, we will have to wait and see what parts of Sun survive the acquisition.
According to Larry Ellison, the key drivers for Oracle wanting to buy Sun were based on Oracle’s core strategy of purchasing industry-leading technologies. In this case, that’s: Solaris – which Oracle rates as substantially the best Unix platform in the world; and Java – the most important software asset Oracle has ever bought, deployed on billions of devices. Buy owning hardware as well as software, Oracle aims to to deliver complete systems (as opposed to components) engineered to provide superior reliability and security, at no additional cost to the customer.
Oracle says it plans to increase investment in Java. There are some obvious questions about Oracle’s commitment to the Java platform on the client (at its heart, Oracle is a server-side company – database and middleware). However, Oracle has been developing client Java applications for a long time so hopefully it understands: the economies that come from allowing the same technologies to run both client and server side; and the value of having one of the largest developer communities in the world, building systems that run on billions of devices. Hopefully, Oracle also understands that Sun has a deeply impressive software stack (Netbeans IDE, Java/JavaFX, Glassfish, MySQL, VirtualBox etc), favored by some of the smartest developers around the world. With increased investment, this stack has the potential to dominate the industry.
That’s the story. It makes some sense at a high-level. The devil is in the detail when it comes to these things, however – so only time will tell if this is good for customers or not. It will be interesting to see if IBM is now content to sit on the sidelines, or whether it believes there is room to offer more to Sun’s shareholders, in the form of hostile bid, than Oracle’s offer, which has the full support of Sun’s Board (Oracle is offering to pay $5.6B for Sun net of debt and cash).
Mr X wrote:
http://www.oracle.com/sun/sun-faq.pdf
So an Oracle appliance – kick in teeth for IBM services trying to get people onto AIX…
What does this mean for current linux efforts? Btrfs? Does this mean better support for Oracle on Solaris X64? They have invested an awful lot in Linux and internally their must be a lot of people working on it – surely they won’t want to maintain both long term – they have a lot of customers currently on SPARC Solaris – are they going to simply push migration to Linux on x86? Remember currently new versions of the database are available on Linux first – not Solaris or Windows or anything else – Linux, they have their own version of linux and they sell support.
They mention Solaris a lot in the press release so what does this mean for the linux offering? In the FAQ they say they are still committed – but *as* committed?
They also have their own:
virtualization solution – Oracle VM ( not as portable or flexible as virtual box – but presumably tailored for Oracle )
hosted offering – Oracle on demand ( note not ‘cloud’ in the sense of hosting arbitrary software/ OS images)
development tool – JDeveloper
app server ( possibly two – old Oracle one and the newly aquired BEA )
Java VM – JRockit.
So what does this mean for Sun virtualisation, cloud offerings, netbeans, VM, glassfish or the current Oracle ones?
Again they say nothing affected – don’t believe that!
One interesting unknown is the Rock processor – Sun said in Mar this year that it was due to finally ship in the autumn and they were working on making MySQL work better with it – Rock was designed with databases in mind – transactional memory etc – if it works could be a killer differentiator – again Oracle can stop MySQL “rocking” on that or have it as a pay only option, and obviously SQL server won’t run as Windows isn’t going to support SPARC anytime soon. Could be a real win for Oracle – note the impact of Marc Tremblay leaving for microsoft isn’t clear to me – isn’t clear whether he was a hindrance or benefit to actually shipping a working processor.
Still the Rock hasn’t shipped or demonstrated value yet.
Clearly a lot of the Oracle stack of software relies on Java – though I wonder if getting it to work well on Windows will be such a priority
Don’t know if they want to push the client side efforts, are interested in phone OS’s etc – the good news here is Larry wants to rule the world – the bad news is he is very keen on pushing up profits.
I could imagine them pushing Open Office even harder to bloody MS’s nose.
Seems to me a very good move for Oracle – now own MySQL, have a significant storage business which clearly aligns well with Oracle’s core products, potentially innovative chip to deliver great db performance, and also own a couple of key assets in the ‘keep MS from eating our breakfast’ category by staying independent – Java, Solaris, Open Office.
Sad that Sun – such an innovative company – has lost it’s independence.
Funny – Steve Balmer is quoted as saying -
“I just learnt it … I need to think about it. I am very surprised”. Surprised that Oracle is now in the position to build the same sort of lock in strategy that MS have been pursuing for years?
Posted 20 Apr 2009 at 11:16 pm ¶
simon wrote:
It looks like to me like there are going to be major, rapid cuts in R&D as a result of this transaction; Oracle has told shareholders to expect the Sun business unit to be profitable soon after acquisition.
I wonder if Oracle has fully thought through its plans for Sun. As Ballmer says, it’s a surprising move – look at IBM’s latest numbers: its hardware business is declining much faster than the software and services businesses.
The big unknown question is: will customers see value in the combined Oracle/Sun offering, allowing Oracle/Sun systems to grab market share away from IBM and HP? Its possible, but hardly a given.
If Oracle slashes R&D in core areas, will customers believe in the combined company’s future road map? What customers that make big bets on technologies like this want to hear about is *increased* investment, not about killing R&D to run the technology into the ground to squeeze every last drop of profit out of it in the short term.
Posted 21 Apr 2009 at 6:42 am ¶
simon wrote:
@Mr X,
One difference between Sun and Oracle, is that Sun has been in a weak position for a number of years; whereas Oracle is a strong company. So, Oracle has the possibility to be much more aggressive than Sun, and really attack the competition.
Sure, they could be boring, and simply cut a load of Sun products that aren’t currently profitable. That’s an easy choice. However, there’s just a chance (maybe a small chance, in reality) that Ellison might want to be a bit more creative than that. Yesterday, he said something like – “Sun has many exciting products” before highlighting only Java and Solaris.
So, it’s interesting to speculate on what could be done with Sun’s hardware software assets. For example:
o To attack Microsoft – could leverage MySQL, Open Office, Netbeans, and Java
o To attack IBM – could leverage Solaris and Java
o To attack VMWare – could leverage xVM Server and VirtualBox
o To attack RedHat – could leverage Glassfish and Solaris
o To attack Citrix – could leverage Sun VDI
On the hardware side,
o To attack HP, Dell, IBM – could leverage Sun’s hardware business
o To attack NetApp, EMC – could leverage Sun’s OpenStorage hardware.
Many of these are *potential* multi-billion dollar revenue opportunities for a strong company. Of course, there’s no way they could do all of these. It will be interesting to see, though, which – if any – they do go after…
Posted 21 Apr 2009 at 12:27 pm ¶
Mr X wrote:
No mention of competing with Google there or in the consumer space ( obviously his big friends with Jobs so maybe he thinks he’ll leave that to Apple ). So do you think they will can the client side stuff – or perhaps they think it’s essential ( like Google ) to have a MS alternative out there else MS will use client dominance to drive you out of your particular niche.
The big fear for me is a tendency for bloatware – the typical kitchen sink type Oracle thing where it does a lot of things not very well – an integrated morass.
Larry is around 65 years old – is he about to retire and spend his time on his biotechs or is he wanting to have one more go at truly pulling off the concept of the thin client – services at Oracle ( or less likely in the cloud – if you define cloud as being hoster agonistic ) accessed via the web and/or Citrix/VNC/VDI type services.
You could imagine a resurgent client side java, better web integration, a Java VDI client together allowing them to make a pretty cool offering.
Posted 21 Apr 2009 at 3:09 pm ¶
simon wrote:
I agree – it could all turn into a bloated mess. And yet, with the right long-term vision and leadership, it’s possible to see how they could go forward to make a huge impact.
Posted 21 Apr 2009 at 4:25 pm ¶