Oracle buys Sun, becomes hardware company

[scandal 951]

McNealy always was a sore loser. To my mind, Bill Joy and Andy Bechtolsheim were the true original innovators at Sun. McNealy was just a suit, and still is.

RIP, Sun

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000019-264.html

Oracle buys Sun, becomes hardware company

by Stephen Shankland

Oracle announced Wednesday it completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in a deal valued at more than $7 billion, a move that transforms the database and business-software giant into a hardware company as well.

Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle has acquired several large companies in its drive to out-consolidate rivals in the business computing technology market, sometimes launching hostile takeovers and sometimes prevailing over regulatory objections. This time, the difficulty was persuading European antitrust regulators who were concerned about the fate under Oracle of the open-source MySQL database software business that was part of Sun.

But that barrier fell as the European Commission approved Oracle's Sun acquisition plan on January 21. Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison and other executives from Sun and Oracle are set to detail plans for Sun on Wednesday during a Webcast event starting at 9 a.m. PST.

"My hat is off to one of the greatest capitalists I have ever met, Larry Ellison," Sun Chairman Scott McNealy said in a bittersweet memo Tuesday, bidding adieu to the company he helped found 28 years earlier. "To be honest, this is not a note this founder wants to write. Sun, in my mind, should have been the great and surviving consolidator. But I love the market economy and capitalism more than I love my company."

By giving it a place in the server, storage, and processor domains, the Sun acquisition means Oracle is a direct competitor to more companies, a complication given that it sells its database and other software for use on servers sold by those competitors. IBM already was Oracle's biggest foe, but others that have survived the consolidation wave include Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, and EMC.

Since announcing the Sun acquisition plan in April, Oracle's sales pitch has been one of integrated products--hardware and software built to work together so customers don't have to do the integration work themselves or pay a third party to do it.

[The_Dude 1,142]

Has this deal been approved by the SEC et al?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Since announcing the Sun acquisition plan in April, Oracle's sales pitch has been one of integrated products--hardware and software built to work together so customers don't have to do the integration work themselves or pay a third party to do it.

Yeah, because that works soooo well with IBM products

[The_Dude 1,142]

Yeah, because that works soooo well with IBM products

Go buy a Mac.... problem solved.

[mawilson 2,133]

Yeah, because that works soooo well with IBM products

It might work for Oracle.

"You want our database? Great, we'll throw in a server to run it on, and a high-performance

operating system (Solaris) to boot."

[rsn 135]

Go buy a Mac.... problem solved.

But then you have a new problem, an empty wallet.

[The_Dude 1,142]

But then you have a new problem, an empty wallet.

And an inferior computer that you cannot upgrade, or run a vast majority of business applications on. But it looks cool and you can act smug around all your friends.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

It might work for Oracle.

"You want our database? Great, we'll throw in a server to run it on, and a high-performance

operating system (Solaris) to boot."

Maybe. But our experience with IBM making similar claims has been dismal.

[scandal 951]

Maybe. But our experience with IBM making similar claims has been dismal.

That's at least partially because IBM has had a long history of diverse platforms that form its "integrated" brand. System/390 mainframes , AS/400 midranges, AIX Unix workstations and servers, Windows based PCs and servers, and all running on a smorgasbord of RISC, PowerPC and x86 based CPUs. They still support OS/400 (or IBM i , or whatever they're calling it these days), JCL and the rest of the OS/360 goobledygook, AIX, Linux, Java... They bought and "integrated" Rational, Lotus, and a host of other software/services companies.

In contrast, Oracle has always been much more streamlined. They've never had the 1960s mainframe and mdirange baggage, and began life in the POSIX world of semi-standards based Unix.

Plus, Ellison is a tyrant who integrates his acquired companies by force into the company mainstream (think Peoplesoft). IBM never had such a vicious tyrant or culture. Expect to see Sun's culture similarly subsumed in short order.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

That's at least partially because IBM has had a long history of diverse platforms that form its "integrated" brand. System/390 mainframes , AS/400 midranges, AIX Unix workstations and servers, Windows based PCs and servers, and all running on a smorgasbord of RISC, PowerPC and x86 based CPUs. They still support OS/400 (or IBM i , or whatever they're calling it these days), JCL and the rest of the OS/360 goobledygook, AIX, Linux, Java... They bought and "integrated" Rational, Lotus, and a host of other software/services companies.

In contrast, Oracle has always been much more streamlined. They've never had the 1960s mainframe and mdirange baggage, and began life in the POSIX world of semi-standards based Unix.

Plus, Ellison is a tyrant who integrates his acquired companies by force into the company mainstream (think Peoplesoft). IBM never had such a vicious tyrant or culture. Expect to see Sun's culture similarly subsumed in short order.

Tyranny ftw!

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Oracle buys Sun, becomes hardware company

Does this mean Java is to become as ###### up as Oracle is?

Edited January 27, 2010 by Lone Ranger

[rsn 135]

Does this mean Java is to become as ###### up as Oracle is?

That depends on what you are talking about specifically. Java is open-source, so the code will likely only go the direction that the community wants it to go. Oracle could go against the community which may result in an "Oracle" version of java and an alternate version of java developed by the "community". Since Oracle has been a contributor to the community process, I suspect there won't be any radical changes, but since Oracle clearly tries to make a business out of the products it acquires, I guess it's possible that they could tighten their grip on Java.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

They hardly have to try to make a business out of Java... it already is one.

[rsn 135]

They hardly have to try to make a business out of Java... it already is one.

By making it a business, I mean making it their own (business).

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

By making it a business, I mean making it their own (business).

If by that you mean putting Websphere and Weblogic etc out of business ... good luck