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What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems?

Posted by timothy on from the ask-the-oracle dept.

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister believes Oracle is next in line to make a play for Sun now that IBM has withdrawn its offer. Dismissing server market arguments in favor of Cisco or Dell as suitors, McAllister suggests that MySQL, ZFS, DTrace, and Java make Sun an even better asset to Oracle than to IBM. MySQL as a complement to Oracle's existing database business would make sense, given Oracle's 2005 purchase of Innobase, and with 'the long history of Oracle databases on Solaris servers, it might actually see owning Solaris as an asset,' McAllister writes. But the 'crown jewel' of the deal would be Java. 'It's almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Java to Oracle. Java has become the backbone of Oracle's middleware strategy,' McAllister contends."

3 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yahoo! + Sun by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 5, Insightful
    No, I hope you're joking. Sun's bundling Yahoo Toolbar with java is bad enough. If Oracle were to buy Sun, it would be in their best interests to stop that immediately unless they don't want to be taken seriously. Choice rant from the link:

    I find it insulting when applications bundle unrelated crapware like browser toolbars, particularly when the installation selects the extra junk by default...

    ...software upgrades need to be elegant and streamlined. Bundling in a browser toolbar cheapens the whole experience because it starts looking just like so many other crapware applications that plague the PC industry.

  2. Re:Strange Database Merge... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So what's left of the database market if Oracle and Sun merged together?

    I don't see anything changing. Right now we have a 3-way fight between three heavyweights: Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. Everyone else is unimportant.

    However, IBM and Microsoft have other competencies and sources of revenue. Oracle does not. In result, Oracle has been looking for new ways to enter the low-end market. So owning MySQL could be a boon for them, but it wouldn't significantly change the market.

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  3. Re:What direction will Oracle take Java? by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Show me a developer who doesn't think everybody else's code is crap.