Ballmer, IBM Surprised By Oracle-Sun Deal

Geon Lasli writes "Reporters caught up with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Moscow to get his take on Oracle's deal to buy Sun Microsystems for US$7.4 billion. Ballmer was at a loss for words: 'I need to think about it. I am very surprised.' According to a source, IBM hadn't given up on purchasing Sun and was blindsided by Oracle's move. I guess IBM must be regretting playing tough 2 weeks ago. Unknown to outsiders, Sun had probably found the Oracle lifeboat before they decided to pull the plug on the deal."

Comments

I Feel His Pain

[eldavojohn]

You see, Ballmer was supposed to get up at 3am and bid $7,400,000,001.00 for Sun on CorporateBay.com. Instead he just threw a chair at his alarm clock and went back to sleep.

Same thing happened to me with a $1.5 thousand Rickenbacker 4003 bass two weeks ago. And now I regret not having that sweet sweet axe in my hands right now just as much as Ballmer regrets not being able to fire whole divisions when their managers don't know the entire lyrics to American Pie by Don McLean. We're both only human, buddy.

Re:I Feel His Pain

[Philip K Dickhead]

Bruce Foxton.

Re:I Feel His Pain

[kpainter]

He should have used justsnipe.com

Re:I Feel His Pain

[blind biker]

I have one word for you, my friend: auctionsniper (.com)

Re:I Feel His Pain

[pickle_in_being]

I know most of the lyrics, should I be shot in my right foot?

Is this good?

[nicolas.kassis]

I can really decide if I like the fact that Oracle is going to be bullying Microsoft going forward or hate the fact that Oracle is probably more evil than Microsoft now.

Re:Is this good?

[nicolas.kassis]

I meant can't really decide

Re:Is this good?

[rackserverdeals]

Oracle has always been bullying Microsoft.

Larry Ellison want's to create the world's largest software company and dethrone MS. He's tried everything including support for nettops.

Considering MS gained dominance through an operating system and an office suite, what Ellison did with just a database is quite remarkable.

They have since grown their software portfolio to include enterprise applications, application servers and middleware.

Now with Sun, their getting an OS, a great development platform and a lot of other nice things in addition to the hardware business.

Oracle's revenue after the Sun acquisition should be close to Microsoft's and close to half of IBM and HP's.

Sun was only about a quarter of the size of IBM and HP, it's two biggest competitors and wasn't doing too bad considering who they were up against. And like I said, Oracle wasn't too shabby in the software world.

The combination of the two, if done properly, should really be fierce. Oracle has been buying a lot of companies in the past few years and all reports I've read in the press indicate that Oracle has been handling the mergers very well.

I thought Cisco would have been the ideal buyer for Sun and I didn't even consider Oracle. Now that the merger has been announced and I had time to think about it, I couldn't think of a much better buyer of Sun.

The two companies have so much in common. People that deploy Oracle tend to do it on Solaris/SPARC more than any other platform and that's been the case for a long time. So the companies have had a strong relationship over the years. Not always great, but overall pretty good. The big knock was when Ellison decided to switch developer workstations to Linux from Solaris, which may not have been a good idea since Solaris/SPARC deployments still beat linux deployments for Oracle.

Here you have two CEO's that hate MS, and want to dominate IBM. We're in for some interesting times.

While I don't hate Linux, the linux fanbois on here have been getting on my nerves so let me throw in this barb.

When IBM was rumored to be in talks with Sun, rumors were going around that Oracle was looking to buy RedHat.

When the opportunity to buy Sun, Oracle chose them over RedHat. RedHat wouls probably have cost them only $2bln compared to the $5.6bln it's going to cost to buy Sun. So suck it! :)

Re:Is this good?

[Shinmizu]

Well, at least you can decide on whether or not you can decide. Errr...

Re:Is this good?

[closingBrace]

This is bad. Oracle is now more evil than Microsoft. But, if Microsoft bought Sun, it would be the baddest news of the millenium. Now, what will happens with MySQL??? This is the true question.

Re:Is this good?

[pembo13]

You can't really buy what Redhat has worked to gain over the years.

Re:Is this good?

[rackserverdeals]

You can't really buy what Redhat has worked to gain over the years.

Yeah you can. It's a publicly traded company. You don't even need their permission to buy it.

And it would only cost you $3.3 billion - the $1 billion in cash and short term investments you'd acquire when you did. But $2.3 billion for a company with only a half billion in annual revenues, 76 million in annual net income (with no income growth despite dramatic revenue growth) doesn't seem worth it.

It's not that you can't buy RedHat. You don't want to.

You can't buy Linux, but you sure as hell can buy RedHat and the developers won't be jumping ship. Especially in this economic climate where raising money for a RedHat fork that can compete with the RedHat brand isn't likely.

And you sure as hell can sell RedHat as a lot of insiders have been doing lately. If you can sell something, you can buy it.

Re:Is this good?

[nschubach]

I just hate everyone. It makes everything much easier.

Re:Is this good?

[An ominous Cow art]

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Re:Is this good?

[rackserverdeals]

First, I like Linux. Right now around me I have one Windows desktop, and an equal mix of Solaris and Linux development servers running Debian and CentOS and even DSL on an old laptop.

You obviously don't understand how stupid some of the things are that people say about Linux around here though. For example, when IBM was in talks to buy Sun, some person replied that RedHat should buy Sun. RedHat and Novel combined couldn't afford to buy half of Sun.

I suspect that Oracle is going to allow Solaris to be EQUALLY supported

When you're customers are choosing Solaris over Linux, you don't allow Solaris to be supported, it's not your choice. If you want to stay in business and make money, you do what your customers want.

They believe that Linux is the way to break MS's monopoly since it has such traction.

And that's the wrong way to do it and it's been failing.

First, Linux didn't have traction. Unix had traction but MS has been eating into that market.

Linux went after the low hanging fruit, the Unix market since it was more compatible with Unix than MS.

Meanwhile MS has been eating into the server market.

The right way to do it would have been to use Linux as a way to stabilize or grow the Unix share in the marketplace against MS and carve out a bigger piece for itself in that space. Instead, they decided to attack the Unix space and spread the same type of FUD that MS does.

So in the end, Linux is gaining share against Unix, but it's growing share in a constantly shrinking slice of the pie.

Re:Is this good?

[Znork]

the developers won't be jumping ship

Most high-power Linux developers have tended to put their money where their mouth is in previous similar situations. Despite the environment, I doubt they'd have trouble finding new jobs.

RedHat fork that can compete with the RedHat brand isn't likely.

The value of the Redhat brand is largely tied to its independence and long term reliability and predictability on strategic issues. Most possible buyers of Redhat do not have the same track record of free software dedication (a company like Oracle would be dead in days if they had to compete with their own version of CentOS for their various products; they certainly don't seem to endear themselves to their customers).

For most buyers of the company the brand would basically cease to exist, so any fork would have little to compete against, apart from the various other vendors, of which Ubuntu would probably be the major gainer.

Re:Is this good?

[recharged95]

"Considering MS gained dominance through an operating system and an office suite, what Ellison did with just a database is quite remarkable."

.

Ellison knows, as most of us:

Content is King (it's all about the data).

.

That's why he was able to do it with just "a database". You need to give him credit, and they didn't even steal it (like MS as legend has it?), just borrowed it from the gov't.

Re:Is this good?

[rackserverdeals]

I'm not talking Linux developers here, I'm talking RedHat developers. It's an important distinction.

RedHat is a lot more than just the Linux kernel, which you know, but I'm stating here so that I can reduce any confusion of what I'm talking about.

RedHat's biggest accomplishment hasn't been anything they did with the kernel. It's been the ISV and IHV support that they were able to get. That's what allowed RedHat to penetrate into the corporate data center.

That's not going to be something any fork will be able to accomplish quickly or easily. I don't believe even SuSE has the same level of ISV and IHV support.

Re:Is this good?

[WindBourne]

>>I suspect that Oracle is going to allow Solaris to be EQUALLY supported
When you're customers are choosing Solaris over Linux, you don't allow Solaris to be supported, it's not your choice. If you want to stay in business and make money, you do what your customers want.
HEHEHEHE.
Sun is selling out BECAUSE they are not making the sales that they use to. In addition, as somebody who finished coding on Solaris, I can tell you that when we were talking to the Sun rep earlier and mentioned Linux on their hardware, they SHOT IT DOWN, FAST. It is NOT about what the customer wants. It is about what Sun can push. Right now, Linux is growing fast, while Solaris is headed downwards. That is why I think that Oracle will switch the sun reps to REQUIRING them to push Oracle AND (either linux OR Solaris, AS CUSTOMER WANTS).

>>They believe that Linux is the way to break MS's monopoly since it has such traction.
And that's the wrong way to do it and it's been failing. First, Linux didn't have traction. Unix had traction but MS has been eating into that market. Linux went after the low hanging fruit, the Unix market since it was more compatible with Unix than MS.
Meanwhile MS has been eating into the server market. The right way to do it would have been to use Linux as a way to stabilize or grow the Unix share in the marketplace against MS and carve out a bigger piece for itself in that space. Instead, they decided to attack the Unix space and spread the same type of FUD that MS does. So in the end, Linux is gaining share against Unix, but it's growing share in a constantly shrinking slice of the pie.
Ms has been BUYING their way into the market. I just checked the netcraft and I noticed that Windows is dropping again while *nix is growing. Linux went into the server space because it was the easiest. Now, they target embedded systems because it is ALSO easy. That is biting into Windows there as well. Finally, step outside of America and you see Linux growing on the desktop quickly. Unixes failure is NOT because of Linux. It was because of bad choices by ppl that wanted 30% profit margins on software. Linux has had MUCH lower margins, but they have the growth. The model is right; give away the software and sell support. So, who else does that model? MS. Where MS does not have a monopoly, they sell it for cheap, or even give it away for free. Then they sell support. Basically, Linux has solid software that is free to do, while you pay for what ever help you need.

As I said earlier, Oracle will likely push Oracle DB and will likely continue to push Linux.

Re:Is this good?

[rackserverdeals]

We were talking about what Oracle was doing not Sun's reps. Oracle was pushing for Linux, Oracle customers were deploying more on Solaris/SPARC.

RedHat revenues are about $500mln. Novel around $1bln, mostly from legacy products, not SuSE. Microsoft is $16bln. Add up all the open source vendors together and they don't even make a dent in the revenues of MS.

If you look at RedHat, while their revenues have been growing fast, their profits have been falling.

Windows server sales $4.8bln last quarter. Unix server sales $4.9 bln. Linux server sales fell to $1.8bln. Unix Linux combined make up less than half of server sales, and that's fighting it's way back.

As I said earlier, Oracle will likely push Oracle DB and will likely continue to push Linux.

You're entitled to your opinion, but you're probably wrong.

Oracle will definately push Oracle DB, it's their main earner. They will support Linux but will likely push Solaris. If they were going to push Linux they would have bought RedHat, because Linux to Oracle means RedHat.

Re:Is this good?

[mikael]

When IBM was rumored to be in talks with Sun, rumors were going around that Oracle was looking to buy RedHat.

When the opportunity to buy Sun, Oracle chose them over RedHat. RedHat wouls probably have cost them only $2bln compared to the $5.6bln it's going to cost to buy Sun. So suck it! :)

With the purchase of Sun, Oracle also has whole teams of engineers dedicated to designing hardhware all the way from workstations to servers. That is an advantage over buying RedHat who concentrate on just certifying hardware.

Re:Is this good?

[Nevyn]

Most high-power Linux developers have tended to put their money where their mouth is in previous similar situations. Despite the environment, I doubt they'd have trouble finding new jobs.

Which situations? Ones where the companies basically went out of business and they trickled to RH/SuSE/Sun/etc., and maybe a few to Intel or IBM. But let's pretend they'll all walk out if Oracle buys them ... where do they go work now? SuSE just layed a bunch of people off (some of which are now working at RH), Canonical don't employ developers, Sun hasn't been top of the list for a while but the last month was the final nail in that coffin. Do they all go work at Apple on darwin? ... will Apple hire them?

Re:Is this good?

[BikeHelmet]

I hate people like you.

Re:Is this good?

[pembo13]

I didn't say you couldn't buy RedHat. I said you can't buy what they have worked to accomplish.

Re:Is this good?

[WeeLad]

About a year ago, Oracle actually tried to sell us on Unbreakable Linux. Amazingly, they're selling strategy consisted mostly of saying that it's essentially the same as RedHat, though certified for Oracle.

Now, with the Sun purchase, I have to wonder whether they'll drop UL in favour of pushing Solaris & OpenSolaris

Re:Is this good?

[rackserverdeals]

I didn't say you couldn't buy RedHat. I said you can't buy what they have worked to accomplish.

Then you must not understand what RedHat has accomplished. What they accomplished was creating a good distribution and were able to build a good brand.

That helped them develop relationships with ISVs and IHVs so that they can support RedHat.

When you buy RedHat, you buy the brand. Just like with Sun/MySQL. While revenues fell at first, they MySQL revenue increased later on and it looks like they are generating more than the $50mil/year that MySQL AB was generating, and likely with lower operating costs.

Mindshare is attributed to the name and unless all the employees quit or get fired, that won't go away.

The ISV and IHV support won't go away either. It's too important.

So when you buy RedHat the company, you get RedHat the brand, and all the ISV/IHV support. You buy RedHat's accomplishments.

But you don't seem to understand that and instead just repeat your initial one liner without adding anything of substance.

Bill Borg is dead...

[yogibaer]

...long live the Larry Borg.

Re:Bill Borg is dead...

[rackserverdeals]

...long live the Larry Borg.

Let's just stick with Ming the Merciless. It gives the same effect and the Sillicon Valley maids don't have to create new place cards.

Re:Bill Borg is dead...

[oliderid]

• 1 EMPTY "SUN";
• 2 DROP "SPARK";
• 3 UPDATE assets set turnover="Big money!" where product like "Java";
• 4 DELETE from assets where product like "MySQL"
• ???
• Profits!

Re:Bill Borg is dead...

[Guspaz]

Except Oracle already owns InnoDB, the only storage engine for MySQL that's worth a damn.

Both InnoDB and MySQL are multi-licensed with at least one of those licenses being the GPL. There's nothing Oracle can do to kill off MySQL should somebody decide to fork it.

counter offer?

[line-bundle]

I don't know the specifics, but can't IBM make a counter offer?

Re:counter offer?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

IBM thought they were being tough negotiators by walking away from a 6.85 Billion bid then Oracle upped it to 7.4 Billion.

Re:counter offer?

[Albanach]

I don't know the specifics, but can't IBM make a counter offer?

If they feel the company is worth more than Oracle are paying, they could make a counter offer. Indeed, Sun's board may have announced the agreement in the very hope this happens.

Equally, in those circumstances Oracle could increase their offer. Unless IBM are very keen on the acquisition, it's unlikely they'll want to enter a bidding war.

Not to say they won't have a final stab, especially if Sun is worth more to them now they know the alternative is for Oracle to own Java.

Re:counter offer?

[BrainInAJar]

No... "definitive agreement" means that bidding is done.

Oracle offered, Sun accepted.

Re:counter offer?

[Albanach]

No... "definitive agreement" means that bidding is done.

Doesn't it mean the boards have agreed the terms of sale?

Sun is a listed company. The shareholders own it, not the Board of Directors who approved this deal.

Unless they somehow managed to get agreement from 50.1% of shareholders before making the announcement (which I imagine would cause all sorts of SEC issues) it's still going to require shareholder approval, no? And, if the decision is still down to the shareholders, IBM could still return to the table, even if it required a hostile approach to the shareholders directly.

Re:counter offer?

[the unbeliever]

Chances are the board owns between them a controlling share of the company, making joe blow stockholder's opinion rather valueless.

Re:counter offer?

[afidel]

I'm sure there was a nasty poison pill in the offer where Sun would have to make Oracle whole if the offer fell through. I've heard of clauses as much as 20% of the acquired companies value so the deal has to be seriously low bid for it to be worth someone elses time to meddle with the deal at that point.

Re:counter offer?

[Albanach]

I think that's unlikely.

Nonetheless, here's what the SEC filing says:

(a) The Company shall establish a record date for, duly call, give notice of, convene and hold a meeting of its stockholders (the âoeStockholder Meetingâ) as promptly as practicable after the date hereof for the purpose of voting on the matters requiring Stockholder Approval; provided, that (i) the Company may delay, adjourn or postpone the date of the Stockholder Meeting if and to the extent necessary to obtain a quorum of its stockholders to take action at the Stockholder Meeting and the Company shall use its reasonable best efforts during any such delay, adjournment or postponement to obtain such a quorum as soon as practicable, and (ii) the Company may delay, adjourn or postpone the Stockholder Meeting if and to the extent (and only to the extent) the Company determines in good faith that such delay, adjournment or postponement is required by Applicable Law or to comply with any comments made by the SEC with respect to the Proxy Statement or otherwise. Unless the Company Board shall have effected an Adverse Recommendation Change in accordance with Section 6.03, the Company Board shall make the Board Recommendation and use its reasonable best efforts to obtain the Stockholder Approval, and the Company shall otherwise comply with all Applicable Laws applicable to the Stockholder Meeting. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, unless this Agreement is terminated in accordance with Section 8.01, the Company shall establish a record date for, call, give notice of, convene and hold the Stockholder Meeting and the matters constituting the Stockholder Approval shall be submitted to the Companyâ(TM)s stockholders at the Stockholder Meeting whether or not (A) an Adverse Recommendation Change shall have occurred or (B) any Acquisition Proposal or Superior Proposal shall have been publicly proposed or announced or otherwise submitted to the Company or any of its Representatives. Unless this Agreement is terminated in accordance with Section 8.01, the Company agrees that it shall not submit to the vote of the stockholders of the Company any Acquisition Proposal (whether or not a Superior Proposal) prior to the vote of the Companyâ(TM)s stockholders with respect to the Merger at the Stockholder Meeting. The notice of such Stockholder Meeting shall state that a resolution to approve and adopt this Agreement and the Merger will be considered at the Stockholder Meeting, and no other matters shall be considered or voted upon at the Stockholder Meeting without Parentâ(TM)s prior written consent.

I think it's pretty clear that Stockholder approval is required and therefore it is possible - however unlikely - for other offers to be made.

The SEC filing also contains specific clauses to deal with 'Superior Proposals'.

Re:counter offer?

[Guspaz]

It was one thing for Sun to have been purchased by a company that doesn't really compete with IBM directly (or not be purchased at all). It's another thing to consolidate MySQL and Oracle against DB2.

I still can't believe it...

[OglinTatas]

I'm as surprised as he. I still can't believe it. It won't be real for me until Taco posts the dupe here on /.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[pz]

I'm as surprised as he. I still can't believe it. It won't be real for me until Taco posts the dupe here on /.

I know that was made as a joke, but how can someone who should have their head screwed on as well as Ballmer, at least when it comes to IT business, not have suspected that Oracle would be in play for Sun?

I mean, when I heard the news on the radio the other day, I said to my wife-to-be (yes, true, I have a fiancee; I'm an atypical nerd that has managed to develop a few social skills), "I saw *that* coming." Who else would be big enough to buy Sun, and an appropriate fit? You can count the number of companies in that class on two hands, tops. If Ballmer didn't have his corporate spies working on it, then he's lost his touch.

Or ... maybe it's disinformation from MS.

Oracle buying Sun -- the question is not whether this is a surprise, but why it didn't happen long before now. And, importantly, if the FTC will block it on the grounds that it would create too close to a monopoly in the DB market.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[bb5ch39t]

What monopoly in the DB market? Oracle has Oracle and MySQL (from SUN). But DB2/AIX (and Linux/Windows/other) is a good contender. CA still has Ingress and Datacom. OK, that's a bit player. And there is always the love of my life: PostgreSQL. Oh, and MS SQL Server for those who don't really need a mission critical RDMS.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[Shadow Wrought]

"I saw *that* coming."

I remember reading either comments or journals about that here that Oracle would be a good fit for buying Sun. So how is that slashdotters, slashdotters FFS!, could see this coming but Balmer couldn't. He should either fire himself or start reading the frontpage. At -1.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[eln]

I don't know that it was all that obvious. I mean sure, it was obvious from the point of view that everyone knows Oracle has been in a buying mode for several years, and so if a technology company goes up for sale Oracle is automatically seen to be in the running. However, Oracle has also stated several times that they're in the software business and don't want to be in the hardware business, so from that perspective the Sun purchase didn't make a lot of sense.

Sun obviously has some nice stuff like Java, MySQL, and Solaris that Oracle could steer toward supporting its core business. It also has a lot of stuff that expands Oracle pretty far afield of their core business though, and they'll have to take a lot of care in how they decide to manage and/or dispose of those pieces. The biggest example is the hardware business: it's profitable, so Oracle may want to keep it. On the other hand, it's not Oracle's core competency at all, and so it might be wiser for them to jettison it or risk going from a tightly controlled laser-focused company into a sprawling difficult to manage conglomerate.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[daffmeister]

I said to my wife-to-be (yes, true, I have a fiancee; I'm an atypical nerd that has managed to develop a few social skills)

Maybe you or your colleagues are just young. Every developer I know has a wife, girlfriend, or family.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[rackserverdeals]

I didn't see it coming, but I'm a bit dissapointed with myself for that.

In hindsight, it's the obvious choice.

Who is Oracle's biggest Competitor? IBM.

What is Oracle lacking when it goes head to head with IBM? Hardware.

When a customer says "we're going with IBM because they can deliver a whole solution" Oracle can now say "So can we!".

Re:I still can't believe it...

[jd]

+2 would still be fine, as I was one of those who suspected Oracle might make a move.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. For example, Oracle can now add modifications to Solaris to provide acceleration for Oracle. But it doesn't stop there. Sun also provides the UltraSPARC range of processors, so it would be possible - at some point - for Oracle to push some low-level primitives useful for databases into the CPU itself.

Why would they want to do that? Duh! Databases are a huge market. Intel is the standard platform at the moment, but it's very hard to get good, sustained performance. Even if a database-enhanced CPU is sold purely as an accelerator card for PCs, you'd have a good source of income from the hardware unit, which has been doing badly.

But Sun servers would look a whole lot more attractive for databases in data centres if they become much more powerful per $ spent. PCs are too cheap to compete on absolute price, but Oracle could utilize their deeper understanding of both relational databases and data warehousing to make Sun servers significantly cheaper per transaction/second.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[DragonWriter]

Oracle buying Sun -- the question is not whether this is a surprise, but why it didn't happen long before now. And, importantly, if the FTC will block it on the grounds that it would create too close to a monopoly in the DB market.

How? In terms of sales, MySQL is a rounding error, and won't budge Oracle from their mid-to-high-40's position. In terms of developer usage, it MySQL + Oracle is just over 50%. MySQL + Oracle isn't anything like a monopoly.

The only way to get an instant DB monopoly by merger would be if Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft underwent a three-way merger. Which is somewhat unlikely.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[rgviza]

> ...at least when it comes to IT business, not have suspected that Oracle would be in play for Sun?

Given that Oracle on Sun is the best way to run Oracle, and Sun was for sale, this shouldn't have surprised anyone.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[laa]

Exactly what kind of colleagues do you have, with family but no girlfriend or wife? :)

Nitpicking module deactivated.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[JasterBobaMereel]

Why are they surprised that a company that uses Suns Software, tools, and hardware extensively, bought Sun, rather than one of their rivals?

Re:I still can't believe it...

[Hognoxious]

You might want to check the legal definition of "monopoly", as opposed to its etymology.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[blind biker]

They didn't block IBM buying Informix - and I submit to you that Informix had a much larger portion of the same market in which DB2 plays, than MySQL. Informix is a true enterprise DBMS, and so is DB2, and both were (and lo, still are) rather popular.

So, I don't think the FTC will block the Oracle-Sun merger because of the database businesses.

But, I've been wrong before :D

Re:I still can't believe it...

[0xABADC0DA]

yes, true, I have a fiancee; I'm an atypical nerd that has managed to develop a few social skills ... You can count the number of companies in that class on two hands, tops

If you were a real nerd you would have known you can easily count to 1024 on two hands. Counting to 59049 is pretty easy as well. A true nerd would have specified how many bits were sufficient to enumerate that number of companies.
--
I knew von Neumann; von Neumann was a friend of mine. You, sir, are no von Neumann.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[Shadow Wrought]

I could be wrong, but I thought Larry Ellison was also very much a thin client fan. Maybe this will be the first step towards a return to centralization. You can sell it as offering greater security, increased in productivity since people won't be able to add their own software, and since the system is tweaked to the Oracle Uber-Server you can market the ability of everyone using shared real-time information.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[Shadow Wrought]

Umm, because slashdotters are smarter than Ballmer?

Individually or collectively?

Re:I still can't believe it...

[DragonWriter]

You might want to check the legal definition of "monopoly", as opposed to its etymology.

I'm quite familiar with the legal definition, which centers around market power rather than marketshare, but there is an intrinsic linkage between the two, and the latter can be pretty strong evidence for or against the former. Of course, if you think there is countervailing evidence that Oracle + MySQL would credibly constitute a monopoly, you are free to present your evidence here rather than just post throwaway comments with neither argument nor evidence.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[sleigher]

...and some of us have a wife AND a girlfriend.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[yorugua]

didn't see it coming, but I'm a bit dissapointed with myself for that. In hindsight, it's the obvious choice. Who is Oracle's biggest Competitor? IBM. What is Oracle lacking when it goes head to head with IBM? Hardware. When a customer says "we're going with IBM because they can deliver a whole solution" Oracle can now say "So can we!".

Don't treat yourself badly. IBM does things Oracle still doesn't do, even after buying Sun:

IBM will admin your whole servers *ix servers for you (HP-UX, AIX, Linux, Solaris). Sun/Oracle, afaik, don't do that.

IBM will admin your whole databases for you( Oracle, Informix, MS SQL, MySQL). Sun/Oracle, afaik, they don't do that.

IBM will admin your applications (SAP, Oracle Financials or whatever it is called these days, Webpshere, Tomcat, BEA, I guess even Axapta)

IBM will admin your Windows boxes.

I guess that Oracle/Sun won't be able to deliver a "whole" solution the way IBM/Accenture/EDS do these days. Of course IBM is also in the business of selling you the hardware plus database business, but they have services that reach well beyond that. Maybe Oracle is in the right path, but there's a long way ahead.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[eln]

Look up "Oracle On Demand." They do all of that stuff.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[danw5k1]

Mod parent up. MS fanbois need to wake up. Good on home PC != mission critical
On the mission critical Sun Sparc/Solaris/Oracle box I admin at work I can add/remove/replace all RAM,CPUs,PS,System Boards,Fans,PCI cards on the fly with 0 down time. It's a pain, and Oracle has an annoying habit of refusing to get off a CPU I want to put offline but it's doable. Try that on a MS machine.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[Jesus_666]

Stop hogging! No wonder the rest of us have supply problems.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[mgblst]

(yes, true, I have a fiancee; I'm an atypical nerd that has managed to develop a few social skills)

Or more likely, you married a fatty. I only see married people making this joke these days, what do you guys have such an inferiority complex you need to point out what most of here already know, and were only joking about anyway.

Re:I still can't believe it...

[Virtual_Raider]

...and some of us have a wife AND a girlfriend.

You know? it's interesting that you can say that in English and it doesn't necessarily imply that you are one of those "us". But if you say that on a Romance language, you have to explicitly include or exclude yourself in the conjugation of "to have". (Algunos de nosotros tenemos - Algunos de nosotros tienen | certains de de nous nous avons certains de de nous ils ont | etc)

This concludes our random rumination of the day. Back to our scheduled topic

IBM plays hardball?

[twidarkling]

Aww, poor IBM. This is why you don't withdraw bids, you ask for counter-offers. Otherwise, you get blindsided by someone willing to do some give and take. This is probably the best outcome though. Microsoft didn't need another addition to their roster of stuff they've co-opted, and IBM should be doing more development instead of acquisitions.

Re:IBM plays hardball?

[gregorio]

Microsoft didn't need another addition to their roster of stuff they've co-opted, and IBM should be doing more development instead of acquisitions.

Microsoft could never buy Sun. Buying a Java and Unix vendor would only give them two options:

Keeping the products: I mean, no.
Phasing out the products: That would be a waste of money, as Java would simply find a new leader and Solaris is open-source now, just like Java. Big antitrust issues would arise too.

Re:IBM plays hardball?

[Burkin]

Why?

Re:IBM plays hardball?

[Hognoxious]

IBM should be doing more development instead of acquisitions.

Why? And why shouldn't Oracle be doing the same?

Re:IBM plays hardball?

[rackserverdeals]

This is bad news for anyone who uses Java (esp. NetBeans), OpenOffice or MySQL, though. Particularly anyone invested in having their java code work the same on every platform.

OpenOffice.org will be fine. Gives something for Ellison to go after MSOffice with (Larry no likey Bill).

MySQL, I wouldn't be toooo worried their. They've been good with InnoDB and MySQL isn't even on the same level of Oracle Express or whatever it was called. MySQL expands Oracle's presence and can get their salespeople in the door. I think last year, Sun got MySQL's revenus up to $88mln while it was only around $50 before they bought them (and dropped to around $35 after they bought them.)

I'm more worried about PostgreSQL. Now that's an opensource database that could nip at Oracle's heels. Sun has been a proponent of PostgreSQL, hiring a developer, supporting it on Solaris, including it in their OS, donating hardware for the pgsql developers to test scalability. I hope Oracle doesn't stop that and realizes they can use that to their advantage as well. I'm going to say it again. Had Sun not bought MySQL, and instead focused on PostgreSQL, they could probably still be independent.

As for Java, the JCP isn't as broken as everyone thinks and Java is so big now and Oracle so invested in Java, it wouldn't be smart for Oracle to mess with it too much.

Re:IBM plays hardball?

[nuttycom]

Sun's been a possible target for takeovers for a while, so I suspect that a big reason for GPL'ed Java and accoutrements was to poison the possibility of just such a move by MS.

Re:IBM plays hardball?

[twidarkling]

As has been pointed out, IBM has equivilent products that could stand better from increased focus on development rather than trying to obtain someone else's IP and attempt to integrate them in some fashion, since we all know users would want future compatability once it's owned by the same company. Oracle doesn't have anything directly competative with Sun's products, so a product integration wouldn't be quite such a thing.

It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[GPLDAN]

That Ballmer had no prepared spin is amazing.

There was an article published online several months ago explaining why Oracle and Sun were a good fit. All of Oracle's application server architecture is built around Java. J2EE rules the Oracle roost. Oracle will pull the plug on selling servers, they wanted Java and Solaris. Solaris gives them SIGNIFICANT leverage over Redhat when working deals for large installs of Oracle. They can bundle a complete solution, even down to the hardware and lock EVERYONE else out of big deals.

Lots of analysts saw this as a possible deal, and McNealy was extremely arrogant in walking away from IBM so you had to figure something was up.

Sounds like the brass at Microsoft is suffering brain drain of its own. I bet Schmidt over at Google already knew exactly what was going to happen.

Old and slow Ballmer.... old and slow...



...developers, developers, developers, developers.....ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[Walterk]

I bet Schmidt over at Google already knew exactly what was going to happen.

Wouldn't surprise me.

Search query report from clients *.oracle.com:
"Sun"
"Acquisition"
"Sun site:finance.yahoo.com"

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[Sockatume]

I imagine a heavy-set bald man standing in his office with a chair held above his head, ready to strike an rubber tree, when the messenger arrives. He pauses, bewildered, and softly puts the chair down to sit pensively, shaken to his very core.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[Trailer Trash]

McNealy was extremely arrogant in walking away from IBM so you had to figure something was up.

Yeah. I mean, it's not like McNealy's ever been arrogant in the past....

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[GiMP]

I'm expecting that Oracle has some interest in keeping the hardware around. Don't underestimate the requirement for storage for databases! There is a business case for Oracle to provide "Database Optimized" servers and storage (SAN, DAS). Storage in particular is very important to Oracle. They've contributed the OCFS clustering filesystem for this reason. More importantly and relevant, Oracle has been sponsoring Btrfs development, as an alternative/competitor to ZFS. So yes, I think the hardware will definitely stick around, at least enough that Oracle can provide turn-key solutions based on ZFS, Dtrace, and iSCSI.

Oracle being in control of both ZFS and Btrfs is a bit scary since the aspect of competitive advancement is gone (there is no other product they have to keep "one step ahead of"), and it is likely that we'll eventually see one of them wither and die. However, in the short term it might make both filesystems better.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[UnknowingFool]

Sounds like the brass at Microsoft is suffering brain drain of its own. I bet Schmidt over at Google already knew exactly what was going to happen.
Old and slow Ballmer.... old and slow...

I am guessing that Ballmer and MS thought that Sun was essentially dead as in Netcraft confirmed dead. They probably didn't figure on competing with Sun (Java and Solaris) as part of any future strategy. Yes, I know Java is open source now but someone like Oracle which runs a lot of Java will ensure it is continually developed and supported. MS cannot focus on Apple and Linux like they probably planned. They still have to fight a multi-front war against their competitors.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[jd]

He'd imparted all the spin to the revolving chair in his office.

(NB: We need 2^64 chair jokes on this story. Please contribute. CmdrTaco might thank you.)

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[fm6]

Old and slow Ballmer.... old and slow...

Oh please. Yeah, there were people who predicted this. There were also people who predicted that Sun would go to Apple, Lenovo, or Acer. It wouldn't surprise me if somebody predicted that SourceForge would buy it for the sole purpose of upgrading Slashdot's hardware!

There are so many BS predictions out there, it's darned easy to miss the ones that actually make sense. Everybody I know was caught flatfooted by this. There are lots of good reasons to think that Oracle couldn't or wouldn't buy Sun: their partnership with HP, the difficulty of borrowing money right now (IBM was going to use its cash reserves, which isn't an option for Oracle), and the difficulty Oracle will have maintaining good relationships with the hardware companies it depends on — which are now its competitors.

Hindsight is always 100% accurate. So what?

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[MightyMartian]

I agree completely. There are lots of stopped clocks out there that still manage to be right twice a day. Most of the folks I talked to fully expected the dance to continue a little longer between IBM and Sun, and then it was inevitable they'd hop into bed together. It blew everyone away when Oracle made the grab.

It's pretty damned interested, probably one of the biggest shakeups in the industry in a long time.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[ableal]

That Ballmer had no prepared spin is amazing.

"I am very surprised." is the prepared spin.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[jwhitener]

"Oracle will pull the plug on selling servers"

Why?

I keep seeing people say this, but I have yet to hear any convincing argument why they would stop the hardware aspect of Sun.

A) It was a money maker for Sun. It can be a money maker for Oracle.
B) Oracle could release preconfigured 'ready to go' database, portal, web, or other type servers.
C) Ultrasparc T2 chips are extremely low watt, high core and thread count chips, that are comparable on price with x86 for high performance in medium to large enterprise server setups.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[raftpeople]

The T2 chips do compete with x86 in the single chip arena, but with Intel's volume and the rate of advancement, that won't last much longer. On the high end (multi-proc systems), T2 performs very poorly against Power (which is designed well for multi-proc systems).

Intel is going to win this war, IBM will hold out the longest, not much hope for anyone else due to the expense of the cpu business and trying to compete with Intel's volume.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[jwhitener]

I'm not sure where you are seeing T2 performing poorly against Power?

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/3962-UltraSPARC-T2-vs.-Power6-today-Siebel-CRM.html

Do you have a reference? Here is oracle's report: http://www.oracle.com/apps_benchmark/doc/Sun_Siebel8_10000_PSPP_On_Solaris.pdf

Every article I can find shows that T2's are clearly ahead in terms of price vs performance.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[bheading]

Who says Ballmer hadn't though about it ? Why put out a statement informing the world that you have spent lots of time thinking about it, and possibly reveal the fact that you're afraid ?

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[rackserverdeals]

the difficulty of borrowing money right now (IBM was going to use its cash reserves, which isn't an option for Oracle

Why? Oracle has over 8 billion in cash, 2.78 in short term investments. Hell they could bump up their collection efforts and their net receivables could almost buy Sun. (hmm.. that doesn't look good).

Plus when they buy Sun, they get over $2bln of sun's cash.

IBM only has about 4.5 bln more in cash than Oracle, and Oracle has enough to cover the bill.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[syousef]

Oh please. Yeah, there were people who predicted this. There were also people who predicted that Sun would go to Apple, Lenovo, or Acer. It wouldn't surprise me if somebody predicted that SourceForge would buy it for the sole purpose of upgrading Slashdot's hardware!

There are so many BS predictions out there, it's darned easy to miss the ones that actually make sense.

It's also easy to make what was vaguely predicted fit what happens after the fact. I call it the nostra-dumbass effect, because people can be so damn gullible and stupid that it hurts sometimes.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[raftpeople]

Something to note about those benchmarks, if you look at the response time for the transactions the T2 was around .5 and the Power system was around .1 (if I remember correctly).

The benchmarks I've seen show the Power system scaling much better than the T2 and pretty much anything else out there (including Itanium and other Intel products). As you get to 16, 32 or 64 procs the Power systems continue to shine, the others not so much.

If the benchmarks for T2 are accurate (I question that response time difference), then it certainly performs well at that level, but it's a problem that it doesn't scale like Power.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[fm6]

My mistake. I read that Oracle was borrowing money to cover this deal, and assumed it was because they had to.

Re:It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[rackserverdeals]

Where did you read that they were going to borrow? I thought it was going to be an all cash deal with no financing necessary?

I would be really surprised if it will be profitable in the first year. Sun is going to have a $500 million hit in august.

A Star Wars quote is appropriate now...

[JamesP]

The Emperor: You have paid the price for your lack of vision.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086190/quotes

No, more like setup man..

[Shivetya]

It will probably be just like every other merger of companies that should fit well together... it won't.

I would not doubt that IBM left the table after realizing that it was either not worth the money because of culture differences or lack of something to go forward with. IBM didn't need Sun... and I really can't think of why Oracle really needs Sun except to keep IBM from buying it. Actually that is the only logic I can see, prevent someone else from buying it.

Re:No, more like setup man..

[mhall119]

I can think of several reasons why Oracle wants Sun:

1. Oracle is heavily invested in Java, it's future development would be a serious concern for them.

2. Oracle wants the whole stack, from hardware to data. IBM already has it, and Sun way trying to get it when they bought MySQL. Buying Sun gives them a proven, reliable hardware platform and operating system that they've already invested quite a bit into supporting.

3. Oracle needs to expand their product line beyond just the database to continue to grow. There is more growth potential in the rest of the datacenter than there is in database software.

Re:No, more like setup man..

[rackserverdeals]

It will probably be just like every other merger of companies that should fit well together... it won't.

Oracle has been buying up a lot of companies recently. The general consensus seems to be that they've had a good merger and acquisition strategy and that they have pulled them all off well.

Re:No, more like setup man..

[jimpop]

IBM didn't need Sun...

Correct, but more importantly: IBM didn't need some others to have Sun.

Re:No, more like setup man..

[PCM2]

3. Oracle needs to expand their product line beyond just the database to continue to grow. There is more growth potential in the rest of the datacenter than there is in database software.

You make a valid point, but you seem to have forgotten that Oracle already owns PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and BEA.

Re:No, more like setup man..

[mhall119]

True, Oracle has already expanded into business management software. That's not what I meant by the datacenter, though. I was talking more in terms of the infrastructure, servers, networking, etc.

Re:No, more like setup man..

[Ilgaz]

I also think Oracle wants to be more down to earth company with regular users supporting them because they use their (Sun) technologies.

It is hard to make a regular end user understand that Oracle is World's second largest software company just after Microsoft since they don't use Oracle products on their desktops, mobiles.

Sun's Java on the other hand, especially J2ME is used in most newbie machines, phones even if they don't know what the heck is Java. Open Office has already marked its place as the credible alternative to MS Office, in fact I have seen MS Office owners also installing it as a backup solution in case anything happens to their suite.

MySQL is used in ''soon to be very big deal'' music players coming from KDE Camp, I believe it is already used in all kinds of applications including Firefox.

Hopefully Oracle management will give Sun (engineers) one thing they lacked, trust for future and a clear direction.

Re:No, more like setup man..

[mhall119]

Firefox uses SQLite, as far as I know. Also, I don't think Oracle is real interested in a future KDE music player. For that matter, I'm not sure how interested they are in J2ME, JavaFX, or any other areas of Java that doesn't effect their existing products.

Re:No, more like setup man..

[rackserverdeals]

I'm not sure how interested they are in J2ME, JavaFX, or any other areas of Java that doesn't effect their existing products.

I would have thought the same thing, but in yesterday's conference call, they stated that Oracle was the leading embedded database which took me by surprise.

With J2ME having such reach in mobile devices, I would think they would care.

Re:No, more like setup man..

[Ilgaz]

Trust me, the companies like Oracle are interested in everything. One must be absolutely stupid or a pseudo 133t not to be interested in J2ME especially. If it didn't break the master plan of them, even Apple would be putting J2ME into iPhone as the rest of the entire phone industry. Of course, Apple app store and click on jar to install won't mix.

KDE is a very important thing and especially after the massive multi platform compatibility, apps inside KDE suite and whatever they use/advertise are important too.

They could be buying Sun to be a more end user visible company, that was the point of my post. It is not like Sun servers will run Oracle DB better like some claimed. There is no such thing.

Re:No, more like setup man..

[Ilgaz]

I think people are so locked in 1990s and they don't see the actual gigantic size of Java reach.

J2ME capable phones, devices are heading to 1 billion mark and with the opening of source, ease of licensing, it will be hard to find anything which doesn't support J2ME.

Desktop java is attacked 24/7 but I actually see apps actually written in Java are hitting top spots in general end user download sites.

As there is a huge confusion and a real bad start in Java FX, its future could be in doubt, I agree to it. Just browsing 2-3 professional java developers blogs and reading their opinions made me think that JavaFX will either restart or completely forgotten.

Re:No, more like setup man..

[binarylarry]

Maybe. Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?

Now What?

[FurtiveGlancer]

Will my understanding of OpenOffice Base become passe before I finish coding the perfect softball coaching database app?

Total Package from Oracle and Why MS Didn't Bite

[saintory]

Does this give Oracle the ability to offer total package "solutions" to their customers? Do they no longer need to go into a meeting with a potential or existing customer with a preferred hardware vendor at their side to make a co-deal? IMO this gives a lot of power to Oracle and sets up against each other two massive players in the development market.

I'm surprised that Microsoft didn't bid on Sun. I would speculate that they would want Sun for the MySql and Java markets. Had they bid and won they would control a vast proportion of the development market, from Database through to front-end, and over the next release or two of Visual Studio could unify Java and C#. As for the hardware, they could have spun it off to an interested party at an attractive price. IMO since Bill Gates left there's been a vision vacuum and the company is scrambling to find it's path through brute force instead of innovation and this is why they didn't entertain an offer.

OH yes..

[RulerOf]

anyone who doesn't know all the lyrics to American Pie deserves to be shot.

Shot...with a cannon...

...That fires chairs.

Re:OH yes..

[explosivejared]

Oh my... we have already used one chair throwing reference in this thread. A more appropriate response would have been, "I imagine that is one alarm clock that is about to get f**king killed!" Alternatively, "Ballmer's lack of reply is most likely due to the torment caused by the voices in his head switching their chant from 'developers, developers, developers...' to 'Oracle, Oracle, Oracle...,' would have worked as well. Please practice proper meme etiquette in the future.

Re:OH yes..

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the good'ol devs were drinkin pepsi and sprite, singin' "this will be the day that I'm fired"?

Re:OH yes..

[Hognoxious]

Oh my... we have already used one chair throwing reference in this thread.

So another 655,359 and we'll have enough for anybody!

Re:OH yes..

[jd]

I think you meant 65,534 (65535 is the largest 16-bit value - 655360 is not a power of 2).

However, Windows is now 64-bit, and we should increase the number of chair jokes appropriately.

Re:OH yes..

[QuantumRiff]

I know I like to have a rough sketch of about 10 or more meme's that I like to use on slashdot. Every time I see one being used, I cross it off my list, so I don't look like an Un-Original poser, trying to get affection.

However, even though there are a large number of meme's on slashdot, I do sometimes end up crossing them all off, and then don't post to the story. I am working, however, to counter this, by developing a meme-generating meme that will allow me to create more as I need them. (a Just-In-Time meme, if you will)

Re:OH yes..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hog's joke was a reference to the 640kb comment that is often attributed to Bill Gates.

640 * 1024 - 1 = 655360 - 1 = 655359

Re:OH yes..

[steelfood]

I didn't know there was a quota on the number of chairs that could be thrown per news item.

Re:OH yes..

[RulerOf]

by developing a meme-generating meme

A meme-generating meme would kind of be like cancer...

...would it be "the cancer killing Slashdot?"

Re:OH yes..

[QuantumRiff]

That's actually GNU\MEME...

Re:OH yes..

[jd]

*sticks tounge out*

Still doesn't work, as you can't throw the zero'th chair. You'd have subtract one more. So there! Nyah!

Re:OH yes..

[csartanis]

The joke is in reference to 640K ram, not 16-bit OSes.

640K = 655360

Re:OH yes..

[V!NCENT]

The laser, the laser...

You forgot the friggin' lasers! Now pack your bags and to to Digg.com and digg up 50 times!

Re:OH yes..

[V!NCENT]

I got four words for you...

I...

Love...

This...

Chair, baby. YEAH!

Re:OH yes..

[V!NCENT]

Everyone knows the zero'th chair is the first chair!

Ahmagawd newfags...

Re:OH yes..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer is such a visionary that he is most likely amazed the sun comes up each morning.

Re:OH yes..

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually GNU\MEME...

I see you are a Windows user.

Re:OH yes..

[Thinboy00]

zero ' th? WTF is the apostrophe doing?

Re:OH yes..

[TTL0]

Alternatively, "Ballmer's lack of reply is most likely due to the fact when he clicked on the reply button he got a message like 'you must upgrade to IE7 to reply to this message'"

of course if he said the OL crashed or that he had to stick in his original office cd to install the reply function i would believe that too.

Re:OH yes..

[Dansteeleuk]

No. But it will become self aware and start making Arnie clones.

Re:OH yes..

[TheoMurpse]

Maybe Steve Ballmer can't throw a zeroeth chair, but I bet Steve Jobs can. Doesn't he practice Zen or something?

Re:OH yes..

[Teufelsmuhle]

They make caffeinated Sprite now?

Surprise!

[toyjoy]

Yeah i understand Balmer and Big Blue concernes cause this could mean that Oracle will be definetly a big player now in someother areas that they don't a big role and could become bigger than them specially in the application servers area and enterprise solutions
I hope that the news about the losses of jobs in Sun will not be confirmed and that Oracle get the transition right.

On the other hand, big blue are knocking with their heads in the wall because if they didn't have given up on Sun's buyout they probably will have a great share in the server's market and the application servers, another thing is that they will have to review their strategy towards JAVA cause now it's like they are fuelling Oracle more and more.

Let's wait and see the next months will be interesting but as a JAVA developer i hope that Oracle get it right in the end.

Re:Surprise!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure you're a Java developer? Your speech patterns suggest that you've been under the influence of Perl

Somebody on the teevee....

[unitron]

...said that it was all about Oracle getting their hands on MySQL to keep IBM from doing so.

I wonder if they're going to turn around and start trying to unload the parts of Sun that they don't want. I look forward to seeing what Robert X. has to say about it.

Re:Somebody on the teevee....

[DragonWriter]

...said that it was all about Oracle getting their hands on MySQL to keep IBM from doing so.

If they said "Java" instead of "MySQL", that would be closer to being credible, but I doubt that Oracle spent the money for any one piece of IP.

Re:Total Package from Oracle and Why MS Didn't Bit

[gmaney]

They didn't bid because Microsoft and Sun would be in antitrust hell forever.

It's not that surprising

[MikeRT]

They're the "number 2 software company," but they didn't have anything like the JDK or a real OS to call their own. Now they have Java, Solaris and MySQL, plus they have access to all of Sun's customers.

Many of my customers would have loved to see this go through because then they could buy an entire package from a single company, and it'd probably be cheaper. Systems integration costs a lot of money, and if Oracle can streamline this down to the point where a lot less labor is needed to deliver and configure an enterprise setup, then they'll succeed handsomely.

I've also seen a lot of people bring up MySQL as an issue, but I bet Oracle actually wanted MySQL. Oracle's DB and MySQL don't compete in most areas, and MySQL can be an excellent rear guard product used to keep SQL Server and PostgreSQL at bay. Oracle has a huge services arm, so it's only natural that they will be able to find a way to fit MySQL into many configurations where Oracle DB would not be as good of a fit.

Re:It's not that surprising

[sunderland56]

Now they have Java, Solaris and MySQL, plus they have access to all of Sun's customers.

But, Sun is a hardware company - many/most of those customers were buying hardware. Oracle is a software company, only interested in the Java/SQL bits.

What are the chances that Oracle will sell off the hardware line? Maybe to Rackable, who seem to be buying up other dead 1990's workstation manufacturers lately....

Re:It's not that surprising

[Tsunayoshi]

Um, Sun sells a hell of a lot more than workstations. I'll take Sun servers in the datacenter over Dell/HP if given a choice.

If this goes through, I really hope Oracle keeps the coolthreads architecture.

Re:It's not that surprising

[Sun.Jedi]

But, Sun is a hardware company - many/most of those customers were buying hardware.

You don't buy SPARCs to run Linux.

The Enterprise solution on DELL/HP (either (L|W)Intel or AMD) may be cheaper on the front end, but as with anything else, you get what you pay for.

I have no real passion or hatred for Linux, but I find the Intel/AMD hardware are just toys compared to the Sun gear. I support 100 or so RedHat/Oracle 9i/10g instances on Dell. I spend the majority of my time fixing Dell issues, as opposed to fixing Sun issues.

What are the chances that Oracle will sell off the hardware line?

I sincerely hope Oracle leverages Sun hardware, and does not spin it off. In addition to Java, MySQL, ZFS, and Dtrace the HW side is a real nice bonus to this deal. It gives Oracle something that MS doesn't have... control of the hardware, which will negate the device driver issues MS faces with whatever OS they drop on the shelves.

Re:It's not that surprising

[eclectus]

Sun is as much a SOFTWARE company as a hardware company. Sun makes a TON of money licensing Java, and while Sun 'gives away' much of its software, support contracts on that software rake in a pretty penny as well.

Re:It's not that surprising

[AmaranthineNight]

Why would they? Now Oracle has a hardware arm and Solaris that they can do large deployments with. They've just made themselves an even bigger player in the Datacenter.

Re:It's not that surprising

[EvilRyry]

I hate to break it to you, but Postgres is owned by its individual contributors. There is no copyright assignment as there is with MySQL. Additionally, its BSD licensed so anyone can do pretty much anything with it.

Re:It's not that surprising

[rgviza]

LOL MySQL == OracleLite (tm)

Re:It's not that surprising

[Ilgaz]

It is really interesting that people think Oracle products only runs on Unix (Linux, BSD or the real thing) and Sun's server line can only run Unix OS.

I personally know gigantic Oracle&Sun&MS Enterprise Server and J2EE setups, one serves to millions in mission and time critical fashion.

It is the image thing I guess. I mean there is nothing saying that Oracle will conspire anything, especially regarding MS server configurations. The only company having luxury to play such spoiled kid like games is MS and nobody else. For Oracle, SAP kind of companies... Products must run on largest kind of configurations from IBM Mainframe to Windows server.

Re:It's not that surprising

[fm6]

So they're a software company. Where is it written they can't branch out? In effect, their salespeople are already selling hardware, because IT application deployments are almost always hardware/software stacks. The difference is that before Oracle salespeople had to hand off the hardware purchase to a hardware partner — along with its commissions.

Oracle is claiming that Sun will add $1.5 billion a year to their profits — starting in the first year. That number may or may not be realistic, but it lacks all credibility if it's based solely on monetizing Sun's (mostly open-source) software. They could make those kinds of profits if they cut costs drastically and do a much better job of selling Sun's servers than Sun has.

Both are eminently doable. There are a lot of Sun people (sales and marketing mostly) that Oracle won't need. And Oracle's own sales force (which is bigger than all of Sun!) isn't hampered by Sun's religious belief that you can sell a SPARC system to any customer if you try hard enough. Oracle will concentrate on selling SPARC to people who actually need it (and it just so happens that most of these people run Oracle software) and stop trying to push it to customers who are committed to commodity technology. Sun has put a lot of work into developing x64 servers that many of their sales people don't seem to care about, except as an x86/Linux-to-SPARC/Solaris migration path. Once these servers are in the hands of people who don't have a stubborn attachment to 1998 market models, they might finally get some traction.

Re:It's not that surprising

[afidel]

Oracle was already getting into the hardware game but reselling HP kit, now they have their own in-house products to use so they have complete control over how the storage engine is built from top to bottom, might lead to so very interesting, very optimized clusters for large scale database work.

Re:It's not that surprising

[Sun.Jedi]

Odd, i'm in a similar situation, and I find myself constantly fixing the SPARC boxes.

I can't offer any suggestions as to why your SPARCS need more attention than other platforms. That condition is really the opposite of my 15+ years in the business.

How many times have you called SUN, and they instructed you reboot, or install BIOS (OBP) firmware, or upgrade drivers to fix your problems?

How many phone calls to DELL would net the same result?

I'll answer. SUN has almost never required a firmware, OBP, reboot, or device driver upgrade to resolve a problem on a system THAT WAS WORKING fine for months. SUN doesn't ask you to "fall forward" from an outage or a change, they fix the problem.

It is DELL's first response after they ask you for dset and PERC log dump (not even a sysreport or sosreport!!). HP isn't much different than DELL. These manufacturers demand that you "fall forward" from nearly every outage phone or chat conversation with their support teams.

That is one of the main reasons that intel/amd are toys. If you can't install an OS on it, and have it just run, without have to keep dicking around with them (driver updates, firmware updates, etc which cause downtime), they cost more to run in admin time because of all the needless upgrades to stay "compliant" with support rules.

Re:It's not that surprising

[raftpeople]

I'm sure Sun has good hardware, but my personal experience at one shop was pretty weak and it was due to having non-ECC memory in these servers (this wasn't a customer choice, it was what was offered from Sun, we had some 4500's and some other similar number). The things crashed randomly with memory problems once a month. They kept replacing memory but problem never went away. We had as400's, hp9000's, etc., those sun boxes were the only ones that ever went down.

Re:It's not that surprising

[Sun.Jedi]

You pick on an 11 year old server! (SPARC II's, sheesh!). I can't recall any of the E series having no ECC memory in them ... sounds like a colossal error, or 3rd party memory. ;)

The HCL for the E4500 [sunsolve|bigadmin account required] and full components list shows all memory. None of that recommended stuff is non ECC. I won't say you're incorrect about the situation (we've all seen crazier stuff than this :)), but the documentation clearly shows that SUN didn't offer non ECC memory for that system.

The SUN memory installation PDF makes no mention of non ECC memory either. Dated Jan 2000, 2 years after release..

Re:It's not that surprising

[falconwolf]

They're the "number 2 software company," but they didn't have anything like the JDK or a real OS to call their own.

Oracle did have an OS, RedHat. There was talk a few years back that Oracle would kill or acquire RedHat after they released their own version of RedHat.

Falcon

Re:It's not that surprising

[syousef]

but as with anything else, you get what you pay for.

I HATE that saying. Has no one using it ever gotten anything for free or paid big only to realize they'd been ripped off?

You could modify it to "AT MOST you get what you pay for" but even that isn't true.

Try "The odds are that at most you'll get what you pay for".

Re:It's not that surprising

[syousef]

Many of my customers would have loved to see this go through because then they could buy an entire package from a single company, and it'd probably be cheaper.

Yes, because less competition means lower prices????

What are your customers smoking?

Uh, no

[afabbro]

I guess IBM must be regretting

I don't think so, since they indicated that after deeper examination and further consideration, they weren't interested in Sun at any price.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess IBM must be regretting

I don't think so, since they indicated that after deeper examination and further consideration, they weren't interested in Sun at any price.

Yes, and I am happy of not winning the lottery last weekend because I would not know what to do with all that money.

Suck it IBM!

Re:Uh, no

[jvkjvk]

Oh, right. They spent all that time and effort up to and including actually making an offer without any "deeper examination". They had all the time necessary to examine the fit and they chose to make an offer.

Oh, you mean "further consideration" after Sun rejected their offer?

In this "futher consideration" they weren't interested anything other than coming up reasons why their failed offer didn't make sense, in hindsight, after being refused. It only means they are tyring to save face. Or sour grapes.

Citing regulatory scrutiny as the driving factor behind not persuing Sun seems a bit sketchy, IMO.

Re:Uh, no

[gmhowell]

In other news, those grapes are looking mighty sour.

Re:Well they've got a lot of nerve

[quangdog]

As if allowing him time to think about it would make any difference. He routinely spews stuff like the following, even though he's had plenty of time to think about it:

"We [Microsoft] don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference."
"I've never thrown a chair in my life."
"We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we're in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There's no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either."
"If you look at the dollars, everything about our prices are quite different than classic enterprise software."
"We have no plan in place. We don't expect that to happen."

(All lifted from: http://thinkexist.com/quotes/steve_ballmer/ )

Ballmer's actual words

[Junior J. Junior III]

"They did what? ... Gosh, I don't know whether to throw a chair, or dance like a monkey!"

Re:Ballmer's actual words

[McNihil]

No it was definitely more in the lines of

"fsck me sideways!"

Re:Ballmer's actual words

[VGPowerlord]

"Of course, they don't have the support of developers, developers, developers, developers!"

Re:Ballmer's actual words

[mario_grgic]

You mean JDevelopers, JDevelopers, JDevelopers

More like they dodged a bullet.

[jcr]

IBM saved themselves another Rolm disaster. If they'd bought Sun, they'd have to write down 80% of it within five years.

-jcr

Re:More like they dodged a bullet.

[jcr]

why do you sign your username?

Because I feel like it. What's it to you?

-jcr

Re:More like they dodged a bullet.

[Midnight Thunder]

>> why do you sign your username?
>
>Because I feel like it. What's it to you?
>
>-jcr

Which is certainly better that signing with someone else's ;)

-anonymous (not)

Re:More like they dodged a bullet.

[Xarin]

But they could do like they did with Rolm and transfer all their dead end managers to it and then sell it.

Re:More like they dodged a bullet.

[jcr]

Oh, I've got my faults, but at least I've never thrown a tantrum over four characters at the end of a post on a web page.

-jcr

Re:More like they dodged a bullet.

[jcr]

they could do like they did with Rolm and transfer all their dead end managers to it and then sell it.

IBM hasn't been shy about laying off deadwood lately. They really don't need a pretext like that anymore.

-jcr

or not

[bcrowell]

Okay, I'll make the argument to the contrary: that IBM currently has every reason to be giving their Evil Laugh a big workout right now.

The NY Times this morning has an article saying that basically this is all about Oracle wanting to get into the business of designing, selling, and maintaining integrated systems for businesses that don't want to have to deal with a zillion vendors and bake their own setups. This is essentially what IBM is already in the business of doing. IBM already has a thriving business model where they set up their customers with software and hardware, and a lot of the software they use is open-source.

By buying Sun, Oracle gets a bunch of software. But OpenSolaris, MySQL, Java, and OpenOffice were all already open-source. Well, nothing was stopping them from selling customers a setup that used MySQL, Java, and OpenOffice, even before they bought Sun. That's what IBM does already. You could argue that Oracle gets more control now over these things. Well, yeah, except that because they're open source, they can always be forked, and they'll always be in competition with other open-source projects. Suppose that Oracle, for example, lets MySQL languish for fear of making it compete too effectively with Oracle Database. Well, the OSS community could then fork MySQL, or simply switch to alternatives like Drizzle (low end) or Postgres (high end).

By buying Sun, Oracle also gets a hardware operation. But Oracle has no experience in the hardware business.

There's also the argument that buying your competitors is an easier way to grab market share than out-competing them or out-marketing them. That was a sane argument for buying PeopleSoft. But OpenSolaris, Java, and OpenOffice, and Sun's hardware weren't products that were competing with Oracle's products, and MySQL wasn't really competing in the same arena as Oracle Database either.

Re:or not

[DragonWriter]

By buying Sun, Oracle also gets a hardware operation. But Oracle has no experience in the hardware business.

But Sun does. And, you know, all those people who work for Sun and constitute that experience are, when the deal is complete, Oracle employees, Oracle just needs to keep them and leverage their experience. This isn't entirely unheard of in acquisitions -- you acquire a firm that has experience you want, and then keep the people with the experience in a position to make use of it. Its not always just about acquiring an IP portfolio. Heck, sometimes its as much about acquiring the people and their experience as the IP portfolio. Two notable examples of this are acquisitions of Steve Jobs-run firms -- Apple's acquisition of NeXT and Disney's acquisition of Pixar.

Re:or not

[Tsunayoshi]

By buying Sun, Oracle also gets a hardware operation. But Oracle has no experience in the hardware business.

If they buy Sun, they have entire business unit that has experience in the hardware business. If they (Oracle) are smart, they won't try to change how the new (to Oracle) business units run, and will listen to the people in those units when it comes to how to run them.

But having been on 2 different occasions part of a company that was acquired by another, I have no faith that Oracle will do the smart thing when merging them.

Re:or not

[eclectus]

By buying Sun, Oracle gets a bunch of software. But OpenSolaris, MySQL, Java, and OpenOffice were all already open-source. Well, nothing was stopping them from selling customers a setup that used MySQL, Java, and OpenOffice, even before they bought Sun. That's what IBM does already. You could argue that Oracle gets more control now over these things.

Not only that, but they don't have to reinvent the wheel with a support organization for those products. They just bought one. Sun Support has always been a money maker for Sun.

(Caveat: I work for Sun Support. I personally am looking forward to being Oracle. Much better than having to take the Blue Pill(TM) of IBM)

Re:or not

[Xarin]

By buying Sun, Oracle also gets a hardware operation. But Oracle has no experience in the hardware business.

Ellison did buy nCUBE so he does have some hardware experience albeit a not very positive one.

Re:or not

[SpazmodeusG]

It's GPL not LGPL. Oracle really can't use any of that open source stuff unless the product they release is also open source.

For example I've just dealt with a Java app that connects to MySQL.
The MySQL Java connector (Connector/J 5.1) is part of our program. It isn't LGPL licensed, it's GPL. So it requires a license to use in a commercial closed source program.
http://www.mysql.com/products/connector-j

Note the link to buy a commercial license on that page.

Sun's genius

[Farlan]

Sun was in serious danger of repeating a Microsoft-Yahoo dance, but the Oracle deal makes me think their board actually thinks about these deals unlike Yahoo...

I'd rather it was IBM...

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO Oracle's track record on incorporating businesses w/o mucking things up is lackluster at best.

JRockit, the old BEA product that was (is?) the best server-side JVM is difficult if not impossible to download individually now that Oracle owns BEA. Are we going to have the same issues trying to download the sun JVMs? Is the newly open-sourced JVM going to become closed source again?

How about the impact to the various Java committees, etc? Will hostility towards Oracle negatively impact them? Oracle obviously has it's own goals for Java and J2EE (to make things easier for them), but how will these goals conflict with the goals of the other community members?

I think that while it might have been a good purchase for Oracle that it will probably be a negative move as seen by the Java community...

Bidding war?

[jimand]

I assume the Sun shareholders still have to vote on the offer. IBM can go away,sharpen their pencils to see if they can make money with a $9.75/share hostile offer. I wouldn't call it over yet.

Re:Ummmm

[nicolas.kassis]

Yeah but, do you hear about it now that it's done? Nope, they ate that company like it was cheese cake.

Re:Ummmm

[rackserverdeals]

"all reports I've read in the press indicate that Oracle has been handling the mergers very well."

*cough*peoplesoft fiasco*cough*

I'm talking post merger. Merger might not be the right word in that case. It was pretty much a hostile takeover with Peoplesoft kicking and screaming as well as legal battles to get it done.

But a year after the Oracle Peoplesoft merger things seemed to be going smoothly.

Even now, years later, while they've been working on consolidating the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards products, they haven't abandoned support for the legacy systems people are using.

Several months ago?

[PCM2]

Months ago? Lots of analysts? Hmmm. I think maybe it's easier to "foresee" this type of stuff in hindsight.

Not to toot my own horn, but I predicted Oracle would buy Sun before the deal was announced -- but I didn't do it months ago. I didn't hear anyone else talking about it months ago, either. And when I made the prediction, the consensus here on Slashdot seemed to be that it was a terrible idea. So if you can point to some references from months ago I'd love to see them. I don't think anybody was really even thinking much about Oracle/Sun before the talks with IBM made the news -- I know I wasn't -- especially considering that Sun had consistently maintained that it was doing fine and didn't need any help from anybody.

So it doesn't completely surprise me that Ballmer didn't see this coming -- though maybe he's not as shocked as he's pretending to be. By acting surprised, he makes it sound like he wouldn't have made this deal himself, which makes it sound like he might not think the deal is a good idea, which is a totally self-serving position for Microsoft to take.

It does seem a little strange that IBM is acting surprised, though. By all accounts they had exclusive rights to negotiate with Sun for a set period of time, and they let that period elapse. What did they expect? Maybe they didn't believe Sun would be able to leave the table and arrive at a firm deal with a different suitor so quickly, but that seems a little foolish on their part, if it's true.

Re:Several months ago?

[GPLDAN]

Not to toot my own horn, but I predicted Oracle would buy Sun [infoworld.com] before the deal was announced -- but I didn't do it months ago.

Neil McAllister called it first, people! He didn't want to toot his own horn, but my stupid generalization made him!


I'm very sorry, Neil. You did call it, and my Google searches cannot find an older periodical that did. You win the IT columnist Pulitzer, whatever that is called. Richly deserved.


Speculation in Usenet and mailing lists predate this, but it was of the "Oracle could use Sun" commentary variety, and nothing akin to your piece that clearly lays out the logic why.


If I had bought in at 6.5 the day your article was published, I would be sitting pretty at 9 now, probably 10 and a half by the end of the week. My bad.

Re:Several months ago?

[fsmunoz]

It does seem a little strange that IBM is acting surprised, though. By all accounts they had exclusive rights to negotiate with Sun for a set period of time, and they let that period elapse. What did they expect? Maybe they didn't believe Sun would be able to leave the table and arrive at a firm deal with a different suitor so quickly, but that seems a little foolish on their part, if it's true.

I'm not really privy to the minutae of this things, but didn't the exclusive rights period ended very recently? As I see it - and I'm asking for your input since you apparently know what you're talking about - this means that Oracle initiated and closed the deal after the IBM negotiations ended, since "exclusive rights" would lead me to believe that they couldn't be negotiating at the same times... if so, saying that McNealy "knew" of the Oracle way out can lend itself to insinuate that the "exclusive negotiation period" wasn't that exclusive after all.

I would appreciate any comments.

Re:Several months ago?

[Raenex]

And when I made the prediction, the consensus here on Slashdot [slashdot.org] seemed to be that it was a terrible idea.

I think that's selective reading on your part. I just read that story at +3 or better, and there was lots of mixed commentary, from positive to negative to neutral speculation about what such a buyout would result in. Only two or three posts flatly rejected it.

Re:Several months ago?

[PCM2]

This is just my speculation, but Sun probably had 20 lawyers in a room full of IBM lawyers for every day of negotiation ... and Scott McNealy probably crashed at Larry Ellison's house every night.

I don't think there was anything untoward on Sun's part, though. IBM walked away from the deal. Nothing about being a giant company precludes you from being a sucker.

Re:Several months ago?

[rackserverdeals]

Sun was being shopped around to a lot of different companies, including Intel, according to reports.

It's more likely there were talks with Oracle before IBM got serious about the offer. While IBM rumors broke, Oracle might have regretted not jumping in, or looked into the deal more, or were worried what an IBM/Sun merger could mean for them considering Solaris/SPARC is important for their business.

Oracle is now the new Apple

[8127972]

They control the Oracle experience from end to end and lock everybody else (read: Microsoft) out. Ballmer likely came to that conclusion and said "oh shit." That's why he's at a loss for words.

Re:Oracle is now the new Apple

[closingBrace]

These are dark days for Java... Will Java remains open source? Will Java remains stable? Will Java remains Java? Will Java remains my favorite programming language? Will Oracle kills Java? That's what we will know in the next years... Stay tuned!

Re:Oracle is now the new Apple

[Svartalf]

Big effin' deal.

Seriously.

Once you GPL/LGPL it, if people are interested in carrying it's development, it'll stay that way.

They're going to have a rough time putting that genie back in the bottle in the case of Java now.

Re:Oracle is now the new Apple

[Hognoxious]

That doesn't mean the free fork will stay the same as, or even compatible with, the "official" version.

Re:Oracle is now the new Apple

[DragonWriter]

That doesn't mean the free fork will stay the same as, or even compatible with, the "official" version.

Oracle would be kind of dumb not to keep up Java development open, since it would open up the field to some competitor to provide a commercially-supported-but-open-source fork that would harness the open-source community and be attractive to enterprises (and, since it could be as compatible with legacy Java apps as any closed version that Oracle produced, Oracle wouldn't have any compatibility advantage.) And there is at least one major competitor of Oracle's well positioned to do that.

Re:Oracle is now the new Apple

[shutdown -p now]

Once you GPL/LGPL it, if people are interested in carrying it's development, it'll stay that way.

They're going to have a rough time putting that genie back in the bottle in the case of Java now.

One of the major strengths of Java was that there was "just one Java" in existence, with all specs tightly controlled by Sun. If we get an "official" Oracle Java, and a bunch of diverging GPL'd forks (I don't trust the FOSS crowd to stick to a single one, looking at past experience), all introducing new mutually incompatible features, it will weaken Java as a whole severely.

In practice, if Oracle will "de-GPL" Java (i.e. ignore all code contributed to OpenJDK so far, and stop distributing future versions under GPL), most enterprises - which are the majority of Java users - would just follow the Oracle branch. OpenJDK guys can try to keep up with that, but that would work about as well as it did for Mono (and FOSS Java efforts in the past).

Re:Oracle is now the new Apple

[El_Oscuro]

Oracle isn't going to kill Java. I mean, their who fscking database has it in it. It would be like them killing SQL... But what does worry me is the crappyness of Oracle's Java Code

The Reason

[kenp2002]

The reason Ballmer was speechless is he forgot Oracle was still around or was suprised Oracle had that kind of money. Take your pick...

Re:The Reason

[rackserverdeals]

The reason Ballmer was speechless is he forgot Oracle was still around or was suprised Oracle had that kind of money. Take your pick...

It's unlikely that the CEO of the #1 software company wouldn't know who #2 was.

Rarely at a loss for words?

[jsse]

But apparently Ballmer, who is rarely at a loss for words, didn't exactly have a sound byte at the ready.

This journalist is a true newbie in this field. Haven't he heard what happened when Ballmer loss for words last time? He expressed his gentle feeling with body language.

It's not a sound byte he was not ready, it's a chair.

Re:Total Package from Oracle and Why MS Didn't Bit

[jd]

And this would be a bad thing, how? Seems to me that hell would be a great place for Microsoft. Does anyone have any Elder Signs available? Preferably on a chair.

More information for Slashdotters

[bogaboga]

This information for chronic trollers and all interested parties at Slashdot. So before you talk about what you do not know, here's a link:

Re:Well they've got a lot of nerve

[Locke2005]

True, but he IS one of the few CEOs that has his own usenet newsgroup: alt.balmer.developers.developers.developers!

agreed except for

[Reality Master 201]

This statement:

Sun way trying to get it when they bought MySQL

Perhaps you didn't mean to compare DB2 to MySQL, but saying MySQL would serve the same place in the product lineup is deeply silly, at best.

Re:agreed except for

[mhall119]

No, but it was the only option Sun had to purchase in terms of a database with significant market and mindshare.

Re:agreed except for

[ralphdaugherty]

Perhaps you didn't mean to compare DB2 to MySQL, but saying MySQL would serve the same place in the product lineup is deeply silly, at best.

      While this is true, some may be interested that IBM is writing a DB2 frontend plugin for MySQL. All SQL statements against MySQL would actually be performed against DB2.

      This is a compatability interface for all PHP software to run unmodified against the enterprise DB2 database on the IBM iseries. Zend has a free Apache PHP engine for the iseries, and MySQL can be installed and used as is as well as DB2 with Zend provided calls, but ideally unmodified PHP would run against the iseries DB2 database with the default MySQL database syntax, and that's what the IBM plugin will provide.

      It's all running in a Unix subset of the iseries OS (formerly OS/400) so should also be available for Unix and Linux.

  rd

Re:agreed except for

[Reality Master 201]

Yeah, but so what? There's a perfectly serviceable to DB2 in most common programming languages - C/C++, Java, Python, Perl, Perl. Hell, on *nix you can use the db2cli client and interface with the database using shell scripting tools. Mostly this is for people running tools that only use MySQL, and it's only to replace them with DB2 eventually - I've worked on at least one such project (a disaster, though through no fault of DB2 or the cadres of IBM Global Services consultants that I dealt with).

Another "DUH" moment...

[bodland]

Oracle RDBMS and Sun has long been a solid platform combo. Typical of Microsoft's "Windows" on the world viewpoint. While they were building mice, gaming platforms and the paper clip dude, Oracle and Sun were working together to create a bullet proof enterprise Java enabled database platform. I was not surprised in the least at Oracle snapping up Sun.

Whoooooosh!

[AliasMarlowe]

640K is enough for anyone.
640K = 640*1024 = 655360.

Re:I hate to be the grammar Nazi here...

[rackserverdeals]

Please tell me, that English is not your first language.

English is my first language (gee maybe second but it's very close I learned two at the same time). Slashdot isn't my first priority and I'm usually doing one or more other things while I'm typing. It's common for me to stop in the middle of a sentence then come back in mid thought which screws things up.

I type pretty fast but I still think faster than I type and that gets in the way too.

If I took the time to proofread, I'd spot the errors. But commenting on Slashdot, just isn't that important to me and I couldn't care less about the grammatical errors as long as the underlying message gets across.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[ThogScully]

There's a psychology that happens when a person bids on something, especially nearing the end when they've mentally committed to it and expect to win it. They will bid higher if they get outbid. That means that if I want to win something, I'm going to outbid him close to the closing time, or else that person may convince themselves to bid higher to prevent losing the item.

Relying on the maximum bid proxy to win things for you is a good way not to win things. You're assuming we're all rational robots who've determined a set maximum before even bidding once.
-N

Timeframes and Widenius

[SignalFreq]

Seems obvious that Sun was in talks with Oracle at least as early as February (when Monty Widenius left). I'm sure that Oracle and Widenius are mutually exclusive and may be the real reason that he left (or was asked to leave) Sun.

Start your own company

[olddotter]

If these leaders of the corporate world couldn't see this 3,000 miles and 6 years away, then that shows that you too can run a Fortune 500 company. What will surprise me is if Oracle kills MySQL. I suspect that MySQL would be the perfect way to attack SQL Server from the bottom and Use Oracle to attack from the top. Just squeeze MS from the top and bottom in the database space.

More interesting points

[a_claudiu]

Everybody is discussing on MySQL, Solaris and Java. But are still some other opportunities for Oracle: JavaME and OpenOffice.

If Oracle have balls they could continue the push for JavaME (Java is used in almost all mobile phones and is the only solution for write once run everywhere). A kind of Java is used also by Google Android platform.

They can make also an alternative for exchange server and with a decent office suit Microsoft is history. This is a real stack offer: hardware for servers, soft for middleware and soft for frontend (PC's, notebooks and mobile phones) all "seamless" integrated.

To be honest I don't see Oracle coming so close to the user from their pedestal of "High level enterprise provider" but it can be an idea.

Re:Total Package from Oracle and Why MS Didn't Bit

[lordtoran]

Well, why SHOULD have Microsoft placed a bid for Sun? Their software stack doesn't run on SPARC, they are surely not interested in maintaining open source Unix and selling big ass servers is not their specialty either. A buyout would also have consumed at least a third of their remaining warchest, not to speak of aftermath losses. And that in the middle of a recession and massive layoffs. Even Ballmer is not that stupid.

Seen it coming? Rearview Mirror

[Dareth]

Why should have Ballmer and Microsoft seen this coming?
Even back in the day, when Bill was running Microsoft, they did not see the Internet coming.
I mean come one, Ballmer is not an Oracle!

Whats next?

[drolli]

This is interesting.

When it comes to Databases

MS: Software stack, .NET
IBM: Software Stack+Hardware (own system, linux, windows), lots of java
Oracle: Software Stack+Hardware (own system, linux, windows), lots of Java

Somehow when it comes to selling complete solutions MS is missing something..... Moreover, if IBM and Oracle agree on pushing Java, then .NET will be dead soon.

Will Oracle keep the hardware, or sell it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle sure wanted the software, no doubt. But what about the hardware? Will they keep it, or sell it to someone like Fujitsu? That's bit of news is the next shoe to drop...

Sun Hardware

[raftpeople]

The writing is on the wall, with Intel's volume it is going to be (already is) very difficult to compete in the processor market. I would be very surprised if Sun cpu's lasted very long. Maybe Oracle will keep building systems, but as Intel continues to improve, I'm guessing it will be with Intel cpu's.

Ballmer knew this was a possibility

[raftpeople]

There is no way he didn't know and walk through the pro's and con's of this acquisition with his people well in advance. All of those guys know far more than anything reported in the media, and because they are sitting in the same position they can pretty quickly do the analysis to figure out who might or might not be in a position to acquire a company like Sun.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[diablovision]

Of course your comment assumes the concept of "maximum bid" does not exist. If you have to bid more than your maximum bid to win, then it wasn't your maximum bid--it doesn't matter whether the other party is rational or not. You seem to be implying that the only way to win against an irrational counter bid is with a larger, also irrational bid.

No Need to Regret Not Buying Sun

[reporter]

Ballmer at Microsoft need not regret that he lost the chance to buy Sun. $7.4 billion is too much for a company like Sun. The only reason that Ellison at Oracle would shell out that kind of money is that McNealy at Sun is his personal friend.

Allow me to explain.

The bulk of Sun's revenue comes from SPARC-based servers. Sun simply cannot afford to develop further SPARC processors -- including the so-called chip-multiprocessor ones like Niagara. Why? Sun lost the workstation market on the desktop to Intel. The last SPARC-based workstation used the UltraSPARC III, and sales of this workstation were discontinued after 2007. Look at Sun's web site. The sales of SPARC-based workstations are finished.

Without the economies of scale from selling hundreds of thousands of SPARC chips in hundreds of thousands of workstations, Sun cannot afford to develop the SPARC processor any more.

Without SPARC processors, most Sun's servers would disappear, and so would the bulk of its revenue. Sun could continue selling Fujitsu-designed SPARC systems, but Sun's profit margins on those are small.

Basically, Oracle will terminate the hardware business at Sun. In other words, Oracle paid $7.4 billion only for the software business of Sun. $7.4 billion is too much for such a miniscule part of Sun. Software brings little revenue (or profits) to Sun.

Re:No Need to Regret Not Buying Sun

[mabhatter654]

the future in enterprise is blades. Oracle will now have an appliance strategy to put in place. They can make Sparc blades for all the other systems.. in fact there's a sparc blade for IBM Blade center. This will let them sell Oracle as a plug-in module pre-configured, and ready to go. The blade chassis will take care of all the storage and networking in a standard manner allowing Oracle to focus on a highly optimized OS + DB strategy. Compared to the cost of an Oracle license the blade hardware would be really cheap. What business wouldn't want a plug-n-play system and I'd think IT staff would love only having one support point for everything from hardware failures to SQL performance issues.

Re:No Need to Regret Not Buying Sun

[rackserverdeals]

Basically, Oracle will terminate the hardware business at Sun. In other words, Oracle paid $7.4 billion only for the software business of Sun. $7.4 billion is too much for such a miniscule part of Sun. Software brings little revenue (or profits) to Sun.

Or you are completely off base.

Re:No Need to Regret Not Buying Sun

[hanekhw]

Yes and the Sun rose over the Oracle. The Sun/IBM deal did make more sense and probably would have incorporated at least some of the Sun hardware technology in some hybrid form. The software side alone may in the future be worth the price but I'm skeptical. Friendships don't translate into billions overpaid in business. Ellison is a businessman. He has plans.

Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about a CEO that is unplugged. You would think that Steve Ballmer had an army of minions at the ready to update the CEO at a moments notice when a GLOBAL market game change is made. I guess Microsoft is a bit slow on getting that information to the powers at be _or_ so obese that the buyout has no affect on them.
 
I think someone either 1) needs to wake up earlier in the day and get the market pulse before heading out the door to clients, 2) be introduced to modern day mobile gadgetry, or 3) BS his way through an answer as to not look behind the times.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[vux984]

Of course your comment assumes the concept of "maximum bid" does not exist. If you have to bid more than your maximum bid to win, then it wasn't your maximum bid--it doesn't matter whether the other party is rational or not. You seem to be implying that the only way to win against an irrational counter bid is with a larger, also irrational bid.

Not quite.

Lets suppose his rational absolute maximum bid is $100, and he is immune from the excitement psychology that compels people to start increasing their maximum as the counter runs out.

For the sake of argument lets say I am one of those irrational twits who bids things up at the end beyond my maximum price to win. (I'm not.)

Lets also say I'm the current high bidder at $60.00, with a maximum of $80, with 1hour to go.

His rational and optimal bidding strategy is to bid his maximum of $100 in the final seconds of the auction.

Here's why:
If he waits and bids in the final seconds, his $100 will exceed my $80, and he'll become the top bidder at $82.00 and then the auction ends. And he wins at $85.

If he bids immediately, with an hour to go; his $100 will exceed my $80, and he'll become the top bidder at $85, I'll get notified that I've been outbid, and then log in to ebay... I'll see it sitting there at $85, and the pschychological need to win takes hold... so I up my maximum.

I bid $92, but that's not enough, and he still has high bid at $97. And I give up. He still wins, but he's paying $97 instead of $85. Bidding early cost him $12.

Or... I don't give up, and raise my max another $12.. $102. Now I'm back on top at $102. And he loses. Bidding early cost him the auction.

This is why I hate ebay. Its *designed* in such a way that the *optimal* bidding strategy is to try and snipe the auction at the last second. Its just stupid. And it costs the sellers because they aren't getting the best prices (and therefore it even costs ebay fees). Sellers should have the option of creating a 'rolling auction' where each time a bid is placed the auction close is reset a day into the future or maybe 8 hours ... I dunno whatever. Then sniping becomes a much weaker strategy because even if you bid at the last second everyone else has a reasonable period of time to re-consider their bids.

Re:I hate to be the grammar Nazi here...

[oliderid]

You got the vocabulary, so I guess it could be first language. Which would really be a shame. :)

Not my native tongue either. He made interesting points, nothing to be ashamed.

You have shown your incapacity to focus on the essential: the content, rather than the spelling. I feel like it is more serious than few typos personally.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[vux984]

On a serious note, I hate last-minute eBay bidders.

Me too, but its the optimal bidding strategy.

The people you're bidding against don't know what your maximum bid is, so it doesn't matter if you enter your maximum as soon as you decide on it or at the last minute.

It does matter. See my explanation elsewhere in the thread here:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1206487&cid=27666381

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[diablovision]

Fair point, gunbroker.com has a rolling bid system and it works much better :-)

Larry already tried to make database hardware

[tlambert]

Larry already tried to make database hardware:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCUBE

It turns out that it's not as easy as declaring a project or buying a company. Most modern storage systems truly suck, at the drive firmware level, where there's nothing you can do about it without changing how disks are manufactured.

I don't see him being successful trying to turn Sun into "nCubed The Sequel", and I really doubt he'd try that.

-- Terry

Now with Sun, their getting an OS

[falconwolf]

Oracle already has an OS, they have been using Redhat Linux.

Falcon

Oracle and Redhat

[falconwolf]

Oracle will definately push Oracle DB, it's their main earner. They will support Linux but will likely push Solaris. If they were going to push Linux they would have bought RedHat, because Linux to Oracle means RedHat.

Why would Oracle buy, they already sell systems with Redhat. A few years ago there was speculation Oracle would buy Redhat because they started using it, or kill Redhat. Here's one such article, "Will Oracle Linux Kill Red Hat?"

Falcon

Oblig

[PPH]

In Soviet Russia, the chair gets you!

Oracle, IBM, MS merger

[falconwolf]

The only way to get an instant DB monopoly by merger would be if Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft underwent a three-way merger. Which is somewhat unlikely.

Imagine this, Larry Ellison throwing Ballmer off his sailboat, during the Sailing World Cup.

Falcon

Oracle buying Sun

[falconwolf]

When a customer says "we're going with IBM because they can deliver a whole solution" Oracle can now say "So can we!".

What would bother me if I were at Oracle would be those hardware businesses that I currently supply with a DB developing the attitude that Oracle was going to compeat with them. With the buyout Oracle would have a compleat system from hardware to OS to applications.

Falcon

Food, Home, Sex, Java - Google it...

[Randomly]

I don't understand: how is it possible to acquire a company with technologies that are this monetize-able: http://tinyurl.com/dh8mcr ?

Oracle is/was bad.

[nurb432]

More evil now? I don't think they have ever not been more evil. They were just lower on the radar for most people.

Re:Total Package from Oracle and Why MS Didn't Bit

[nurb432]

True, but they still need to keep track of what is going on .

Re:Total Package from Oracle and Why MS Didn't Bit

[CodeBuster]

That is an excellent point. In fact, rather than make large acquisitions of the type like Yahoo and Sun, Microsoft would be better served by consolidating their divisions to concentrate their research efforts and eliminate unprofitable also-rans like the Zune. Their continued investment in Windows 7 probably is a wise long term move, provided that they can price it competitively. The $300 price point is just too expensive for an non-server OS these days. Microsoft really needs to hit the $100 or less price point with Windows 7 if they want to remain competitive going forward. They should also do more to encourage open source efforts like nAnt, nUnit, nDoc, and nHibernate on their .NET platform and address the niggling issues with Visual Studio (it is already a good product, but it could really be great if they included the sort of features that one now has to buy ReSharper to get). This will be especially important if a combined Oracle + Sun step up the competition with the Java platform (personally I would like to see BOTH succeed going forward because competition has always delivered better platforms and products in computing).

Re:Total Package from Oracle and Why MS Didn't Bit

[Raenex]

Well, why SHOULD have Microsoft placed a bid for Sun?

To kill Java or turn it into a dotNET zombie. Would have been interesting.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[Tubal-Cain]

I hate last-minute eBay bidders

Minute? How slow of reflexes do you have?
I never bid with more than 10 seconds left, and it's usually closer to 5.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[petermgreen]

Sellers should have the option of creating a 'rolling auction' where each time a bid is placed the auction close is reset a day into the future or maybe 8 hours ... I dunno whatever. Then sniping becomes a much weaker strategy because even if you bid at the last second everyone else has a reasonable period of time to re-consider their bids.
Personally I would avoid such an auction (unless it was the only way to get a rare item) because I would know that irrational twits would most likely win and because it would make dealing with trying to buy one of a load of similar items a PITA.

While I don't particularlly like the current ebay format I think an indeterminate end time would piss off a lot of buyers (and the more buyers you have the more likely you will have some buyers who think the item is valuable) while a sealed bid system would extract less money from irrational twits.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[vux984]

Personally I would avoid such an auction (unless it was the only way to get a rare item) because I would know that irrational twits would most likely win

They should win. Its an auction where the person willing to pay the most wins the item. That's the point. Why on earth would any seller ever want to sell anything below the maximum they could get for it?

While I don't particularlly like the current ebay format I think an indeterminate end time would piss off a lot of buyers

Perhaps, but the current system pisses off a lot of buyers, and turns them away. I don't buy much on ebay because I hate the system. And the majority of my 'wins' are 'buy it now'.

Another idea for fixing ebay is to switch to a looser and slightly random end time. Instead of '5 minutes left...', '1 minute left'... '10 seconds left'.

Simply say the auction ends on Friday, May 3. And leave it at that. On May 3, say the auction ends: 'Today', until suddenly its done. Bidders will have a pre-determined time it will be over... they KNOW it will be over by May 4 no matter what happens, they just don't know what time it ends on May 3.

The upshot is there is no way to effectively snipe since you don't know what time the auction ends. The best you can do is bid midnight May 2nd, and hope the auction ends really early May 3rd.

Re:Ummmm

[Mr. Foogle]

Even now, years later, while they've been working on consolidating the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards products, they haven't abandoned support for the legacy systems people are using.

Abandoned is such an interesting word. We're using a legacy product bought by Oracle. Before the company was bought their support guys would bend over backwards to support us. Patches, updates, advice.

Post-buy .. it's the same support crew. But they act oddly Borg like and most answers to our problems come in the form of 'upgrade there is no other fix'.

Also, a promised upgrade to the product for Solaris was de-facto canceled in favor of Windows only.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[equivocal]

Caveat ebay: If you beat a sniper, you paid too much.

Sealed bidding would come closer to the perfectly rational primate model of behavior than tweaking the close times. If you can't see what other people think something is worth then it can't influence what you think it's worth.

And such a late posting deserves a gratuitous stupid-ebayers story. I just watched an item listed with a starting price of $50 not sell, get relisted with a starting price of $25 and close with a winning bid of $60.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[fm6]

You seem to be implying that the only way to win against an irrational counter bid is with a larger, also irrational bid.

It is. It just isn't a valid strategy for getting a good price.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[fm6]

You can be rational without being a "robot".

It's possible that when you get outbid on something, you could rationally decide that the item is worth a little more to you than you originally thought. But that's obviously not what's happening when people up their bids several times — especially when they do it at the last moment.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[fm6]

I hope that was an attempt at a joke. Though given your inability to express yourself clearly, I guess it probably wasn't.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[fm6]

I bid $92, but that's not enough, and he still has high bid at $97. And I give up. He still wins, but he's paying $97 instead of $85. Bidding early cost him $12.

Why? If you had bid $92 in the first place, he still would have given up at $85.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[fm6]

Sorry, I expressed that backwards, and too simplistically.

Why did you give up at $92? Unless you're a compulsive bidder, it's because that's the most you're willing to pay. So that's the maximum you're going to bid for the thing, regardless of what the other guy does.

Now suppose you bid $92 a week before. The other guy doesn't know this, he just knows that his top bid is less than yours. So he still bids it up to $97. Maybe he does it more quickly, but aside from that, the outcome is the same.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[vux984]

Why did you give up at $92? Unless you're a compulsive bidder, it's because that's the most you're willing to pay. So that's the maximum you're going to bid for the thing, regardless of what the other guy does.

Right. But -until- he bid, "I" had entered a max bid of $80. After he bid I reconsidered and decided my true max was 92.

However, if he had bid at at the last second, I never would have reconsidered my max bid and it would have still been $80 five seconds before the auction ended, when he bids. By doing this I don't have a chance to consider enter my true maximum.

By bidding $100 immediately before the auction bid he is able to get the item for $85, well LESS than my maximum bid, which is to his advantage.

The outcome, by him bidding at the last second, was different AND in his favor.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[fm6]

In other words, bidding at the last minute gives you a final chance to change your mind.

That's not improving your odds. That's just second guessing yourself. That's bad decision making, especially when you're doing it under time pressure. If $92 was too much to pay when you had time to think about it, it's not suddenly going to become a reasonable price just before the auction ends.

You said before that bidding early is a formula for losing. Well, winning isn't everything. If winning every auction is your primary goal, then you're going to buy a lot of stuff for a lot more than it's worth. If you want to get things at a reasonable price, you'll actually end up losing most auctions.

Especially on eBay, where most of the users seem to be like you, in it solely for the buzz of winning.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[ksheff]

Relying on the maximum bid proxy to win things for you is a good way not to win things. You're assuming we're all rational robots who've determined a set maximum before even bidding once.

I don't bid to win. I bid as a way to get things cheap. If I can find the same item on another web site, I'll use that price and factoring in the difference in shipping/taxes/etc to determine the max bid. If I win the auction and get it for less, that's great. If not, I buy it from the other site and still pay less than the winner of the auction.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[ksheff]

Actually, the rolling bidding process is closer to many 'real life' auctions that what ebay has. They have no time limits and bidding stops when no one else wants to pay more than what the last guy has bid. The "reasonable time period to reconsider their bids" is when the auctioneer is doing the "going once...going twice.." spiel.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[Tubal-Cain]

...given your inability to express yourself clearly.

How was I unclear?
You are correct that it wasn't a joke, though. I'm not going to lose an auction to someone that has second thoughts about what "Maximum Bid" actually means. If people were willing to bid once and only once, it wouldn't matter if I bid at the last second or at the first.

The alternative is a bidding war. I outbid someone (because it is my actual maximum bid), and they decide to up the ante until either they can't justify bidding higher, or they outbid me. Either way, the price gets driven higher.
I decided I would never go the bidding war route after watching my dad bid on some appliance:
He made a bid, and the guy he outbid bid again. My dad commented aloud how stupid the guy was for driving up the price like that... and then bid higher.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[fm6]

Unclarity: "How slow of reflexes do you have?"

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[vux984]

In other words, bidding at the last minute gives you a final chance to change your mind.

No. Bidding at the last minute DENIES anyone else a chance to change THEIR minds and increase THEIR maximum bids.

If $92 was too much to pay when you had time to think about it, it's not suddenly going to become a reasonable price just before the auction ends.

Well, DUH!. But we're talking about optimal bidding strategies for the other guy to beat people like "me" AND get the lowest price. I specifically said:

"For the sake of argument, lets assume I'm one of those twits who raises maximums." Hint: I'm not that person,

You said before that bidding early is a formula for losing.

Bidding early is a formula for losing AND/OR paying more.

If you want to get things at a reasonable price, you'll actually end up losing most auctions.

If "your maximum bid" == "reasonable price", then you will lose less often and get more things at a reasonable price by bidding your maximum bid at the last second.

Especially on eBay, where most of the users seem to be like you, in it solely for the buzz of winning.

No. Not like me.