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Oracle Top Execs Answer Sun Employee Questions

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the duck-and-cover dept.

The Register writes "Sun invited Oracle president Charles Phillips and chief corporate architect Edward Screven to an employee-only town hall this Wednesday, where they took questions on what's coming. They said they'd be 'crazy' to close Java, that Oracle 'needs' MySQL, and all Sun's processors look appealing. They hedged on OpenOffice — Phillips said he couldn't comment on any product line — and on Sun's work in high-performance computing. Screven made it pretty clear the Sun vision of cloud computing does not fit with Oracle's; Oracle sees itself as a provider of infrastructure like virtualization to make clouds, not a provider of hosted services. As for who's staying and who's getting cut at Sun: Phillips said Oracle needs Sun, but warned 'tough decisions' will be coming. Don't forget, this is the company that couriered pink slips to the PeopleSoft staff it cut following that acquisition."

40 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Here's praying... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...that they don't decide to GPL Solaris. Really don't want to see my favorite OS pulled apart and canibalized to fuel the growing Linux hegemony. Let's keep some diversity and competition in the Unix market!

    1. Re:Here's praying... by CookieOfFortune · · Score: 3, Funny

      I like that term... Linux hegemony. :D

    2. Re:Here's praying... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ha ha! It must infuriate you to know that we're going to gut your OS and leave it for dead! Onwards to Solaris my brethren, we have an operating system to pillage and a user base to rape!

    3. Re:Here's praying... by eln · · Score: 5, Funny

      and a user base to rape!

      Dude, have you SEEN the user base? Not even with someone else's dick.

    4. Re:Here's praying... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm a sysadmin for a government contractor and we support many Linux distributions and some real Unix, but most commonly deploy RHEL boxes. My experience with RHEL has been lackluster: yum is retarded, the package selection is silly (Debian does much better at this), software compatibility between versions is awful, and its init scripts and management tools are ridiculous.

      Solaris offers solutions to a lot of these problems. The solaris systems management agent is well-designed and extremely helpful; there is nothing like this in the "enterprise" linux distributions I've seen. The solaris package management tool is simple and effective. The solaris backwards compatibility guarantee is invaluable, and the kernel contract system gives me a superior way to make sure essential services stay up. And these are smaller features.

      Add to the above a superior IP stack, ZFS, zones (I have customized Xen and deployed it in a production environment and it's great, but doesn't replace zones), dtrace, etc., and you have a truly enterprise OS. No current Linux distro offers this. I'm sad to think that the great project that is Opensolaris might be canned.

    5. Re:Here's praying... by ThePhilips · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That would be really bad (and is very unlikely event).

      Solaris 10 is pretty much last commercial Unix which does suck but only moderately. Because only alternatives are HP-UX (dead man crawling) and AIX (IBM Global Services' private toy).

      [ OK, AIX too does suck only moderately, but it's just IBM is active in relatively few markets/regions (what/how they sell/support depends on region). You can buy it, but you will not get much support from them. ]

      Many companies have strategic partnership with Sun solely for its ability to provide stable, well integrated with the hardware Unix.

      P.S. Though, honestly, more and more companies which had enough intelligence in past to have good relationship with Sun, also used that intelligence other way around and evaluated/deployed Linux already long time ago - everywhere where it was feasible.

      --
      All hope abandon ye who enter here.
    6. Re:Here's praying... by Tanktalus · · Score: 3, Funny

      Where's all my cool Linux stuff on Solaris, though?

      I'm sure you could just compile cygwin ... :-P

    7. Re:Here's praying... by kybred · · Score: 5, Funny

      ... to pillage and a user base to rape!

      Always rape BEFORE you pillage (and burn)!

  2. Sell OpenOffice to IBM by markdowling · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now that Lotus have integrated OpenOffice into Notes 8 Standard and are also pushing Symphony, they are the ones with the incentive to ensure the OO momentum is maintained (not to mention ODF).

  3. Uh Cloud? by rackserverdeals · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Screven made it pretty clear the Sun vision of cloud computing does not fit with Oracle's; Oracle sees itself as a provider of infrastructure like virtualization to make clouds, not a provider of hosted services.

    Uhm... That's one of the things Sun is doing with cloud computing that I don't think others are.

    All the cloud stuff is, is virtualization and infrastructure. Jonathan Schwartz himself has said that if you're not comfortable putting your stuff on a public cloud they'll bring the cloud to you.

    They've been doing cool stuff with their virtualization and provisioning systems.

    --
    Dual Opteron < $600
    1. Re:Uh Cloud? by Twillerror · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, exactly. I wish more people would speak to this side of "cloud" computing.

      What we want is two have redundant "pools" of server and applications. Those pools usually run at 2 or more data centers.

      We pull the plug on one data center and clients of those servers and application automatically switch. We have more apps, need more servers for a cluster, or more space we just add on to the thing in a fairly automated fashion.

      I'd like this at the intranet level. We have lots of various legacy and web based apps that I want to be able to run in 2 datacenters.

      When the system fails our internal network in conjunction with the "cloud" software will switch so one of the clouds takes over the same IPs.

      Putting servers in public clouds is for startup web applications, the scientific community, some niche apps(like using Amazon s3 for clusterable storage) and maybe small businesses. No way in heck we are putting our emails and our documents up on someone else servers. Being a public company I don't even think we could with all the SOX crap.

    2. Re:Uh Cloud? by rackserverdeals · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think that's the direction sun want's to go with their private cloud stuff. It was called N1 but I'm not sure what's it's called now.

      As a large public company, you may not be able to put everything in the cloud like you said, but some stuff you could.

      Imagine your public website gets a predictable amount of traffic but every other press release brings a huge spike in traffic, so you have built out your system to handle the peak times so your hardware mostly sits idle.

      You could have your own cloud provision spares, but since it's not sensitive data, you can provision computing power from public clouds, like amazon ec2 and just pay for what you need.

      OK, maybe not the best scenario but I wanted an excuse to post this link to this Sun HPC software demo that shows Grid Engine sending jobs to private servers, then going to private spares, then pulling in Amazon EC2 instances to handle the load.

      --
      Dual Opteron < $600
  4. remember, sun != peoplesoft by damn_registrars · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the case of Sun, you have a company that makes (some) useful and reliable products. In the case of peoplesoft, you have a company that makes an obscenely bloated, broken, overpriced software package that has caused havoc and pain across the continent. Peoplesoft was the most similar thing to Microsoft available for takeover for less money than the contents of Fort Knox, and Sun did to them what so many of us would love to do to Microsoft.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:remember, sun != peoplesoft by Migala77 · · Score: 3, Funny

      In the case of Oracle, you have a company that makes an obscenely bloated, broken, overpriced software package that has caused havoc and pain across the continent.

      Fixed that for ya

    2. Re:remember, sun != peoplesoft by Red+Flayer · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Peoplesoft was the most similar thing to Microsoft available for takeover for less money than the contents of Fort Knox, and Sun did to them what so many of us would love to do to Microsoft.

      Just so you know... Sun did nothing to PS. It was Oracle who bought PS and canned the staff (just as they've done for many acquisitions).

      FWIW, it's now several years later, and the "PeopleCode" (seriously, that's what they called it at Peoplesoft) is just as borked as ever... the JDEdwards/PS integration is no closer... I think Oracle's strategy is to move PS clients over to Oracle Apps and drop PS.

      Now if only they can unbork Oracle Apps...

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
    3. Re:remember, sun != peoplesoft by MouseR · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Many PeopleSoft employees moved into our Montreal office.

      As someone whose been through an Oracle acquisition, I can say that Oracle actually handles that nicely. It's a bit of a culture clash, coming from a small vertical market company, but they dont savagely trash acquisition content.

      They do get rid of non-essential personnel but they give you a chance to move on to current products, and they not only support acquired products for many years, they also keep staff around to make sure these products aren't just backed by paperwork and a web page.

  5. Why Hedge on Open Office? by reSonans · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So, Oracle admits they 'need' MySQL, which may or may not complement their core business, but then ducks a question on the future of OpenOffice, saying they can't comment on any product line. Isn't MySQL a product line, too? Why comment on the future of one and not the other? Sun employees, start twisting in the wind...

    --
    Light the blue touch-paper and retire immediately.
  6. How It Went Down by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "OMG I work in . will I get laid off?"

    "No no, no one will be laid off. All of Sun is important to us."

    2 months from now when everyone from Sun will be ancient history.

    --Wanted to link that pic of the Iraq guy at the press conference, obviously lying, with his hands in a "simmer down" gesture, but I can't find it. Maybe it wasn't Iraq. I dunno. Someone find it.

    1. Re:How It Went Down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wanted to link that pic of the Iraq guy at the press conference, obviously lying, with his hands in a "simmer down" gesture, but I can't find it. Maybe it wasn't Iraq. I dunno. Someone find it.

      Methinks you are a bit unclear on how this whole Internet thing works.

    2. Re:How It Went Down by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      they're not going to spend $5 billion on a bunch of product lines only to fire all the people who create and maintain them.

      They spent $10 billion on a bunch of product lines, only to fire everybody when the bought PeopleSoft. Based on Oracle's history, there's no reason to think they wouldn't fire every single current Sun employee.

      Your counter-argument seems to be "but, but, that would be stupid of them!". Well, yeah, this is Oracle we're talking about here. Have you ever tried to install Oracle?

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    3. Re:How It Went Down by Clandestine_Blaze · · Score: 5, Informative

      Disclaimer: Oracle employee

      No, they didn't fire everybody. There were layoffs, but there were also many PeopleSoft employees that became Oracle employees. The current client engagement that I am on has two such people.

      Maybe you meant "they fired a bunch of people", which is inevitable with any merger or takeover. But they didn't fire EVERYONE.

      --
      Best "String" Ever!
    4. Re:How It Went Down by fm6 · · Score: 3, Informative

      They laid off a lot of people. They never laid off everybody. In fact, they've actually laid off a lot fewer people than you expect. Several times they've acquired companies that were basically competition, and everybody predicted they'd just fold them up, fire everybody, and move all the customer to Oracle products. But they haven't done it. Didn't do it with PeopleSoft. Didn't do it with RDB.

      Also, they were dumb enough to buy Sun in the first place.

      Right. They're only the second-largest software vendor on the planet. They couldn't possibly walk and chew gum at the same time. I'm sure Larry just told his underlings, "Hey, we have too much cash, and I'm bored. Take $7 billion, buy Sun, then fire everybody."

      BTW, have you every managed anything more complicated than a beer run? I suspect not.

    5. Re:How It Went Down by Clandestine_Blaze · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So you must concur that its fucking hell to install?

      How am I supposed to refute an individual's anecdote? If you find something difficult, how do I deny your experience? As with the installation of any software that requires post-install tailoring to fit your business needs, YMMV.

      --
      Best "String" Ever!
  7. Re:Plug the damn leaks already by rackserverdeals · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Phillips said MySQL has reach in "incremental markets" such as start-ups that Oracle can't get to on its own.

    Basically, there is a customer out there that won't buy your product because it's too expensive for example. Instead of losing them to a competitor, you get them to use another product of yours, for free or hopefully with a service contract. Either way, they haven't gone to a competitor.

    Your not making the money you would have made had you sold your flagship product, but you weren't going to make that anyway. Might as well get something, with the potential for more later, than turn them away.

    --
    Dual Opteron < $600
  8. No talk about Solaris by parryFromIndia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find it odd that no one asked any questions about the future of Solaris - although there was a round-about question on x86 which resulted in an somewhat positive answer for SPARC. Oracle seems to be keeping SPARC and thus Solaris alive. (There isn't another OS running SPARC that is in widespread use after all.) This also makes me wonder if Oracle product support for Solaris x86 is going to improve now. This also seems to suggest that Oracle may not be selling Sun's hardware business to HP per the original plan. The idea sounded very interesting - HP would then become the most diversified hardware company selling x86, Itanium and SPARC hardware.

    1. Re:No talk about Solaris by rackserverdeals · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The day the sale was announced Sun/Oracle had a conference call where Larry Ellison said two of the main reasons they were buying Sun were Solaris and Java. Solaris was the best Unix technology out there he said.

      Selling the hardware business to HP was part of a different deal in the bast where Oracle and HP were going to buy different parts of Sun but IBM blocked it according to the article.

      Nothing in the recent sale, other than some bloggers speculation, indicates they will be selling off the hardware units.

      --
      Dual Opteron < $600
  9. "...helped develop the Linux kernel..." by Browzer · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sounds like what a typical politician or an administrator would say.

    Nonetheless, here are "Oracle's Technical Contributions to Linux" [contributions sounds so much better than develop]

    http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/linux-tech-leadership-contributions.html

    and a link to Oracle's "Free and Open Source Software" http://oss.oracle.com/

    looks extensive

  10. Summary by Locke2005 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sun Employees: What is our status when Oracle takes over?

    Oracle President: See Figure 1

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  11. Switching to Postgres by ColeonyxOnline · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I talked to my manager today, he said we were going to use Postgres instead of MySQL for out next web project.

    In his opinion, the latest stable release had poor support for stored procedures and now this acquisition puts further development into question. He wants to move everything out of MySQL at some point.

    Since I have never used Postgres before, I couldn't comment on anything, but from my perspective, MySQL had been moving forward with their database. Even if the stored procedures were not on par with the other DB's out there, they would mature in time.

    I was ready to speak up, until I thought about MySQL passing hands for the second time, talks about forks, and finally the developers leaving the company. All those things cannot be good short term, and long term will depend a lot on the parent company.

    So for the time being, I think my manager is correct and I did not protest his decision.

    1. Re:Switching to Postgres by crazybit · · Score: 3, Informative

      With PostgreSQL you can write stored procedures in different languages, and they will run as fast as if the function was run from a shell script.

      http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/interactive/xplang.html -- There's more info

      --
      - Human knowledge belongs to the world
  12. Re:Open Source NeWS! by fm6 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What were they supposed to do with NeWS, continue developing it while the rest of the Unix community used X11? If they had, Sun's workstation business would have died about a decade earlier than it did.

  13. Re:No One Takes The Viral GPL Seriously Anymore by RiotingPacifist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the problem with open source office suits is an office suite dosen't get anybody laid, so there is little enthusiasm from people not paid to do it. If you want to use an MS clone the Openoffice is fine, but there is never going to be any innovation unless it comes from another company, so the best hope is to open up the development and get all the companies on board with something, but given its slowness and dependance on java i don't think even that will result in a good product, its best for it to die and novell,linux foundation,red hat, etc, to put their effort into gnumeric,abiword,etc, (maybe rip out the good parts of openoffice and put them in libraries).

    --
    IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
  14. Re:No One Takes The Viral GPL Seriously Anymore by Tiger4 · · Score: 3, Informative

    You guys are talking past each other. But in essence that is how MySQL is set up. They will license you a proprietary source copy, or you can use the Open Source one under a differing set of terms. Of course the packages themselves are somewhat different too.

    --
    Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
  15. The destruction of a beautiful company by giuffsalvo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm literally hating myself, for having refused a job offer by Sun 1 year and half ago, because of personal (but not very serious) reasons...Now I'll never have the opportunity to work in a company so academic and transparent...

    1. Re:The destruction of a beautiful company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As someone whose first job out of college was as a programmer at Sun, I can honestly say I will never again work for such an academic, transparent company, and that's sad.

      I'm not hating myself for it. It's more like the feeling you get when you think back on a time in your life that you know will never come again. It makes you wish you had appreciated it more at the time, because when it's over, it's over forever. Perhaps a bit too romantic and sentimental, but that's just how I feel about the whole Oracle-Sun deal. There really isn't another company quite like Sun, and I mean that in the best way.

      Some people laugh at Sun due to its poor business performance, but it really has contributed more to the industry than any other company out there today.

  16. Re:Sun Directory, Messaging Server, OpenSSO, etc. by bunratty · · Score: 4, Interesting

    and Sun Grid Engine, VirtualBox, ...

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  17. Re:Plug the damn leaks already by IntlHarvester · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't see it that way. The main benefit of adding a "MySQL" mode to Oracle is because MySQL's datatypes are non-standard and applications are likely to contain MySQL-specific DB portability bugs.

    Nobody's going to buy Oracle and then start coding MySQLisms. If someone wants DB-portability, the techniques are already well known.

    --
    Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
  18. I give the Sun hardware division 4 years by chiph · · Score: 3, Insightful

    before Oracle closes it because of low margins.

    Nevermind the obvious synergies and benefits you get from controlling the entire stack -- from CPU to system software to applications. See: APPLE

    Chip H.

  19. Re:No One Takes The Viral GPL Seriously Anymore by try_anything · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dude, even married people dream of getting laid someday.

  20. Re:The big question by wbren · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oracle is much larger than Sun in virtually every way, and is much more than just a database company. Anyone who thinks Oracle is only about databases hasn't done their homework.

    Furthermore, Oracle buying Sun makes much more sense than IBM buying Sun. Oracle wants to offer the full package to their customers--from servers and storage, to middleware and database software. IBM already has most (if not all) of those bases covered, so their would have been a significant amount of overlap. The parts of Sun that survive the acquisition will turn Oracle into a force to be reckoned with, for better or worse.

    --
    -William Brendel