Slashdot Mirror
DOJ Gives Oracle Approval To Buy Sun
k33l0r writes "The BBC is reporting that the US Justice Department has approved Oracle's takeover of Sun Microsystems. The acquisition gives Oracle control over (or a leading role in), among other things, Java, MySQL, (Open)Solaris, ZFS, OpenOffice, and the NetBeans IDE. 'The European Commission has still to rule on the deal, a step that will be required before it can close. That body has indicated it will issue an initial opinion on Sept. 3, according to the Wall Street Journal. It may OK the deal at that time or launch a four-month probe of it. ... The Justice Department ruling came earlier than expected, a possible response to Sun's declining revenues and precarious business position in a steep recession, as the required reviews proceeded.' We first discussed the deal back when it was announced in April."
Apollo.
As far as mergers go this is probably a good fit. Oracle and Sun always needed each other for the most part. However I feel both are a dyeing breed. The industry wether you like it or not is moving away from those two companies core competencies.
High End Servers which are highly scalable with high end software which is highly scalable, is no longer the way it is now. We are moving to more smaller systems and don't need such scalability features as we realize that cost benefit really isn't there, for most situations.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The only thing I'm concerned about regarding this deal is how this will change Java. The way I see it, one of two things will happen: One, current Oracle staff will manage the Java platform development and bad things will happen (all sorts of bad things could happen). Two, Oracle will deem Java an unprofitable product and will spin off a free software foundation, the likes of Mozilla or Apache.
My leaky memory says that 40% of Oracle's income (profit?) comes from Oracle on SPARC, and another 20% from Oracle on other Unix.
If IBM had bought Sun and phased out SPARC like they did Sequent, then they'd probably own 50% of Oracle's market.
It's far better for Oracle to buy their own hardware supplier than depend on others: the Sequent was highly optimized for Oracle performance, and then disappeared in a little puff of greasy smoke when IBM bought it and shut it down in favor of Power. That's got to have been painful!
As other commentators have pointed out, Oracle is heavily invested in Java, and sees MySQL as a "channel" that brings them customers. You note that Oracle invested in improving the performance of the transactional engine that MySQL uses instead of shutting it down...
I suspect Sun was a perfect fit: it complemented the things Oracle needed, and didn't have any important products that compete directly. Win-win.
That in turn could be good for me, as I'm a capacity planner & performance guy, working mostly on large systems, like the ones Oracle and Sun customers use.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Oracle does not have a tradition of giving away much of it's software. Sun by contrast has a lot of open source or free as in beer software. I am worried that Oracle will either kill or start charging for Java, OpenOffice, Solaris, VirtualBox, MySQL and other products based on it's own business interests. It's only natural for it to do so. With this aquisition, Oracle is in a position of great power. It can kill or alter the course of all the products of both companies. Absolute power corrupts.
Note: I do not work for Oracle, but we are a big customer of theirs. I have watched this very carefully, attended briefings (by Sun and by third party analysts.)
I am not concerned that Oracle will kill Java, OpenOffice, VirtualBox, MySQL. (I'm a little concerned about them selling off [Open]Solaris, since I don't see Oracle as an operating systems company.) However, I do expect to see a "pro" version of Java, OpenOffice, VirtualOffice, MySQL where Oracle forks the code into a stable branch, and companies can buy into a support contract for it. This isn't materially different from how OpenOffice/StarOffice are related now, or how Red Hat runs their business.
For example MySQL and PostgressSQL are the only 2 viable open source alternatives to an Oracle DB for many systems. (There are critical systems for which Oracle is absolutely needed, but the percentage that could be served well by an open source alternative is probably significant). It is definitely in Oracle's interest to kill or dillute MySQL.
I disagree that Oracle wants to kill or dilute MySQL. Quite the opposite, really. Oracle desperately wants to compete with SQL Server at the lower-end databases. Small companies and many mid-size companies feel that Oracle is much too complicated for them to run with [typically] a limited IT staff. Oracle has a lot of buttons, knobs, switches to tune performance (not to mention get things running.) As a result, SQL Server often gets deployed here. And for most internal-office workloads for small or mid-size companies, SQL Server works very well. So Oracle doesn't make money here. Oracle knows that lots of people can (and do) easily deploy MySQL, this is an easy "win" for them.
My $0.02