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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.
Sun sucks. Their overpriced hardware got eclipsed by Pentium 4 PCs which could do the same work for 1/10th the price. In the end, the only advantage Sun platforms offer over PCs is the capability to use massive amounts of RAM (64G, 128G, and beyond). But make no mistake about it, Sun got eclipsed by Intel. Moore's law has a harsh penalty for those who don't keep up.
On the other hand, Oracle having a say in OO, Java, and other projects is a bit scary. I'm not so in love with Oracle's embrace of FOSS or even the concept of FOSS and GNU.
For those wondering why the merger wasn't simply rubber stamped, it has to do with the licensing of Java:
http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/no_java_7_us_doj
From what I read, it wasn't a *huge* deal, but enough of a concern that the DoJ had to work with Oracle instead of simply approving the merger right away.
The EU probably has similar concerns.
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Or something like that.
A sad day.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's not quite as Larry put it in a corporate email he sent on the subject.
Well, I suspect that Oracle will attempt to position MySQL as their "free Oracle-compatible" database offering, less support and high-end features but still feature-complete enough that people will continue using it (and hopefully, in Oracle's eyes, upgrade to their full database suite when need arises).
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I am guessing this will mean more layoffs. I wonder if managers will be targeted, or tech workers?
Yeah, Sun already made MySQL fork all over the place ;-)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
More to the point, I suspect they will position Oracle as a reliable MySQL-compatible database. MySQL uses a lot of weird extensions to SQL and owning the MySQL front end will make it easy for Oracle to add a 100% compatible front-end to their database. This will make it easy for companies that have deployed various things on MySQL to consolidate them all onto one big Oracle appliance (and, coincidentally, pay Oracle a lot of money in the process).
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By "we" you must be referring to whatever market you are in. From my perspective, the amount of data being processed has increased and scalability is more necessary now than ever before. Large companies are increasingly involved in data mining and other large scale statistical analysis, and the need for computer systems that can perform those calculations in a timely is continuing to grow.
Palm trees and 8
Data Mining and Business Intelligence doesn't need huge powerhouses anymore. A low end server can easily handle the Millions of records Databases now. The Mid Range can handle Billions. What is left for Oracle and Sun are the Trillions of records DB. Which most sectors don't use. Also with advances in distributed computing we rarely need to go high end for the Trillions of records.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I have a few concerns.
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.
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.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
They're competing products in the same way a ford fiesta and a ford super duty truck are competing products.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
um....
apparently you have never worked in a business that needs large amounts of related data that is generated by hundreds of systems across a geographic area.
It's a bad deal for both companies.
The acquisition of Sparc and Solaris further estranges Oracle from Microsoft... Most of Oracle's revenues come from windows-based products and the Solaris portfolio isn't likely to change that. Likewise, they now become a competitor in Java vs. Dot-net. It isn't smart to step up from mere competitor to antagonist without gaining a massive new strength, and that didn't happen here.
Then there's Java. Drains quite a bit of cash without making enough money and Oracle as a company has the wrong temperment to maintain and improve a programming language anyway. Start charging enough to make money on Java and Java dies. Nor does having Java particularly complement Oracle's product line.
And mysql is a mess too. Improving it drains sales from their flagship database product... but failing to improve it causes a fork which loses Oracle whatever value owning Mysql had for them. Bad mojo all around.
The Sun/IBM deal would have been much smarter. IBM has a huge market for the likes of Sparc and Solaris. Better yet, they have demonstrated the wherewithal to take code they own and insert it into Linux. There's lots of stuff in Solaris to like, IBM is already weighing heavily on the side of Linux-based products and services and a well supported Linux on Sparc could save Sparc from oblivion and maybe even return it to being a growing market.
Meanwhile, IBM's database product (db2) never escaped its tiny niche. MySQL would be a great complement to their portfolio, moving them squarely into the mainstream database business.
Lastly, IBM actually has a need for Java given the breadth of hardware and OS platforms they sell. Write once run everywhere would be a huge benefit to IBM. It strongly complements the rest of what they sell, even if they never make a nickle off of it directly. Sadly, IBM can't rely on Java when it's controlled by a company as boorish as Oracle. It has to remain a minor player in their portfolio.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
If you're somebody like eBay, you really really need scalabaility, as you're doing hundreds on non-idempotent transactions a second.
One of my much smaller customers needs 128 cores to reach a reasonable rate of speed committing sales transactions for a single line of business, so this isn't limited to very large companies or those with large data, just anyone with reasonable sales volumes.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I wonder if this might lead to a dual-licensing for ZFS so it might be possible to use in linux.
c++;
It will be very interesting to see how that pans out. I rather like Open Office - it's quirky and kind of ugly, but it does work and its drawing tools are great for business graphics. but its presentation tool (competitor for PowerPoint) sucks even worse than PowerPoint, and PowerPoint is at an advanced stage of suckitude. That said, I hope Ellison sees the promise in Open Office and really runs with it. If he could make OpenOffice presentation better than Keynote, word processing better than Word, and spreadsheet better than Excel, I would pay real money for that.
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If you're somebody like eBay, you
really really need scalabaility, as
you're doing hundreds on
What does non-idempotency matter in the eBay's case?
Is it because if your transactions are idempotent, you can get away with simpler recovery mechanisms, and that lets you get away with less powerful servers?
Exactly. The need for databases has not gone away, but the upper bound for what you can do with cheap, commodity hardware and the likes of Postgres or MySQL is now higher than most projects will ever need. Numerous popular web sites run on a handful of well-specified but basically off-the-shelf PCs. Almost any in-house business admin application can be run this way, too.
I'd go further than the parent post, though, because I suspect it's just as bad at the other end of the spectrum now. Unless you're working for something like a bank, a government social security department, or a massive commercial outfit like Amazon, you probably don't need the high-end capabilities of software like Oracle any more. However, if you really are playing in that league, it's probably cheaper to buy lots of commodity PC parts and build your own cloud than to use expensive, high-end server kit from the likes of Sun. Likewise, if you're Google or Amazon, you have the resources to develop bespoke software tools to match your needs anyway (and if you're not quite Google or Amazon yet, you can lease resources from those who are).
It's hard to see how either Oracle or Sun has much of a top-end target market left for its traditional products. It would be interesting if they went for an aggressive mid-range offering though, aiming at providing a complete hardware and software platform for mid-large businesses that are fed up with Microsoft but don't want to outsource everything to the cloud either. Post-merger, they'll have a credible office suite, more database expertise than anyone else, lots of supporting back-end/middleware tools, and a programming language and client-side software platform that were tailor-made for remote deployment.
If it turns out that the market likes the benefits of centralised admin and remote deployment, but wants to keep control in-house rather than trusting (and paying ongoing fees for) third party services, then an Oracle/Sun combo that invested its resources smartly over the next couple of years should be able to compete very strongly. They might even be able to build a credible long-term business model based on support, consulting and customisation, rather than relying on relatively few sales of expensive hardware and DB licences.
Thought for the day: if this goes through, I'll be glad I don't have shares in SAP.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Cloud? What about the cloud? Isn't it going to depend on scalable servers and scalable software? I can't see a push toward smaller systems, myself. Every Tom, Dick, and Dilrod on the planet is pushing the advantages of cloud computing. Seems to me that the core expertise of both Sun and Oracle are going to be in demand if everyone goes to the cloud.
Note, I'm not one of those people who places their faith in the cloud - I'm just pointing things out here.
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You must be bonkers and probably had experience with less critical small volume data.
Try processing 100 million records a day in a telecoms or a medium sized bank on those so called smaller systems.
Oracle and Sun are primarily catering to Enterprises, not necessarily start-ups. I have been in development for 12 years now.
Small companies always prefer open source and these smaller systems, and rightly so, who wants to pay couple of tens of thousand per CPU when Linux and MySql will do.
Enterprises where transaction are critical, government agencies monitoring them and auditors watching like a hawk, they can't risk these smaller systems. THEY HAVE TO GO BY THE BOOK. So if the database crashes and backups corrupt, they can at least say, "We got the best, what else you wanted us to do".
I'd go further than the parent post, though, because I suspect it's just as bad at the other end of the spectrum now. Unless you're working for something like a bank, a government social security department, or a massive commercial outfit like Amazon, you probably don't need the high-end capabilities of software like Oracle any more.
A lot of Sun kit is highly parallel, so whereas you can buy one non-SPARC low-end system to handle things just fine, it may be better to purchase something like a T2000 or T5120 and use virtualization to split things up. For the same rack space and power usage you can run a bunch of hostnames with less overhead than something like VMware.
Of course Solaris runs just fine all all Tier 1 OEM systems (HP, IBM, Dell, Sun, etc.), so if you want to run x86 you can do that just fine and still get all the features of zones, DTrace, ZFS, etc.
CPU usage is not the only constraint you have to think about. Rack space, power, and cooling should be considered as well.
I just woke up and on reading the title I thought they meant Oracle was actually purchasing the sun...
How about changing Linux to use a less restrictive license?
"Data Mining and Business Intelligence doesn't need huge powerhouses anymore."
My theory about why has Sun Microsystems not done particularly well in the last few years is that the highly reliable hardware Sun Microsystems sells is no longer popular because it is far cheaper to use consumer-grade hardware with software that is fault-tolerant. The excellent 2008 book Planet Google describes Google's experiences on page 54: "For about $278,000 in 2003, [Google] could assemble a rack with 176 microprocessors, 176 gigabytes of memory, and 7 terabytes of disk space. This compared favorably to a $758,000 server sold by the manufacturer of a well-known brand, which had only eight multiprocessors, one-third the memory, and about the same amount of disk space."
But why would Oracle buy Sun? Possibly because there are difficulties in making Oracle database products work with the new consumer-grade hardware with fault-tolerant technology.
Changing the Linux license is legally impossible without removing a lot of the code.
c++;
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
The head of Oracle and 3rd richest man in the world visited the lowly Java developers conference last month and gave full support for Java inside the new Oracle.
That was the draft - fortunately his PA is paid more than $1 per annum.
I'm cautiously optimistic over this buyout which could turn out to be very inspired depending on what decisions are taken next by Oracle.
...
Hopefully Larry will "cut the OO.org ribbon" (or at least ensure it's entirely optional) for a start!, then rapidly pour Oracle's expertise and bucks to turn OO.org Base into a viable MS Access killer (utilising MySQL as the engine) - this will require a way to convert MS Access-based applications as seamlessly as possible and could be done very quickly with the resources available to Oracle.
Messing with any of Java / OO.org / Virtual Box / MySQL (either by damaging them, ignoring them or charging for them) would be counter-productive and merely alienate consumers and the FLOSS community et al.
Solaris should be allowed to die a peaceful death by being offered up for [further] incorporation into GNU / Linux along with ZFS technologies.
This way Oracle can keep MSFT in the trenches at the "low-end" (i.e., severely knock MSFT's revenue) whilst maintaining good relations with customers and the open source community and use the lull to engage fully in the cloud with e.g., Google and IBM. As use of MS Office declines, Oracle will then be in a strong position to take out MS SQL Server. Firm Oracle support for ODF would be nice too.
Not sure what Apple would make of all this but we could always ask Larry's official wedding photographer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison
The Fortune 20 I know about, stored all its really critical data in DB2 on an IBM mainframe. Oracle is used all over the place, but if it is really important, only DB2 is considered good enough.
Sorry for being the clueless noob here, so please enlighten me if you will. But wouldn't Oracle's acquisition of Sun possibly, remotely, be a doorway for them to turn some/most/all of its products Open Source? IOW, if "their" Java tanks, they tank everything else (MySQL, etc), if not they start turning some of their products OS'ed? Or will this acquisition immediately make most (if not all) of previously-OS'ed code closed-source? Granted, I've looked into MySQL's downloads page and their GA is still GPL-licensed (admittedly, they might change it in the future, and herein I might be answering my own question).
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I agree, and your example would be a small telecom at that, if that's all it's processing! Power Point Lecture notes on telephone resilience based around incidents like on Sept 11, 2001 by Prof. Jonathan Liebenau (Columbia University) give the number of telephone calls per day for AT&T in 2001 at 300 million. There will be several usage record writes for each call, but let's be conservative and say only 2, one at the start of the call, and one at the end to give the time. So there are 600 million transactions. Most phone companies divide up the billing cycles among thedsays of the month to reduce stress on the system, and AT&T has according to some public records I looked at a while ago, something like 300,000,000 accounts (yep, three hundred million... and I'm low-balling it). So that is conservatively 30,000,000 bills to be processed each day, each requiring many database operations (but let's say 10 for arguments sake... but it might be as high as an order of magnitude higher given all the details that needs to be gathered and processed for each account). Etc. etc. etc. 900,000,000/(3600*24) ~ 10,400 transactions per second if you assume that all processing is evenly spaced through the day (and that number is likely very low compared to the actual number) Of course transactions are not ever evenly spaced through the day, so there will be periods will it will need to process much higher volumes (e.g. peak periods). Just a few of the other database operations I'm leaving out things like OLTPs for CSRs and customer web access, ETL's for data warehousing as well as the data warehousing reports, etc. etc. etc. And the key here is that most of these operations usually do not involve only simple look ups like for content serving. There is usually a lot of heavy processing going on the app side as well. FWIW, often they won't do a lot of processing in cursors on the DBs, they will move very large buffers of data onto the app servers for processing to reduce the DB load. The ability to dump large pages of a result set (as you work through the result set) into buffers for access/processing by app servers is something that Oracle does very well. I know JDBC essentially does this, but I'm talking about malloc type operations, not using a lot of intermediate code in an (albeit very good) api like JDBC and the various frameworks around it.
Granted, things like Call Usage and Mediation, OLTP, and DWH, et al all run on their own database servers (often multiple for each app) and application servers (again multiple servers for each), but this is a lot of processing going on and enterprises like these don't run them on giant server farms. Bottom line is that to get the processing horsepower with high availability without having to manage a tonne of servers, companies like these will use a smaller number of heavy machines. Something like HP Superdomes or equivalent. I say a smaller number, but given their cost, I'd also say it is still a significant number. :) And I am not sure, but I don't think ATT uses HPUX much... but still use heavy weight servers.
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Oracle has put a great deal of effort into optimizing their server and net application platforms to Solaris.
While Oracle still maintains their "Unbreakable Linux" distro, I wouldn't be surprised should they keep and push Solaris in one way or another.
Mind you, it's totally not dept. So who knows what they'll do.
"Ever try to develop fault-tolerant software? Think millions of dollars just to begin."
That doesn't seem correct to me. It is possible to send every transaction to four places, using two ISPs. Each transaction would cause the calculation of an SHA-1 return code. A computer with a return code that doesn't agree is not working correctly.
It is definitely in Oracle's interest to kill or dillute MySQL.
I'd say thier best bet would be to hold it down (don't let it get any better but don't kill it either) and use the mysql code (which they now own) to make a mysql compatibility mode in oracle.
If they kill it they risk it being replaced by postgresql or a mysql fork which they have no control over.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Way to go. Business-retard Schwarz destroyed Sun, and I hope to God he does not go to work for Oracle in any shape, form or fashion. It's worth millions to keep him away from Oracle. Oracle would love for their competition to have Schwarz. Sun had no chance whatever with Schwarz anywhere near the company.
Will probably never happen. Since Linus Torvalds has never insisted on copyright assignments on code contributions to the Linux kernel the way MySQL and the Free Software Foundation, for that matter, does as well, ownership of its copyright is spread over hundreds, maybe thousands of contributors. Linus himself, I hear, can take full credit for only 2% of the actual code in the kernel. Even if you could contact them all, it is quite unlikely that they will all agree to have their contributions re-licensed to a different license, most especially if it's just to accommodate something like ZFS. If you can't get them all to agree, you then have to find the contributions of the dissenters and excise their code from the kernel somehow, and produce a fork that will have to compete with the original kernel for developer mindshare. The GPLv2 fork will have the further advantage of being able to receive all the updates to the code in the less restrictive fork, while the less restrictive fork will be unable to legally integrate updates made to the GPLv2 fork. Such an event would also deal a catastrophic blow to the credibility of the Free/Open Source movement, and Microsoft's FUDsters would have a field day.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Think you are missing one important point, yes the world is moving to smaller systems. But if you have a look at a four socket system with 8 core CPUs in there and add hyperthreading, you end up with a system that to the OS and the application looks like a 64way smp with a bit of numa. And lets see, that looks very much like a "large scalable" system, say 5 years a go. So the hw is getting smaller and cheaper, which allows us to build cheep "large scalable" systems, but as nice as it sounds now you will need an OS that can handle all of those CPUs, and lets see Oracle gets a OS that's been thriving on those types of systems for the last 10+ years, namely Solaris/OpenSolaris. I do believe that Sun would have done much better if they would have stuck with what they do best, build HW and write infrastructure SW to make that HW shine, rather than trying to become a SW company, of which they have shown a number of times they don't have a clue.... That is selling SW, they do write very good SW
I disagree with you that it would be in Oracles best interest to dilute or kill of MySQL, I would rather see it as being in their interest to keep MySQL alive a thriving. If you look at it, they could use MySQL to compete with SQLserver on the low to midrange, and use the current Oracle DB server to compete with DB2 on midrange to hi end. But I guess that we have to wait and see what they end up doing.
I wonder if this might lead to a dual-licensing for ZFS so it might be possible to use in linux.
Although it's unlikely, I certainly hope so. I currently use ZFS on FUSE on my server, but I only use it for a mirrored backup (FUSE performance isn't up to scratch for a 10 terabyte system, in my opinion). If I really wanted to go hardcore ZFS (which I'd love) I'd switch to OpenSolaris. :)
I love the fact that I threw in two new drives and created a mirrored filesystem instantly with one command. No formatting required.
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"A reasonable Sun machine costs a lot less than employing one of these people for a year."
Initially, your explanation seemed to me to have credibility. Then I realized that a Sun server is not perfectly reliable, either. Fault-tolerant software is necessary even when using very expensive hardware. Also, "consumer-grade" hardware is usually very reliable.
So, the comparison is not between consumer-grade hardware + fault-tolerant software versus server-grade hardware without fault-tolerant software. The comparison is between the reliability of consumer-grade hardware with fault-tolerant software versus server-grade hardware with fault-tolerant software.
The biggest cause of failure is bad contacts. The second biggest cause of failure is power supply failure. There are chemicals that help solve the problem with bad contacts. It is easy to arrange fault-tolerant power supplies.
Oracle already has a "free Oracle-compatible" database offering, Oracle XE. I doubt they'll replace it with something with less commonality with the main Oracle DB products, since that would make it harder for people to step up from the free product to the expensive one, a transition that Oracle has some strong reasons to make as easy as possible.
Ah, but MySQL is a lot more well-known and popular than Oracle XE which makes it ideal as a marketing tool. A few tweaks here and there and you could make it so that it's a piece of cake to replace a MySQL db with an Oracle db.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Since neither pre-acquisition Sun nor Oracle owns the Linux kernel, that's not something that's going to come out of this merger. (AS I understand it, since Linus doesn't require copyright assignment, the Linux kernel isn't all owned by any one entity, which means that relicensing the kernel would be extraordinarily difficult, so it'll probably take something more compelling than ZFS to motivate such a change.)
Oracle might have more reason to want ZFS to be available on Linux than Sun did, and so might plausible license ZFS in a way to make that happen.
Ummm.... Most organizations don't need that....
I never said the High end stuff doesn't have its place... But it is much smaller market.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The Health Care industry is not small. Neither is government.
Just trying to disambiguate here. It's early. And with Ellison involved....Well, you know.
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