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Oracle To Sell Sun's Hardware Business To HP?
Underholdning writes "With the DOJ approving Oracle's Sun buyout, the question arises what Oracle might want to do with Sun's hardware business. It's no secret that what Oracle wanted was the software part. Now The Inquirer is running a story claiming that Oracle will sell the hardware business of Sun to HP. This will give Oracle a juicy check while HP can increase its services. Larry Ellison denies that it will take place, but a source for CNN claims otherwise."
Since Sun made Sparc cpus, and used Solaris for their OS, will they sell Solaris to HP to match their hardware?
If Oracle does not want Sun hardware, what Sun software does Oracle want?
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."
It's true that Sun hardware is more reliable than consumer-grade hardware. However, neither are completely reliable. Both require fault-tolerant software. Also, consumer-grade hardware has become very reliable.
Why in hell would they want to sell the Sun hardware business to HP when they have just started to advertise it? See http://www.oracle.com/features/sunoraclefaster.html