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Oracle To Stop Developing Sun Virtualization Technologies

hypnosec writes "Oracle will soon be announcing its decision to stop development of Sun virtualization technologies including Sun Ray Software and Hardware, Oracle Virtual Desktop Client, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) product lines. In an update to its support policies [Oracle support login required] for virtualization software and hardware, the database company has revealed that this decision is a result of its efforts to 'tightly align Oracle's future desktop virtualization portfolio investments with Oracle Corporation's overall core business strategy.'"

22 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oracle had a business strategy beyond "turn everything we touch into shit"?

    1. Re:Wait... by sjames · · Score: 5, Funny

      Something about synergistically embiggening Larry's masculinity compensation plumage for great justice.

  2. Fuck you Oracle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You will not expand your market, you will shrivel, only your bribes to executives will keep you afloat. You destroyed a company that contributed more to the furtherance of computing and society as a whole than you will ever be able to achieve with your selfish business strategies and practices.

    1. Re:Fuck you Oracle by BitZtream · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For reference, what your post tells others is that you started this Internet thing late and missed the era where Sun was one of the big boys in the server and workstation arenas.

      Just because you were only around for their decline doesn't mean thats the way it always ways :)

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    2. Re:Fuck you Oracle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I have to agree. While everyone kind of liked SUN and cherished their accomplishments - few ever bought anything of them.

      It might have worked, if everybody actually using Solaris had also bought SUN x86 servers instead of installing it on generic hardware and bought more software from their stack. Additionally, for too long their business strategy seemed to be "Let's invent some mind-blowingly cool stuff and then have sales try to sell it to our customers".

      And this not for one product, but basically for almost all of the products they came up with in the last years.

      Oracle has no choice but to milk their current customers literally till the sun goes down.

      No kidding. Sun's x86 hardware kicked ass. Unlike Dell and even HP, Sun actually engineered their x86 servers. They didn't just slap cheap-ass commodity components around the CPU.

      A recent customer went through a lot of trouble replace "old" Sun x86 hardware that had been around four or five years with new HP hardware - to "save money", because HP's servers were cheaper than Oracle's servers (that Sun designed...).

      Note I said "cheaper", not "less expensive". Yeah, the HP's were cheaper than the Sun servers. And slower. The four or five-year-old Sun x86 boxes were a shitload FASTER than the brand-spanking-new HP servers. Talk about a bunch of howling developers. I was laughing my ass off.

      And even with the Oracle markup, after my customer had to go out and buy licences for software to manage HP servers - OOOOOPS! (iLO software, etc), the HP boxes turned out to be more expensive than the equivalent Oracle (nee Sun) servers. At least Oracle doesn't charge extra for things like that.

      HP's servers also came with cheap off-brand FC HBAs that wouldn't play nice on the customer's SAN. Good God, crappy FC hardware that can't interoperate with other vendor's equipment was solved by QLogic et al a fucking decade ago.

    3. Re:Fuck you Oracle by msk · · Score: 4, Funny

      Here's a nickel. Go buy yourself a real computer.

      (The first Sun equipment I used was a Sun 3 workstation.)

    4. Re:Fuck you Oracle by Psion · · Score: 4, Funny

      Six digits, you say? Wow.

    5. Re:Fuck you Oracle by Isaac-Lew · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes, I'm impressed.

  3. Soon they kill Solaris by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This coming on the heals of XenServer going open source.
    As soon as they realize the futile effort of supporting Sun hardware (Niagara, Sparc) and Solaris which are not selling well, they will also cease supporting them as well.
    Frankly, I think IBM would have been a better company to have owned Sun and its assets.

  4. Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by dcavens · · Score: 5, Informative

    As I had to RTFA to figure this out, thought I'd pass on that VirtualBox is still going to be actively developed.

    1. Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by nurb432 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For now.

      --
      ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    2. Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As I had to RTFA to figure this out, thought I'd pass on that VirtualBox is still going to be actively developed.

      Virtualbox development, however, is now going to "tightly align ... with Oracle Corporation's overall core business strategy."

      Something tells me we may have a fork, and possibly a shift in Qemu development energy in the future.

    3. Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      For now.

      Virtualbox is GPLed free software. Oracle owns the domain and trademark, so they could force everyone to change the name, and they could use FUD to scare people off. But they cannot kill it. It would be like their efforts to kill MySQL and OpenOffice. Those projects were set back some, and renamed, but they live on.

  5. VirtualBox: Don't panic! by DigitAl56K · · Score: 4, Informative

    If, like me, the summary freaked you out, you'll be happy to hear that VirtualBox is not getting the axe.

    1. Re:VirtualBox: Don't panic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      since [Ellison] was hired

      He kind of founded the company.

  6. Re:Crap by sageres · · Score: 5, Funny

    Has anyone ever thought that the Oracle might be evil?

  7. Oracle support login required by ScottCooperDotNet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yet another reason to avoid helping Larry buy another yacht.

  8. Fork you Oracle! by DrJimbo · · Score: 4, Funny

    FTFW

    --
    We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
    -- Anais Nin
  9. Re:Crap by EvilSS · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oracle just wants to destroy everything that was good about the Sun.

    Oh, so they are staying in the storage business then.

    --
    I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
  10. Re:What does Oracle even do anymore? by EvilSS · · Score: 5, Informative

    I doubt they would be killing them off if they were profitable. I do a lot of work in the virtualization and VDI space (not all of it by choice, mind you) and I have never run into anyone even asking about Oracle in those regards. AFAIK the only thing that could be considered really successful is Virtual Box and it's sticking around, thank [omnipotent bearded deity #4].

    --
    I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
  11. Re:Another take on this... by dbIII · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My theory is that thousands of dot bombs were buying Sun stuff in the boom and the success at that point didn't even depend on management turning up, so they got lazy and could not adapt to conditions after the crash. After that they couldn't even sell excellent stuff to people that really wanted it, not unless the customers had a hidden black-ops budget and orders to kill any approaching accountants on sight (the same problem IBM has with power stuff now). Increasing scarcity meant that a lot of commercial software no longer had the newer versions ported to Sparc and there wasn't really a way to justify buying Sun x86 gear. So Sun ended up trying to push a lot of good stuff at three times the price of stuff that was half as good, which meant people would just go out and buy two of the things that were half as good instead.

  12. Re:Another take on this... by oxdas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think most people would hate Oracle if all they did was "keep what works and get rid of what doesn't." After all, Google dumps far more unprofitable products each year and they have a much better reputation on these boards. Oracle has earned its reputation by repeatedly attacking the very foundations of the tech industry in the (short-sighted) pursuit of higher profit margins from more vendor lock-in. This is the root of the anti-Oracle bias, not scrapping a few products.