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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Cyber Cynic

The five biggest changes out of Sun/Oracle

51 comments

TAGS:mergers and acquisitions, open-source software, Oracle, oracle-sun, Sun
IT TOPICS:Development, Enterprise Software & Services, Management, Open Source, Operating Systems, Software

I'd thought about Oracle buying Sun. But, then I thought, "Larry Ellison isn't that dumb." Well, I was wrong. Ellison is that dumb. Oracle is buying Sun in what may be the most moronic technology acquisition of the 21st century.

I've looked at the Oracle/Sun deal. I've read Ellison's explanation as to why the buyout makes sense. I don't see it. I don't see any upside to this deal. And, on top of that, Oracle, which spent $7.4 billion for Sun, vastly overpaid for the company. This deal will make money for Sun's executives and stockholders, but it will prove to be a disaster for Sun's users, developers, and employees.

You see, I know Sun's technologies well and I just don't see a win here. IBM and Sun made sense. Despite their cultural differences, I could see Sun's software prospering with IBM. But Sun and Oracle? I only see most of Sun's technologies' dying with Oracle in charge.

Specifically, here's how I see it playing out.

1) MySQL is dead. Long live MySQL. Oracle doesn't have much to say about MySQL. Why should they? They're going to quietly kill the open-source DBMS as fast as possible.

Unfortunately for Oracle, it's too late. MySQL, under Sun's mismanagement, had already forked. MySQL founder, Michael 'Monty' Widenius left Sun and started his own community branch of MySQL, MariaDB. His purpose? "To provide a community developed, stable, and always Free branch of MySQL that is, on the user level, compatible with the main version."

That's one of the things that Ellison, and Microsoft for that matter, don't get. You can't kill open-source projects. Companies come and go, but popular open-source programs like MySQL just keep rolling on.

2) Solaris/OpenSolaris. Oracle is making sounds like it wants to do something with Solaris. Just don't ask me what. Solaris has been declining for years. Oracle uses Linux internally, and it even has its own rip-off of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), Oracle Unbreakable Linux.

Ellison can talk all he wants about Sun's Solaris operating system being "by far the best Unix technology," but so what? Unix is dying. Linux has been eating away at the Unix market for more than a decade. Ellison's support of Unix makes a good sound-bite, but as a business move it makes no sense. I predict death by neglect for Solaris.

3) Java. Java has value, but Sun's done a poor job over the years of turning that value into money. Oracle, which uses Java in many of its applications, can certainly put Java to good work in supporting its own products. My question is, "What is Oracle going to do with the Java Community and vice-versa?"

I know some things will happen. NetBeans, for example, is history. Oracle is a big-time Eclipse supporter. As for the rest? I honestly don't know what Oracle will do with the JCP (Java Community Process). If they're smart, they'll get everyone together as soon as possible to spell out their future plans for Java. If Oracle doesn't, they'll have Java developers running, not walking, away from the Sun/Oracle Java as fast as they can.

4) SPARC. Oracle can talk all it wants about taking a step back to the past where companies sell hardware and software bundles, but I don't see it. Fujitsu will continue to make SPARC boxes for that dwindling market, and I expect to see Sun's x86-server based business getting either spun out as an independent company or sold to Dell or HP. I just can't see Oracle in the hardware business.

5) Sun's other open-source programs. I have a bad, bad feeling that Oracle is going to let popular and powerful open-source projects like OpenOffice and VirtualBox wither on the vine. Oracle is willing to spend money on open-source projects that it uses. For example, Oracle is a top contributor to Linux. But, I don't see these, or Sun's other open-source projects, contributing to Oracle's bottom-line, so I don't see them getting much support.

Over the years, Sun has contributed, albeit reluctantly at times, many great advances in operating systems and open-source software. With this acquisition, those days are done. Good-bye Sun, it was nice to have known you.

Oracle buys Sun

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FUD

Submitted by Anonymous on January 13, 2010 - 12:46 P.M.

This article is with out a doubt one of the most FUD inclusive ones I have ever seen printed.
Some Points:
1) UNIX has not been shrinking it's been consolidating for years. A recent poll conducted BY Gabriel Consulting Group among the fortune 500 found that UNIX boxes are critical to datacenters and its usage is increasing.

2) SUN and Oracle have many customers who use both Oracle and MYSQL. They aren't going to dump mysql. They are going to enhance it. SUN does make money on MYSQL. One probable way is through support contracts.
That means you can't call SUN anymore and get support for free.

3) SUN is more then just Solaris and Java. It's SPARC boxes lead the world in ability to virtualize. One of the great things to do with that is load vmware on a
SUN box and put many instances of Linux on it. Then you get SUN's Green benefits and the ability to run lots of Linux instances at the same time.

4) Larry Ellison is not a villain he is a good business man. Being envious of his bank account is not productive in this age of world competition. SUN has been lead for too many years by poor businessmen and great engineers. There is no doubt Oracle will cut the budget at SUN to make it profitable. That probably means he will work to monetize Java, OpenOffice and MYSQL. But it is people like you who have whined for years that SUN has not been as profitable as you would like to see. You can't have it both ways. Either SUN needs to operate as a business and make money or it needs to become some kind of crazy non-profit corporation so that you can have all of it's technology for free. Which way do you really want it?

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An unimpeded view...

Submitted by Anonymous on September 15, 2009 - 12:13 P.M.

The real reason Ell bought Sun was so that on his weekend return flight on his personal jet into San Jose Airport (which he operates to deliberately break the noise curfew to tweak everyone who lives on the approach) that, once the plane breaks the low cloud so common in the Valley in the winter, HE IS OWNER OF ALL HE SURVEYS.

The jet noise issue is really the instructive lesson here:
- When challenged by the airport and residents affected by the noise, he acted provocatively by repeatedly exercising the practice
- When the airport attempted to fine him for the practice, he essentially had the rules changed just for him
- Moguls will act only as moguls do--to increase their empire regardless of cost

My prediction is that Ell will simply change the rules--challenge the legality of open-source and change them to suit needs of empire. OpenOffice and MySQL won't just disappear, they'll stop being free, and I'm sure his lawyers are already engineering a way to back-bill open source consumers and developers for all the years that now-Oracle property was used without compensation. And the reparations may be so great from IBM that he'd end up owning it.

This is a chess move, not a business move. As in chess, the difference between genius and disaster is neither great nor obvious.

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What about the Java CAPS suite and SOA?

Submitted by Anonymous on June 30, 2009 - 9:58 A.M.

What do folks think will happen with the overlapping middleware products?

Fusion vs Java Caps?

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For money-minded Oracle,

Submitted by Anonymous on May 5, 2009 - 8:27 P.M.

For money-minded Oracle, Open-source is a big competitor.

Finally Oracle will monetize all the products.

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Great lot of discussion

Submitted by Aakash on April 24, 2009 - 7:33 P.M.

Great lot of discussion done.

With this acquisition Sun-Oracle, lot of things will change; both s/w and h/w.

1. forget about MySQL going dead. oracle would be least interested it making it dead. see, either you buy MySQL or OracleDB, both will bring revenues to Oracle.
simple old proverb: you can break single stick easily than multiple sticks. its tough for IBM and MSFT not Oracle fighting with two DBs in market.

Another, if you kill MySQL, someone will wakeup and write the source to YourSQL. so forget about OpenSouce getting killed...

Oracle is not blowing $7.4B for just killing MySQL.

2. JAVA, well that's the key player to Oracle. Oracle need Java to cut its royalty business and other points already discussed by lot many, needless to say.

3. Solaris/Opensolaris; nothing is happening to it. Like Google is making Android OS, Oracle if wants to be in businees, need an OS, so Solaris will fit in. Remember, linux is community based. You need fixes either you pay or you wait. so with solaris, if oracle has solaris/opensolaris, it doesn't pays linux even $.1. Moreover, it will rather optimize Opensolaris/Solaris to meet OracleDB exact requirements. Oracle is not buying Solaris to kill or play "Media Player", it need it for OracleDB. What paying to linux is better spending on its own R&D.

4. other Sun software; some will surely get killed, but some will live. ones that will live: portals-tools, IDM etc... Oracle will make its DB run behind those tools, rather than other DBs.

5. What's future: IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Google,... similar companies will have tough time... all will prove complete h/w-OS-to-Production stack, and its better, as it will give market competition among giants. s/w and h/w will improve in time with better quality and service.

Nothing is Moore's law! you cannot make Pentium running 10kGHz, 20KGHz.... 100kGHz... there is a limit, once you reach, you break. Sure Newton's law do definitely apply... anything goes up! comes down.

Remember it!!
IBM is working on planning to get AIX running on X86. Once they do so... Sun Solaris will be back again in competition. Dell/HP need to think either about Windows/Linux/Solaris/AIX.. whatsoever... they are still in h/w business.

combination maybe:
IBM: websphere-java-DB2-AIX-x86/ppc
Oracle: Sun-Webserver-java-OracleDB-Solaris-x86/sparc
MSFT: MS-Webserver-.Net-SQL-Windows-x86/ppc
....

So, forget thinking about technology getting killed, rather it may modify or transform into new competitive technology.

the discussion can go on endlessly; but its only the employees and developers who get crushed.

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Weapons against Microsoft

Submitted by David Gerard on April 22, 2009 - 7:58 A.M.

It depends how much Oracle hates Microsoft.

1. Java is what .NET was invented to counter. Oracle can turn extremely large guns on .NET - autoconverters to turn .NET code into Java? Mono's toast.

2. OpenOffice.org - Oracle can give away supported StarOffice as part of enterprise deals.

See, Larry Ellison *hates* Gates and Ballmer.

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I agree. Whatever hurts MS

Submitted by sam on April 22, 2009 - 9:53 A.M.

I agree.
Whatever hurts MS is good for Oracle.
The more people use Java and OO.o (maybe Solaris?), the more it will hurt MS.

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MySQL dead

Submitted by Rhyous on April 21, 2009 - 5:56 P.M.

Hey,

If MySQL dies, Postgresql is a solid database server and with a BSD license, you can be assured that no one could ever shut it down.

www.postgresql.org

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Even if there are synergies

Submitted by theoldman59 on April 21, 2009 - 11:46 A.M.

Oracle paid too much for Sun. They could have saved a $billion by being a bit more frugal and no body would have complained.

As for the components listed in the article, no one knows for sure what Oracle will do, the comments are all conjecture. My own opinion is that the management of former Sun Products will be bungled as Oracle isn't a hardware company and Oracle's software model is a different, so Oracle will have no idea of how to save Sun's products. Not real optimistic here.

Oracle could be successful, then again, Oracle may have just tossed $7.5 billion in the tank. We'll know in a year or two.

One more set of casualties in the ongoing market struggles.

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Sun /Oracle

Submitted by Aiden Callaly on April 24, 2009 - 12:47 P.M.

your analysis is pure uninformed conjecture with no dollar revenue numbers to support any of your arguments. Java is key and will be monetised, something that Sun never managed. The hardware side of the business is a red herring and will be spun off. The deal makes sense to me

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