Oracle reels in Sun Microsystems with $7.4bn buy
Database giant Oracle has agreed to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4bn, or $9.5 a share, in cash. The surprise move comes in the wake of IBM walking away from a possible buyout of Sun Microsystems for $6.85bn. Oracle said the boards of both the firms had given the transaction the thumbs up. It’s expected to complete this summer …
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THANKS LARRY!!!!!
as a Sun reseller... can i be the first to say "WHOOP! WHOOP!"
Larry you have saved us from IBM and assorted other "fates worse than death"...
:-)
LOL!
"Oracle.... aspire to help customers simplify the development, deployment and operation of high value business systems, from applications all the way to datacenters...." So why did they buy Sun then? :D
Can't wait for the firesale of all the hardware bizz, it will be interesting to see who steps up to bid for any of it (CISCO?)!
Takin' all bets ...
... on how big Schwartz's golden parachute will be, although given that he's systematically destroyed Sun he probably deserves to be keelhauled behind one of Ellison's yachts.
Sad to see it end like this - I don't work for Sun but know a fair few people who do, at least for now. All the best to the lot of them.
Tombstone - an ignominious end to a once-fine company.
MySQL owned by Oracle
That'll be interesting, if nothing else.
Ouchie
That cannot be good for MySQL - or for any employees at Sun.
I dare say all the higher-ups will be raking it in though, as ever.
Assuming this isn't a joke....
It will be very interesting to see what Oracle keeps, what it bins, and what it sells. If Oracle really want to be a hardware vendor, then it makes a lot of sense.
Anybody want to guess who Microsoft will now buy.
Personally....
..as a soon-to-be Orasun/Sunacle/Suckle employee I'm happy with this outcome...
With IBM there was too much overlap in hardware/services etc. With Oracle we seem to have a much better fit and hopefully not shed too many jobs.!
Anyone got a "Oracle for Dummies" I can borrow?
RIP MySQL?
Mines the one with "Postgres for dummies" in the back pocket. Gotta move with the times.
SPARC is dead, Exadata is dead
Expect a lot of things to die with this deal. Oracle has no patience for low margin hardware unless it sells lots of software licenses.
HP is the real loser as they are the only ones without a software stack which is were the real profit is. (but they still have ink)
McNealy's life work is for nothing buy Larry's chopping block.
Eat my Shorts says the Sunny Oracle ...... Future Bright Store
"Ellison and McNealy were two of the prime movers behind the anti-Wintel coaliton which pushed the Network Computer. This was launched with much hoopla back in 1995. It's nice to know they've finally got there" :-)
With such a protracted gestation, can the Future expect One Mother of a System Internet Networking as AIdDynamIQ Computer with Virtual Operating Systems and Attendant and Attentive Drivers? .
Big Blue bites the Dust ..... and is extraordinarily rendered an Also Ran?
Bravo..... and to the Victor the Spoils.
Can't speak English
"be accretive to Oracle's earnings" - does this mean the same as "increase"?
Move along, nothing to see here
"Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system - applications to disk - where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up."
I wonder how this works with the "HP is much faster running Oracle" campaign HP have been running on the back of mags like the Economist.
Oracle have been struggling to integrate their last bunch of purchases with all that framework stuff and Oracle Forms HTML nasty hybrid stuff for ever. But that could also be something to do with firing all the competent old hands a couple of years ago.
Please, can we kill Oracle Forms now? But to replace it with Java ... gah.
humm....
As a Sun employee, not sure what to think of this move by Oracle ... Can't see any convincing reason for Oracle to get into hardware. Let's hope I will be proved wrong.
What now for MySQL?
By an odd coincidence, the MySQL user conference opens today in California. I would love to be a fly on the wall there today!
That's the end then
Shame really, JIS had vision for the future of IT but not Sun's place in it. With zero business accumen he was doomed to fail and take Sun with him...
Sun IP is significant and Oracle will do what they have done in almost every acquisition slash and burn...the end of an era.
PLEASE will someone with some sense take the business private, get rid of my little pony and focus on the core strengths of this innovation powerhouse before it's too late?
Computing Harrods
Overpriced database on overpriced hardware.
Poor old MySQL - I feel a Visual Foxpro coming on.
Anagram
Best anagram of Sun and Oracle I could find is 'larcenous'
I doubt I'm the only one to say this but...
"All your database are belong to us!"
Where to begin (
MySQL - can't see that project progeessing.
Oracle in charge of Java, sweet suffering Jehoshaphat I don't like that
Still at least "unbreakable linux" will die a death, alongside the souls of once happy Sun employees.
Questions
1) What happens to Solaris & OEL now that Oracle have two competing operating systems which will both run on the same Intel-compatible hardware. Different code sources, bot open-sourced but with wildly different licenses.
2) What happens to the server and microprocessor design business. Is SPARC doomed? If sold off, who will keep that going when they are unlikely to be handed the ownership of Solaris too.
3) How are Oracle going to get money from SUN's open source software business given the latter never managed it. In other words, how are we going to be stitched up...
I'll assume the odds and ends of the SUN business, like the storage side will get sold off, although none of those have the strategic importance of the server and SUN open source software set.
Oh - and my sympathy to SUN employees - they are going to be paying the real price for this...
MySQL??
Hmm, for those of us who have built a business around MySQL, this is a little worrying. Is it in Oracle's interest to continue to have an open-source db like MySQL around? My feeling is that, if they've got any sense, they'll look at building a clear upgrade path from MySQL to Oracle and use it to broaden their user base. If they let MySQL die, all they'll succeed in doing is forcing those who can't (or won't) afford to pay for Oracle to use either PostgreSQL or MS-SQL, surely neither of which would be good for Oracle.
Interested in what other people think...
enterprise dilution and intentions for MySQL
There's a reference to MySQL in http://www.oracle.com/sun/sun-faq.pdf
"What does Oracle plan to do with MySQL?
MySQL will be an addition to Oracle’s existing suite of database
products, which already includes Oracle Database 11g, TimesTen,Berkeley DB open source database, and the open source transactional storage engine, InnoDB."
My concern in the longer term is the diultion of enterprise features within MySQL where overlap and competition with that and Oracle may arise.
Interesting...
...to see what the future brings. I don't think it makes any sense for Oracle to buy the company and then flog off the hardware because - seriously - what's left at Sun when you take away the hardware?
If they follow up on the position of having a true end-to-end solution, I think that would be very powerful indeed.
Any odds on IBM buying HP now they've missed out on Sun?
Logo
Always liked the sun logo - quite clever really. Pity it'll go. (Not quite as important as the jobs that will go admittedly)
Re: mySQL
"Anyone got any thoughts on what this means for mySQL?"
A forking of the code base? Can't the Sun sell-out having a major effect otherwise, since the bulk of MySQL is GPL'd anyway (the same logic could apply to Java, at least to a first approximation)
Personally, I've been looking for a reason to migrate stuff to Postgres. Maybe this is it.
Re: Can't speak English
>> "be accretive to Oracle's earnings" - does this mean the same as "increase"?
Seems to, pretty much. Looks like we both learnt a new word today.
From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/accretive:
ac⋅cre⋅tion /əˈkriʃən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [uh-kree-shuhn] Show IPA
–noun 1. an increase by natural growth or by gradual external addition; growth in size or extent.
Re: MySQL
If only MySQL was licensed under the GPL to protect us from the effects of such ownership changes...
StarOffice/OpenOffice
This also gives Oracle some control over the Star/OpenOffice suite Which might be interesting if they tied it into some of their middleware & back-end products a-la MS-Office/Sharepoint/etc...
Bit of a surprise, but not completely insane
**Usual disclaimers about these being "my opinions, not my employers" apply.**
Does this mark the move of Oracle into the hardware business? I'd like to see Sparc & Solaris continue in some form... they are the only proprietary Unix competitor I can respect (HPUX is garbage)
How will Java fare under Oracles stewardship, and will we get better licensing terms from Oracle? I really would have preferred IBM to get control of Java (if only to get rid of the current brain dead license terms).
Is this the end for MySQL?
Here's hoping that all my old colleagues who ended up @ Sun PS continue to have jobs.
Shit...
There goes the neighborhood - ZFS, MySQL, Solaris and VirtualBox in the hands of a company every bit as nasty and proprietary as M$ or Apple if not more so? A sad day indeed :-/
Roger Heathcote.
MYSQL Freetards
Get your chequebooks ready...
Looks like going forward the free Oracle / MYSQL versions will only contain a subset of functionalities and or be limited in capability.
If you cant beat em buy em. (aquire, adopt, extend being ideas that are clearly lost on the numpties at the top of the big media foodchain.
And who will give odds on IBM buying PostgreSQL?
As for Sun Java frankly i couldn't care less - Its always been ironic that the best Oracle IDE (TOAD) and the power user shell SQLPlus are both written in C++.
Fuck
Goodbye Sun, at least it'll take Oracle down so it's not all bad.
Yeah!
1) Push Linux big time on Oracle's "own" hardware X86 kit
2) Complete domination of the Solaris platform from web app, down through the DB to the O/S and right to the hardware
3) Push mySQL to the side ( out of sight out of mind )
4) Sack Schwartz!
5) Buy a bigger yacht to celebrate!!!
6) Grudgingly pay shareholders something for their trouble....
Sod MySQL, what will happen to OpenSolaris now, with Oracle being so big on Linux and pushing their own copy of RHEL?
@Simon, you don't keel-haul "behind" a boat, you do it under the boat. Haul the condemned slowly along the boat's keel.
Best thing that could happen
Hmm.. take the maker of arguably the highest quality hardware on the planet, and the most prolific database company... put them together.... .. looking down the line, really, you'd have to be an idiot to look elsewhere.. who knows more about high end systems than Sun? or really, has a better technology stack to underpin Oracle with? .. and in turn.. who is in better position to make use of this hardware stack than Oracle... -- Personally, I think it's great news...
RIP Unbreakable Linux
Long Live Unbreakable Solaris...
@Matt prepare to migrate your Linux boxes to Solaris :-).
Rock
Pure speculation.
Do we think Oracle have already run their software on the machines Sun has up in the lab? Oracle DB on Rock with SSD Tier 0 storage via ZFS might be rather interesting after all. Obviously the deal is about far more than Rock, but an interesting thought.
Long Live Javacle
Will JDeveloper move use the Netbeans platform and become a competitor for Eclipse ?
A free IDE with all the features of Eclipse that better integrates with Oracle and offers J2EE features that Eclipse lacks would surely grab my attention.
Ql
I can already feel my prices rising. I'm sure there is some marketing idiot at Oracle who is now thinking of new, per-core, ways of charging us for products we used to get for free or low cost.
MySQL, it was nice working with ya. The writing should have been on the wall when MySQL top execs left, but now, why in the world would Oracle continue with MySQL? Unless they bastardize MySQL into some kind horrific of feeder/sales channel for full Oracle.
Time to give PostgreSQL a more thorough review. At least we can be assured of continued openness and development (think 3-5+ years)
Future of MySQL
It seems that Sun and Oracle are a better fit product wise. In regards to MySQL though, Oracle owns Innobase and maybe that is where MySQL will fit in - (InnoSQL, MyDB anyone). If anyone knows more about the relationship between InnoDB and Oracles other database products. Please enlighten us.
As for Paris, she knows as much as anyone about enterprise database solutions.
MySQL is the one bit that might run afoul
of the anti-trust laws here. So it get sold to somebody else.
initial thought
I work for a Sun X64/SPARC and Solaris/JAVA/Oracle "shop" and my initial thoughts are this is going to be good news for us.
Bugger
downloading source for mysql, java open solaris, and virtual box!!!
to much power in the hands of Oracle me thinks
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