Oracle buy SUN, WTF!! part deux

over dinner I was talking with Nathalie and some further thoughts on the deal emerge

1/ DUH! the big diamond in the rough is of course MySQL. How could this not jump at me! Larry E must have freaked out at the thought of IBM getting its hands on mySQL. This way Larry gets to nip that one in the bud... I always thought he would pull this maneuver on RedHat to get JBoss. Of course the fate of our dolphin friends at SUN is all of the sudden very iffy. Something tells me Larry will try to make something of it and rank and file within Oracle will kill it quickly... to be followed.

2/ Oracle may actually be good for SUN. SUN was always a good company whose potential was not realized by poor middle management. By middle management I mean directors and low level VPs. I have never seen such a bunch of time-serving political hacks. Sun was full of petty fights over nothing by people that had nothing better to do, because, let's face it, SUN was a company on auto-pilot for awhile.

3/ Java. I don't expect anything to happen to java. Java has moved in maintenance mode a long time ago and being part of a healthy company like Oracle can only help.

4/ Hardware: serious headwinds? In a age where the emerging trend is $300 PCs are we going to see $3000 servers replacing $30,000 boxes? Oracle is new to this game. This comforts the view of "acquisition for maintenance stream aggregation".

Interesting acquisition...

Comments

Bill Pyne said…
What will be interesting, to me, is the handling of the JVM. Will Oracle try to get a little piece for every deployment of a JVM? My main concern is the effect on languages that have developed on the JVM over the past years, e.g. Scala and Clojure.
Anonymous said…
get ready for mySQL fork with some serious venture backing.

You missed out on the cloud angle. with $3000 servers and a bunch of software free. the Technology business is now a Utilities business

You can only make money on a subscription basis with end to end capabilities.
Marc, I think that you need to take some time and think about this a little more. Both posts show how little understanding you have about Oracle and Larry Ellison. You are usually a good strategic thinker (which is why I subscribe to this blog) but you seem to have hit a blind spot today.
Don Marti said…
MySQL fork? Already several in progress. See The New MySQL Landscape by Jeremy Zawodny.
Anonymous said…
re MySQL fork, is't this also a golden oppty EnterpriseDB and Ingres?
Anonymous said…
at last... finally finally finally it will all be freed from those inept moronic Sun managers. I look forward to the newer and bigger and better.
adt43wt342 said…
Bill, I do not expect any impact on java in the short-mid term. That ship has sailed and control of java is nothing but a liability (cost) today. You don't monetize languages directly...

Anon @ 1:56. Interesting points. I will put some money that says the opposite on venture because a/venture is dead b/ it is tough to fork a brand. I may lose that bet... Excellent point on the cloud but please do expand on what oracle would do about it. Obviously a salesforce.com generalized is a mighty competitor. I don't know what Larry can do but accelerate the movement...

Edwin, a/ I was the best strategic thinker. We needed to :) b/ I will give you that I don't spend a second thinking about the industry anymore c/ in reading slashdot, which usually gives you a cross section of opinion i couldn't really find new arguments but a fleshing of the points above.

Anon @ 3:39. I don't know, the nature of oss is a leader (mySQL) and much smaller competitors (postgres and commercial knock-offs). I was thinking about them yesterday but I don't see them doing any better. I would see the mySQL venture fund before I see the postgres thing. I could be COMPLETELY wrong of course :)

anon 6:41. Yes, people underestimate how bad moronic middle management is at SUN. I chuckle when I read Ponytail boy's email to the troops "Oracle recognizes our most important asset is:... our people" (kid you not on the tempo). Watch Oracle take an axe to "our people". The layers of moronic fat in SUN was staggering.
Bill Pyne said…
"You don't monetize languages directly..."

Sorry. I didn't explain my point well. Your statement is part of my point. The other part is that the JVM isn't Java but it's critical to Java and other languages now. I'm more concerned about paying a license to use the JVM.
Anonymous said…
Bill, it worries me too because the JVM team (hotspot) is some of the most talented in the industry, but the good news is they've already GPL'd it.

On top of that you have Harmony (Apache's JVM), and Intel is putting a lot of resources towards developing a JVM that isn't controlled by someone with a vested interest in non-x86 architecture.

I think even if Sun's JVM development was frozen tomorrow, things would be perfectly fine.

Perhaps they'll sell 'professional support' for Java?

It has always amazed me that the Redhat guys are selling support for the OS, Marc and his crew sold support for the App Server, yet java, (a crucial part of the runtime stack), never pushed commercial support?

I think that would be a way to make more money off the runtime while still keeping things free.
Bill Pyne said…
Anonymous,

Thanks for the info. Sounds like nothing to be alarmed about with the JVM.
Unknown said…
Why is Java safe? Why not monetize Java. With a large install base, why not do to the JDK what was done to JRockit (un-free it)? Yes it will destroy Java, but how quickly can everyone replace it in a down economy? Can they really live without bug fixes and point releases? (including those that keep up with Linux and Windows patches)

From a strictly monetary standpoint there is probably a short-sighted gain to be made from closing Java. There may or may not be a long term play that allows Oracle to profit from Java.
Unknown said…
Also Marc, don't forget about the Java patents as well... Granted "suing people" has yet to prove itself out as a sustainable business model (I've yet to hear about a run-away success patent troll who does more than win a case or two), but it is a game everyone is playing. So Java might be monetizable especially if you don't care whether it survives.
Ben Althauser said…
Worst case scenario, some of the free stuff disappears. If so, there will be an army of people waiting to make something to replace it the best they can. Best case scenario - Java advances and becomes more of a presence (Netbeans rules!).

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