Oracle buys SUN, WTF!!
This afternoon when I read about the the Oracle acquisition of SUN my first reaction was WTF...
It doesn't make much sense to me, SUN is mostly a hardware company with software delusions. Oracle is the reverse, a software company with hardware delusions (remember the net-station?). And now they are saddled with a legacy hardware business...IBM or HP, already hardware companies made a lot more sense.
But of course this is not about strategy it is about
1/ financial. SUN IS a legacy business that can be milked. Expect Oracle to fire a ton of people to run this from a maintenance standpoint. Oracle is becoming the king of maintenance streams and it seems they will add whatever in the mix. What will be interesting is what they do with the research in hardware and software. They can easily kill both expenses (with negative consequences for java) and move it to maintenance mode for the next 10 years. On the positive side there is an historic opportunity to really get in the UNIX business, what with LarryE and his delusions of unbreakable Linux
2/ LarryE. Of course when the big ego of LarryE is involved, shit does not need to make sense as long as it pleases him. This is in the wake of IBM trying to buy them and it may be a bit of "one up manship" on his part. I wouldn't look for too much sense when Larry is involved.
And even if it doesn't make much "sense" it may work still, Oracle is actually good at integrating companies. I think java will be fine under Oracle stewardship. Like I said before I have very fond memories of Sun. I hope it goes well. I would have preferred HP but there it is.
It doesn't make much sense to me, SUN is mostly a hardware company with software delusions. Oracle is the reverse, a software company with hardware delusions (remember the net-station?). And now they are saddled with a legacy hardware business...IBM or HP, already hardware companies made a lot more sense.
But of course this is not about strategy it is about
1/ financial. SUN IS a legacy business that can be milked. Expect Oracle to fire a ton of people to run this from a maintenance standpoint. Oracle is becoming the king of maintenance streams and it seems they will add whatever in the mix. What will be interesting is what they do with the research in hardware and software. They can easily kill both expenses (with negative consequences for java) and move it to maintenance mode for the next 10 years. On the positive side there is an historic opportunity to really get in the UNIX business, what with LarryE and his delusions of unbreakable Linux
2/ LarryE. Of course when the big ego of LarryE is involved, shit does not need to make sense as long as it pleases him. This is in the wake of IBM trying to buy them and it may be a bit of "one up manship" on his part. I wouldn't look for too much sense when Larry is involved.
And even if it doesn't make much "sense" it may work still, Oracle is actually good at integrating companies. I think java will be fine under Oracle stewardship. Like I said before I have very fond memories of Sun. I hope it goes well. I would have preferred HP but there it is.
Comments
I almost worked for Oracle 13 years ago ! (they were already involved with Java) and instead continued doing services (while you were at Sun !) and joined Sun a few years after that ..
This is definitely game changing for the Industry.
This should help Sun products and technologies grow imo ..
Let's hope for the best !