April 20, 2009
First thoughts on Oracle acquiring Sun
- Wow.
- And during the week of the MySQL conference, too.
- In the must-read slide presentation, Oracle’s says all the right things about being committed to all product lines and technologies. On the whole, this is believable.
- Oracle says it’s focusing Sun hardware sales on existing Oracle/Sun customers. Makes sense.
- Oracle mentions OpenStorage prominently. Makes sense. Integrating DBMS with storage is Oracle’s high-end DBMS future. (E.g., Exadata.)
- HP can’t be happy.
- MySQL and InnoDB are reunited.
- MySQL is apt to get decent, much as it would have under IBM.
- Even so, if you really believe in open source’s freedom, it’s time to look at PostgreSQL …
- … or EnterpriseDB’s Postgres Plus, although my recent dealings with EnterpriseDB underscore the importance of being VERY careful about counting your fingers after you shake hands with that company.
- And I wouldn’t be surprised if another shoe dropped soon on the EnterpriseDB front. (Please excuse the mixed metaphor.)
- I used to laugh at how many different app servers Sun had acquired. Oracle acquired a number too. Together it’s quite a pile of them.
- Oracle says acquiring Java is a great big deal. I’m not sure I see why that would really be true.
More later. I have a radio interview in a few minutes on a very different subject.
Categories: EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, HP and Neoview, MySQL, Open source, Oracle, PostgreSQL
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20 Responses to “First thoughts on Oracle acquiring Sun”
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[…] Monash has some first thoughts but I’ll limit my comments at this time to “very interesting”. What do you think? […]
Curt,
We seem to be crossing paths today! Here are my initial thoughts on Oracle / Sun.
http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/mergers-and-value/
Peter
What do you think this means for Greenplum?
I believe their primary platform is the Sun Fire X4500/X4540 on Solaris x64. My guess is Greenplum will also probably lose access to the Sun sales channel as well.
Sun’s OpenStorage plus ZFS will be a threat to NetApp.
At least counting by customer, less than half of Greenplum’s sales — and falling — are on Sun boxes, they tell me. I also heard of a quality issue Greenplum had that the customer ascribed to the Sun hardware and not the Greenplum software itself. So Greenplum doesn’t get wiped out by this.
But I’m sure on the margin there are sales calls that would have featured Greenplum that now will feature some version of Exadata instead.
If I ran a company that relied on the current MySQL culture (like Tokutek, Greenplaum, etc.), I would immediately begin looking for another database to port my product to.
Oracle has some experience with Open Source ( http://oss.oracle.com/ ), but outside of InnoDB and Berkely DB, I would characterize it as “toe in the water” activity. InnoDB isn’t known as a model open source player (development takes place behind closed doors, with sporadic code dumps), and I have a feeling that Java and MySQL development will become more InnoDB-like than the other way around.
Max,
Well, a MySQL fork could do the job. But a new entity would probably have to emerge to coordinate.
Any thoughts on OpenOffice/Star Office. Not really that relevant on the bigger scheme. But the spreadsheet capabilities might be interesting to Oracle.
[…] my first three posts on the Oracle/Sun merger suggested, I think Oracle will do a better job with MySQL […]
Curt,
Thanks for noticing the typo in my original piece.
Peter
From a technical standpoint, going with a fork would be much easier. But I’m uneasy about the chances for the forks you listed in your fourth follow-up post to the acquisition.
[…] Curt Monash […]
Curt,
I have now put together a slightly more considered piece, drawing on the thoughts of people in the blogosphere and on various on-line forums. This can be found at:
http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/combinatorics/
Peter
[…] First thoughts on Oracle Acquiring Sun […]
[…] ＞＞對這則新聞的第一時間想法 […]
I agree Java isn’t the big deal here
It’s all about the solid state anatomy
>> although my recent dealings with EnterpriseDB underscore the importance of being VERY careful about counting your fingers after you shake hands with that company.
OK, but are you going to divulge the nasty bits? Or are they in a post I can’t find? 🙂
My take on the new EnterpriseDB management team is that even when they recognize and acknowledge that they haven’t lived up to a commitment, they can’t be trusted to fix the problem.
Frankly, EnterpriseDB is small enough and I have enough PR influence that I probably could have intimidated them into doing the right thing if I’d squeezed hard enough. But the amount of squeezing evidently required was more than I felt comfortable with.
EnterpriseDB’s prior management team had the usual mismatch between marketing claims and reality, but I take that in stride. They were on the whole good guys. But I suspect the new ones don’t value individuals — e.g., individual customers — enough to be good business partners for enterprises.
I know that’s vague, but it’s all I intend to provide.
[…] focus had to be changed anyway. And Fred Holahan was the proximate cause for me writing: my recent dealings with EnterpriseDB underscore the importance of being VERY careful about […]
[…] had my issues with Fred Holahan, who was VP of Marketing when I posted that EnterpriseDB was not to be trusted. (That said, Fred is long gone from EnterpriseDB and my opinion hasn’t changed.) But […]