Oracle Buys Sun for $7.4 Billion
Hold everything, Oracle has agreed to buy Sun.
At the end of last week, Bloomberg reported that struggling Sun Microsystems had returned to rebuild previously burned bridges with IBM. According to Bloomberg, Sun said it would talk if IBM made a stronger commitment to buy. It reeked of desperation, but then who was going to argue that at this stage in the game Sun wasn’t getting a little bit anxious to sell?
Following the collapse of the IBM deal, the outlook for Sun wasn’t exactly bright. While many felt the $9.50 per share initially offered by IBM was more than Sun was worth, analysts debated as to whether or not a single company would be willing to buy Sun in its entirety and feared that the best option may be for Sun to break into smaller divisions and sell individually.
Early this morning all that changed: Oracle announced that it will buy Sun for a reported $7.4 billion, or $9.50 per share. According to the New York Times, the two companies said in a statement that the value of the transaction would be $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt. According to Bloomberg, Oracle President Safra Catz has said Sun will contribute an estimated $1.5 billion to the company’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, with that figure increasing to over $2 billion by year two.
“This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,” Catz continued. Oracle has also dubbed Java “the most important software” it has ever acquired.
Reuters reports that Sun shares this morning jumped 27.1 percent (up to $8.50 from $6.69 on Friday) and Oracle shares fell 4.2 percent (down to $18.25).
Ofcourse, I'm no analyst of any kind, just IMHO..
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/018363
(from http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/index.htm )
I would thought this one is most important, as it's official after all
A thousand thank yous. I'll add them in now.
I hope that they will enhance Java before using it for any reason. I hope that they will deliver a USABLE product that is USER-FRIENDLY and does what it supposed to do in terms of functionality.
use kaspersky's anti banner feature - or download one of the many rigged lists for your hosts file to redirect the ad sites to localhost
I don't know the answer to that, but it got me thinking. Our management told us in december, that from this year we're going to use openoffice on the ~2000 pcs we have for customers.... openoffice is sun right? I wonder if that's still going to be free then?
Yes, Open Office is Sun. Along with Virtual Box, and a few other Open Source software. I don't really know what Oracle's track record with Open Source is, but this could present a problem for the linux community.
Okay - so if you're right, I don't have to worry having to remove it in 6 months again.
Oracle is one of the creators of realvnc - so they do know what opensource is - in general I don't like opensource though. I prefer software where someone claims responsibility when there's a problem.
IMO IBM didn't really have the need to buy Sun to improve its business. I see it just an opportunity for IBM to remove a smaller competitor from market.
Another player which has been silent is Microsoft. Maybe it's waiting to buy HP one day... :-)
In terms of what it could mean for their database...this could be a very very good match. Java makes great GUI front ends, esp considering it can load and run the same way regardless of OS. Building this into their software to make it a more complete and flexible package in terms of customizing end user interfaces would be a handy thing I'd imagine.