IBM: Who Cares About Sun/Oracle, Anyway?
Yesterday’s biggest news was Oracle’s purchase of Sun. Oracle swooped in and nabbed Sun right from under IBM’s nose, or so it seemed.
Talk about IBM buying the company spanned weeks. Despite initial discussions falling through, Sun had allegedly told IBM they would agree to breathe new life into old discussions as long as Big Blue made a solid commitment to buy. Two days later, it was all over and apparently, IBM couldn’t care less.
IBM was going to get a ton of press either way. If it had purchased the struggling Sun, we’d want to know why and what the company had planned for its newest acquisition. If someone else purchased Sun, we’d want to know why IBM let the company get away and what the company thought Sun’s chances were under its new parent company. CFO at IBM Mark Loughridge did what ZDNet describes as, “the conference call equivalent of a shoulder shrug,” yesterday.
“What’s really changed? I think nothing,” Loughridge stated boldly.
We don’t even know where to start with that one, except to say Sun and Oracle, along with nearly everyone else in the industry, disagree.
Yesterday Oracle described Java as the most important piece of software the company had ever acquired. President Safra Catz also detailed just how lucrative the Sun purchase would be for Oracle. Sure, that might mean squat to IBM, but try this: Recent rumors say Oracle may hold on to Sun’s software and shed or sell its hardware divisions to the likes of HP. However, until that day comes, Oracle has entered the hardware market and over night has become a huge player in the game. To say that kind of acquisition changes nothing is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting, “Lalalalalalala.”
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Jane McEntegart is a writer, editor, and marketing communications professional with 17 years of experience in the technology industry. She has written about a wide range of technology topics, including smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. Her articles have been published in Tom's Guide, Tom's Hardware, MobileSyrup, and Edge Up.
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fatedtodie It may be a game changer in the business or it may be nothing. A lot depends on how Oracle deals with the Sun assets. So IBM is right, at this point nothing has changed but... 6-12 months from now? IBM could be in trouble or... Oracle might not be able to handle the new markets and may lose big time like AMD did with the purchase of ATI. AMD STILL hasn't recovered from the dent that put in their processor lines.Reply -
tenor77 yoda8232I don't care tbh, I never even heard of Oracle until now.Reply
They're just one of the biggest database companies in the world. I happen to be running a version of Oracle right now. It's working properly right now **crosses fingers** -
Zenthar fatedtodieAMD STILL hasn't recovered from the dent that put in their processor lines.Maybe it's just me, but I'm under the impression that for about a year ATI is keeping AMD afloat. I know the merge wasn't easy, they were trying to unify (and still are) their process and structure, but in the end the ATI division did much better than AMD in the last year.Reply
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havo What's changed? Oracle has no experience in the hardware market and there is no "magic combo" that will come out of this that IBM has to fear. In fact IBM gets to take advantage of the uncertainty of the Sun platform to sell more servers. Everything else stays the same. They compete against Sun on the hardware platform just like they did before.Reply
In the long run, say 24+ months, Oracle will have a chance to use Java to its advantage. This is the real concern for IBM but is far enough out that they can deal with it. This merger is more of a risk to Oracle than it is to IBM. -
Zenthar The only "magic" IBM could "fear" on the WH side is Oracle licensing in regard to Sun CPUs (Oracle license is on a per CPU/core basis). Other than that Sun isn't that big of a player in the HW business IMO. However, IBM already invested a lot in Java, that might be the more stressful aspect.Reply
Oracle is already taking advantage of Java, it can be used as a stored procedure language since Oracle 9i (even latest Oracle 8 using some "add-on"). On a side-note, I'd like to remind people that Sun acquired MySQL last year so Oracle is now an even bigger database player. -
fatedtodie @Zenthar The problem is AMD was a Processor competitor to Intel. Before AMD took on ATI (and to buy them they had to take out a HUGE multi-billion dollar loan) they were a pretty steady competitor. It was a fanboy choice of AMD or Intel, the specs were pretty close. then ATI... boom AMD becomes a non player again in the CPU market, they lose market share by the day...Reply
It is only now with them working on the Global Foundries product and trying to hit the 28nm line before Intel and skipping the whole 32nm generation that AMD MIGHT have a chance to catch back up. -
Why are they excited to get their hands on Java? It's a useful technology, but I wouldn't think it would suit the needs of a high end product like Oracle. Symantec based their antivirus management console on it and look how well that played out for them. Unusable almost describes it.Reply