Submitted by “Oracle’s acquisition of Sun raised a lot of questions about the future of Sun’s core technologies. Oracle says that it is committed to Solaris and Java, but some open source advocates are concerned about the implications for OpenOffice.org and MySQL. Ars looks at how Oracle and members of the open source software community have responded to the acquisition.”
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Edited 2009-05-04 17:24 UTC
Seriously, it is not a walk-in-the-shopping-buy-something thing. They are a bit quite, of course, they have to. Oracle will spend time scrutinizing every detail they can before making a decision with as low noise as possible. That is the correct way to protect your investment. What they think is valuable will be improved or swallowed by Oracle products, some Sun products will disappear, probably through a “upgrade” plan. The last case is what, I think, will happen to MySQL.
OpenOffice is a foot-in-the-door not only for Oracle, but also for IBM, Novell, RedHat and the other big server/service vendors. Probably its development will speed up. Oracle needs it not only to extend its presence on business, but also to have a coast-to-coast solution. Hope a OOo foundation be created. Anyway, I expect a more tight integration of Java-OpenOffice-OracleDB to come now that they have them all.
Java will probably be revamped to counter Microsoft .net . Hopefully Oracle, IBM and the open source community may agree over a direction.
Solaris is a great product and many people say it is a wonderful partner for Oracle main products. They will probably keep improving it to see how things work out.
The hardware division will be aligned to deploy more and more x86 pieces. It worked for Dell, HP and IBM, will work for them too. I am worried about SPARC and Niagara technology though.
Wish good luck to all good Sun folks on the current troubled waters.
I mean “quiet” on 1st paragraph. Gosh!
The trouble I have with the current situation is that neither company has someone willing to come out and lay out what their vision of the IT landscape. What I mean by that is – how does all the different pieces of software integrate into each other to deliver an end result for a current or potential customers.
So far Sun failed to do it, and Oracle appear as though they’re going to fail to do it. Ask yourself, when you install software on Solaris – why isn’t there a uniform way to configure software from a single interface? each software provides a plugin to an interface so that it can be configured from one location.
It is depressing because I don’t see the fundamental flaws of Sun getting fixed; it’ll simply lumber along as a division of Oracle which will add to the spaghetti of software on offer. Don’t expect any change unfortunately.
Matt! very pessimistic!
The moves on OpenSolaris lately have been great. Sun have actually made some of their fantastic technologies accessible and pleasant to use even for simple desktop use (ZFS – Time Slider for example)
I see nothing but improvement in how Sun have been moving towards a rational product set that is well integrated and easy to use (whilst keeping their other good properties), sure they were coming of a low base but they are definitely heading in the right direction.
But that is one product on one specific area; where Microsoft hands Sun’s metaphorical ass to them on a platter is coming up with a completely integrated offering where everything links into everything else. Where setting up and configuring the software is easy and fast because there is time spent on making the software accessible. It isn’t about dumbing down the experience it is realising that the vast majority of system administrators aren’t UNIX guru’s, companies aren’t going to pay $140,000 for a UNIX guru when a very capable generic IT guy can be employed for $70,000.
As I said, there is no integration; take OpenOffice.org and Alfresco; why don’t we see Sun rebrand Alfresco and sell it and support it as ‘StarOffice Collaboration Server’ and create a bundled deal with the StarOffice client, OpenSolaris and maybe teaming up with an organisation like Toshiba, HP or Dell to provide the underlying hardware for the end user within an enterprise organisation?
Its difficult not to get depressed given so many opportunities are there for them to take advantage but they never do – because of a lack of leadership within Sun.
I agree about the alfresco point…i think its another case of NIH would have been great to see such things occur.
I’m just going to remain positive. What has been lacking at Sun (warning: armchair CEO) is leadership and product vision. Sun have many fantastic products but they just don’t sell as a vision. I think Oracle gets this point and I hope they can bring some of their better qualities to the Sun product line without destroying the innovative culture and goodwill of the employees.
In some ways it might have been better if Sun had been bought by IBM. Oracle run a very tight ship, and although they are not the best software or technology company in the world they extract the very last penny out of what they have. That’s why they have the money to buy Sun.
At Oracle, unless something pulls its wait then it gets dispensed with. This means the end of projects like Looking Glass, which was never what it appeared anyway, and Oracle will certainly not allow MySQL to undercut Oracle. As for the rest we’ll have to wait and see.