Why hasOracle bought Sun? I doubt it was for
its hardware manufacturing capability. Oracle has an ecosystem too
based around other hardware vendors for Oracle to want to provide
serious competition, writesRonan Miles, chairman of
theUK Oracle User
Group.
Also,
Sun has been suffering of late. I doubt it has anything in the
labs that could be an HP or IBM killer.
Some believe Oracle would like to
prevent IBM from picking up the Sun customer base - but we
should remember that IBM has a very strong Oracle practice, so the
idea that many customers could be won over to DB2 does not really
hold water.
Oracle would consider even one customer loss as too many, but
this would be an expensive way of keeping those customers. Of
course, I am sure Oracle will continue to support existing Sun
customers - it has an excellent record of protecting customers'
investments.
So what the future of the hardware and the customer roadmap
looks like will be something to anticipate post-completion.
That only really leaves Java.
Fusion strategy
This acquisition puts Oracle firmly in the centre of the Java
world. I think the Java community has viewed Oracle with suspicion.
Certainly in the early days there was a feeling that Oracle would
like to make Java proprietary. But it has to be said that those who
know Oracle well would see that as unlikely. However, as Sun has
continued to own Java rather than donate it, time will soon tell
who is right.
From the Oracle viewpoint, acquiring ownership of Java is a
logical step in its Fusion strategy, which has driven Oracle's
acquisition strategy since it began with Peoplesoft.
The Oracle Fusion strategy bets the company on a
Java/middleware-based platform around standards-interfaced packaged
applications, coupled with roll-your-own applications relying on
Java for high-performance integration. Oracle has a habit of taking
risks like this, having already bet the company on the internet in
the past.
While Oracle would probably have had few qualms about Sun
continuing to drive Java had Sun had remained financially healthy,
it would be a bigger risk had Oracle allowed Java to go to someone
less committed to open systems. Considering this, the acquisition
of Sun becomes a given.
Fusion will give the partner ecosystem a lot of opportunity for
components that can integrate into customer solutions, but Oracle
would not want to allow a central component such as Java to be at
the whim of players it is not intimate with.
This should also confirm to the industry that Oracle is now
definitely much
more than a "database" company - if anyone still held that
opinion.
Good news for Java
So, what does the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) wish for this? My
initial reaction is that this confirms Oracle's commitment to
Fusion and Fusion Middleware. This is good for our members. It also
opens up the opportunity for Java to become more business-ready,
given Oracle's focus on providing more manageable applications
rather than more manageable IT estates.
We can also look forward to Java becoming more
application-focused, giving quicker delivery to business, rather
than engineering-focused, which is great for industrial-strength
applications but relies on skilled people giving an implicit
limited bandwidth.
So, does UKOUG regard this as a good thing? Certainly. Much like
BEA, which needed a good story for it to continue and to give
its customers a solid future, Oracle's purchase of Sun provides
Java with a solid future, which Sun started but sadly was not able
to guarantee for the future.
Useful links: