The delays caused by the EC's decision toprobeOracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems could
createproblemsfor Sun's customers.
Organisations that rely on Sun, many of which are in the
financial services sector, will not be able to start planning ahead
until Oracle's
$7.4bn acquisition is completed. Meanwhile, Oracle will be
unable to publish its plans for Sun's software and hardware
products.
But not all end-users, including many in the UK, are concerned,
because they do not expect to make decisions on refreshing their
technology until April next year.
Unfair advantage
The EC has until January next year to make a decision on whether
or not the acquisition will give Oracle an unfair advantage. The
deal has
already been approved by US regulators.
It is concerned that the acquisition could be anti-competitive
because Oracle databases and Sun's MySQL compete directly with each
other in many parts of the market.
"Consolidation of suppliers is a concern where it reduces
competition," says Ben Booth, global chief technology officer at
research firm Ipsos.
No problem
But Ronan Miles, chairman of the UK Oracle User Group, says a
significant number of companies' fiscal years run April to March.
"This means investment plans that are going to rely on whatever
plans Oracle publishes are not going to kick in before next year,"
he says.
Sun customers in the UK, including Nottingham Building Society,
Leek United Building Society and Ipsos, will wait until April
before making any decisions.
"At present this is not really causing us any issues, but we are
watching closely to see how it plays out," says Peter Hanlon, chief
architect at Auto Trader
Ronan Miles says that by singling out MySQL as cause for
concern, the EC is saying it is happy with the rest, including
Sun's key Java programming language.
"This is good news, and even if Oracle were to cut out MySQL,
this should not have a big impact on users' plans as it will
continue to develop as an open source project," he says.
Winners and losers
The biggest loser is likely to be Sun, which has already been
hit by a global downturn in the server market.
Worldwide server revenues fell around 30% in the second quarter
compared with the same period a year ago, according to research
firms Gartner and IDC.
In the economic downturn, fewer businesses are investing heavily
in the hardware and operating systems software on offer from
Sun.
Competitors seeking to capitalise on the uncertainty caused by
the Oracle acquisition will be further helped by the delays caused
by the EC investigation.
At least one of Sun's UK customers in the public sector said it
had been approached by Sun's competitors recently.
Just three months after Oracle announced plans to acquire Sun,
competitor HP launched a server migration programme for Sun
customers at lower cost.
Although end-users are unlikely to be severely affected by the
delay, Sun competitors such as HP, IBM, Microsoft, Teradata and
Sybase are likely to be the only winners, says Gartner analyst Andy
Butler.