Oracle is buying Sun, the owner of Java, MySQL and Solaris.
Oracle is now the enterprise equivalent of Apple: a single vendor with a start-to-finish closed loop from the hardware to the OS to the applications.
Another way to look at it: they now own a top-to-bottom development stack like Microsoft’s:
- OS (Solaris, and no, I don’t include their rip-off of Red Hat Linux)
- Language (Java)
- Databases (flat files, MySQL – oh, wait, yeah, Oracle too)
- Lots of business applications
- Enterprise licensing savvy
I’m no analyst by any means, but it would seem like a pretty interesting investment. I couldn’t see why IBM would be that interested in Sun, but Oracle, that makes sense.
I did get one big chuckle out of the press release line that says, “Oracle is as committed as ever to Linux and other open platforms.” I couldn’t help but think, “Exactly – you were never that committed to Linux other than as a revenue stream for support.” I’m probably wrong, but I just found it funny.
