It seems that somebody wants Sun, and that somebody is Oracle. The database company is now officially in the hardware business after announcing that it has purchased Sun Microsystems for $7.4 Billion USD:
Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle will buy Sun shares for $9.50 each in cash. The price represents a 42-per-cent premium to Sun’s Friday closing stock price of $6.69. Net of Sun’s cash and debt, the transaction is valued at $5.6-billion, Oracle said.
So, why would a database company buy a server company? There are two reasons according to this Oracle press release:
There are substantial long-term strategic customer advantages to Oracle owning two key Sun software assets: Java and Solaris. Java is one of the computer industry’s best-known brands and most widely deployed technologies, and it is the most important software Oracle has ever acquired. Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle’s fastest growing business, is built on top of Sun’s Java language and software. Oracle can now ensure continued innovation and investment in Java technology for the benefit of customers and the Java community.
The Sun Solaris operating system is the leading platform for the Oracle database, Oracle’s largest business, and has been for a long time. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle can optimize the Oracle database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris. Oracle is as committed as ever to Linux and other open platforms and will continue to support and enhance our strong industry partnerships.
This deal is likely to not face the same amount of poking and prodding by US Anti-Trust Regulators that a proposed IBM/Sun merger would likely have faced. My only question is this: What happens to MySQL as to some degree it competes against some Oracle products? Thoughts?
EU Throws Spanner Into Oracle’s Attempt To Buy Sun
Posted in Commentary with tags EU, Oracle, Sun on November 10, 2009 by itnerdYou might recall that back in April Oracle wanted to get its hands on Sun in the worst way. But that purchase has run into a bit of a problem because the European Union has decided that it doesn’t like the deal. According to the 8K form that Sun filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the EU is objecting for this reason:
“The Statement of Objections sets out the Commission’s preliminary assessment regarding, and is limited to, the combination of Sun’s open source MySQL database product with Oracle’s enterprise database products and its potential negative effects on competition in the market for database products,”
That sucks if you’re Oracle. Needless to say they are not happy about this and issued a press release to let everybody know why they’re ticked:
The database market is intensely competitive with at least eight strong players, including IBM, Microsoft, Sybase and three distinct open source vendors. Oracle and MySQL are very different database products. There is no basis in European law for objecting to a merger of two among eight firms selling differentiated products. Mergers like this occur regularly and have not been prohibited by United States or European regulators in decades.
So what happens now? As usual, lawyers will get involved, this will drag out for some time. But it will get sorted out in the end and the lawyers will become very rich in the process. In other words, it’s business as usual. But the uncertainty that this delay causes won’t be good for Oracle, Sun, or their customers.
Leave a comment »