Oracle's surprising takeover of Sun isn’t so surprising when you realize what Oracle will be able to offer:
Mr Ellison is keen on two bits of Sun’s software portfolio in particular. One is Java, a programming language that is the underlying technology both for many business applications and for software that runs on mobile phones. Sun never managed to make much money from it, in part because it wanted Java to be an open standard. But Mr Ellison may have different ideas. To him, it is “the single most important software asset we have ever acquired.” Sun’s other crown jewel is Solaris, its highly reliable operating system, which is often used as the platform for Oracle’s databases. More Oracle databases run on Solaris than on any other operating system, Mr Ellison notes. With control over both pieces of software, Oracle will be able to make them work together better.This ability to integrate hitherto disparate pieces of technology, and thus make life easier for companies, provides further justification for the merger. For some time, Mr Ellison’s vision for Oracle has been to become the Apple of the enterprise, hiding complexity from customers, just as Apple does with its powerful but easy-to-use consumer products. Taking over Sun, he said this week, provides Oracle with all the pieces to put together systems that reach from “application to disk”. Oracle’s engineers are already brainstorming about how to build “industries in a box”—complete computer systems that come fine-tuned for, say, banking or retailing.
Oh, and there’s one more thing — which Ellison prefers not to mention:
By buying Sun, Oracle becomes the world’s largest open-source company, prompting much debate among developers and users. There is particular concern about the fate of MySQL, a firm Sun bought for $1 billion in January 2008. It sells database software which is also available in a free, widely used, open-source version.