RE: Sun and Oracle
> Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 18:37:19 +0100 > From: obnoxio@serendipita.com > To: informix-list@iiug.org > Subject: Sun and Oracle > > Long term strategy or short term tactics? > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/12/sun_oracle_sec/ > OTC... You can take what I say with a grain of salt... There's a couple of viewpoints to why Oracle and Sun is a good deal, including the hardware piece. Right now, the market sees this as Oracle being Sun's white knight. IBM? They're the evil ones who fumbled the ball on this one. (Yeah they should have gone the distance when they made their bid.) So this buys Oracle some short term credibility and a good story. It also strengthen's their ties to the Vendors and Resellers of Sun, some of who also resell Oracle. ;-) [Note: You should have heard some of the interesting chatter about the Sun/IBM deal and the channel partners FUD] Longer term. Oracle steps up a notch in the JCP. (Java Community Process). Longer term. Oracle can now sell a complete mySQL solution. They also have acquired some staff that has the low level knowledge of ROCK and multi-threading an apps architecture. Also a longer term play in that it will have a positive performance impact on Oracle 12+ releases in the near and longer term future. Server virtualization and then clustering those virtualized servers will only go so far.... Longer term. Oracle will only keep the pieces that either make it money, or give them a tactical advantage by keeping control over them. So you wouldn't expect to see mySQL going back to the OS community in the near term. Even if you don't see Oracle getting involved in Maria. (The new mySQL OS spinter). In the near term, Oracle doesn't cede IBM access to their 'White Space' customers. Unfortunately this hurts the Informix community since you can imagine seeing more IDS on Sun than DB2 and that if there were IDS benchmarks, they could be done on Sun (Rock) without causing IBM too much concern... but I digress, the point is that in owning Sun, they block IBM's avenues to growth. Also, the combination of Sun and Oracle gives the Rock platform a set of software apps to work with and to show the value of Rock. What's the market share of Sun's web/app server vs Oracle's and of course Oracle's products using the web/app server? IBM needs access to the white space. You can only sell so much software and services in to the same customer base. Also, Moore's law hurts software sales' margins. So while Oracle didn't see the benefits of owning Sun, I'm sure that they've thought things through. Also, when the deal is baked and things settle down... If Rock doesn't hold the potential that the hype indicates... Oracle could always spin off or sell off the hardware division to another company. (One that actually has some strong ties to IDS...) But hey! What do I know? I'd short Oracle until the deal was baked then I'd consider waiting a qtr depending on Oracle's price, then I'd go long. I'd hedge by selling out of the money covered calls. (Not that that strategy doesn't work... ;-) -G _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_BR_life_in_synch_052009