why won’t anyone think of the industry analysts? sun buys mysql and oracle buys bea…on the same day? don’t they care that i’m busy? –Steve
Pretty crazy, huh? MySQL and BEA are snatched up by Sun and Oracle.
It looks as if Steve and James will give you the meeting details later today, which is fantastic. I’ll just throw out some speculation and thinking out-loud to hold you off until then: a little bread-basket while you wait ;>
Sun and MySQL
In one day-long consulting session with Sun, I recall seeing a “database” discussion on the agenda and thinking, “Sun does databases?” As we discussed in #redmonk this morning, and as I found out quickly that day, they indeed did: being big fans in PostgreSQL and Derby/JavaDB. Obviously, being the owner of MySQL makes them much more of a database company, and I’d expect – hope – to see Sun be a hell of lot more prominent in the database world.
Hopefully, buying MySQL will also mean a cloud computing opportunity for Sun to host those big MySQL’s in the sky people mutter about frequently.
As a side note, there’s the Hyperic/MySQL partnership to figure out. I’m guessing Sun would rather see their own IT management stack, Sun xVM Ops Center, cross-selling there, if not now, in the future.
Update: Steve’s more extensive analysis is up, including this nicely put “why would Sun do this” comment:
Q: So does that make this “We’re the Dot in the Dot Com,” the sequel? With the commensurate crash to follow?
A: Some would contend that’s the case, yes. Particularly a couple of members of the media we’ve spoken with. And of course it is possible that the model propping up Google’s immense valuation and those similar to it will prove to be similarly illusory. But somehow I doubt it. The fact is that the Google’s of the world have made real what Sun itself could not: a network that is, in fact, the computer. And the Google’s of the world, far more often than not, run on MySQL. Via this single acquisition, Sun’s made itself a relevant vendor in a space that very few, if any, of the larger commercial systems suppliers can play in.
Whether you agree with the valuation or not, YouTube sold for $1.6 billion, and consumed virtually no software from any of the major vendors. If that acquisition was to take place today, they would have been buying from Sun.
Oracle and BEA
Oracle buying BEA is a whole ‘nuther bucket of fun. To come out of middle-ware left field, it should mean good news for OSGi as both BEA and Oracle have been using OSGi in their middle-ware. Obviously, in this part of todays news, there’s even more fun when it comes to the Java world, Oracle and BEA being two big weight-pullers in Java middle-ware.
The big question more broadly here is how Oracle will either: (a.) use BEA’s technologies to finish out Fusion, or use them at all, (b.) consolidate portal and workflow product lines, if at all. That is, there’s a lot of (from the outside) duplication between BEA’s and Oracle’s product lines; Oracle has shown that it doesn’t go around just knocking out old product lines (probably a good move, despite the easy put-down this brings from the architectural peanut gallery); so how’re they going to handle consolidating those product lines?
Disclaimer: Sun, MySQL, and Eclipse are clients.
Bob: that's a fun take, Bob. The "buying into the cloud" echo's the rest of the conversations I've had today.
Cote, it doesn’t feel to me like there is a big question here at all. Congratulations on writing simultaneously about these two, because it makes much clearer what just happened:
Sun made a brilliant game changing move. They’ve bought a front row seat at the unfolding web software and cloud computing future.
Oracle, by contrast, paid a lot more to invest in an architecture that is in decline and that clearly the cloud computing world has already written off.
It’s tough when you’re afraid to cannibalize your own business. But, as someone once said, if you don’t, someone else will.
More on my blog:
http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/01/16/mysql-and-bea-oracle-and-sun-will-be-at-each-others-throats/
Best,
BW
The Hyperic part is just SIGAR, a library that does some low-level metrics gathering, it could be easily swapped out (as opposed to the Hyperic Management framework). The core of the MySQL network monitoring is written by MySQL itself.
Daniel: makes sense. I guess that means Javier and co. can put Sun down as an OEM customer, then, huh?
Yes, that is a nice logo to have 🙂