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Oracle + Sun = ?
The recent acquisition of Sun Microsystems
by Oracle Corporation sure did took me by surprise. After all, while we all
know about Oracle's tendency to be aggressive when it comes to acquiring other
firms, the choice of Sun was odd. What made Oracle buy Sun? But, as you read
on, it all makes sense.
“The acquisition of Sun transforms
the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical
computing systems,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “Oracle will
be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications
to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not
have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration
costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”
Oracle is at a long-term advantage by taking
over Sun's assets, notably when it boils down to the following Sun technologies:
Java, Solaris and VirtualBox.
Oracle has had a long history with Java.
Oracle Database editions come with a JDBC driver, and Oracle offered documentation
and training for using Java EE with Oracle's middleware and aplication server
solutions. However, now Oracle has direct access to the JDK codebase, as well
as the Java specifications. This would certainly boost Oracle's standing, in
a world where many solutions, both consumer-based and mission-critical, are
controlled via Java.
Then comes Solaris. While Oracle has its
own Linux distribution (called Oracle Unbreakable Linux), it doesn't enjoy the
popularity which Solaris does. Solaris is widely used by organizations worldwide
to handle their servers. With Oracle now in control of Solaris, it would be
interesting to see what direction it goes in.
And then we have VirtualBox. In my opinion,
VirtualBox is one of the best virtualizers out there. And with Oracle too stepping
into the virtualizing arena with Oracle VM, I'm sure the day will come when
both of their codebases shall be merged.