[Info-vax] OT: Sun/Oracle - Effect on Hardware Support

[JF Mezei]

David J Dachtera wrote:

> Just wondering if anyone has heard anything through channels about how
> the acquisition of Sun by Oracle effects the hardware support side of
> the business.


Our experience with mergers has been tainted by the fact that the buyer
(Compaq and then HP) was interested in only a small portion of what it
was acquiring and just let the rest run on auto-pilot with no growth
strategy. (There were signs that Pfeiffer was truly intent on leveraging
the enterrpsie products like Alpha, VMS and Digital Unix, but once he
was ousted, this ended very quickly).

In the case of HP buying Compaq, it was even worse because Carly did it
to get fame and delay her being fired and eliminate a clone competitor
(same product lineup).


Sun is very complementary to Oracle. There is not much overlap between
the two.

Larry Ellison doesn't need this merger to save his career. Ellison is
already into enterprise business. So this isn't some vanity purchase, I
think Ellison has plans for Sun within Oracle.

My guess is that Ellison has had his eyes on a hardware/OS company for
some time but didn't see an opportunity until now, with Sun cheap enough
to be purchased.

There is going to be some serious discussions on the future of Sparc.
But that would have happened under a standalone Sun anyways. But Sun
will continue to make servers, no matter what architecture of the CPU.

But storage is a key component, especially for a database vendor. So I
don't think Oracle will ignore that aspect of Sun.