Oracle to Acquire Sun: death or rebirth?
We suggested this idea at the beginning of 2008, as a Joke. Now it is true:
Sun and Oracle today announced a definitive agreement for Oracle to acquire Sun for $9.50 per share in cash. The Sun Board of Directors has unanimously approved the transaction. It is anticipated to close this summer.Oracle and IBM are face to face. It is hard to say what this could means.
We also read on Wall Street Journal:
[...] The deal, which Oracle valued at $7.4 billion, including Sun's cash and debt, represents the likely end to one of Silicon Valley's more iconic companies, which had struggled for much of this decade to remain relevant. [...] The deal values Sun at $9.50 a share, a 42% premium to Friday's close. The deal price is slightly below IBM's offer of $9.55 a share.The forces behind the Java-based economy are slowly clashing together. IBM and Oracle were not friendly each other in the past years, and this acquisition can bring new fuel to their duel.
Oracle with Sun has the power to seriously harm IBM.
IBM sells DB2 software with custom hardware and Java Support (IBM holds a JVM license: it has its own Java implementation) Oracle now can do the same, selling Oracle on Sun Hardware, but driving also the evolution of Java.
So, the IBM and Oracle market is overlapping.
Java is born in 1995, and it is now 14-years old. A grand-father in the fast paced IT World. Even if it is difficult to compare programming languages with other software (COBOL and FORTRAN are still live, while Windows95 is quite dead), this news will not let me sleep very well, tonight.