Oracle announces deal to purchase Sun Microsystems
Oracle Corp. has announced a deal to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. for $7.4 billion, a surprise union of software and hardware companies that emerged following failed talks for International Business Machines Corp. to buy Sun, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Sun, whose server systems have long been sold along with Oracle’s database software, was widely believed to need a bigger partner as it competes with giants such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc.
Sun currently employs 1,500 to 2,000 people at its Colorado facilities at the Interlocken business park in Broomfield.
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We need to keep Open Office and MySQL FOSS. That business model works. Pay for SUPPORT not software. Don’t get greedy like M$. Sharing the pie means that the pie usually gets bigger…
T_P – I agree with you in principle (especially re M$), and I certainly use lots of freeware. That said, obviously Sun’s business model was not successful. The current economy was the death knell, but Sun has been dying for years. As a former employee, I spent about $3000 in the Employee Stock Purchase plan. That stock bottomed out last year at about $320 – the Oracle offer will make it about $2000. Hopefully, I will live long enough to break even.
The SUN business model involving HARDWARE has been the problem. It remains to be seen if the same thing that was done to Cray at SGI happens to Sun under Ellison. Skim off the brains and kill off the hardware parts was the SOP at SGI( Note who got SOLARIS ). Note what it has bought them ( Bankruptcy ). Hardware requires hardware to build it and a structure to maintain it. Software doesn’t require that kind of investment.
This ENRON type emphasis on profitability rather than RESEARCH is killing the computer industry in the US. Other countries are not so short sighted. We ARE paying for this attitude, big time. My ex-boss at Cray is a prime example.
Sun goes the way of Cray, CDC, Sperry, Univac, Broughs, Data General, Wang, DEC, just to name a few. It is the nature of a technology industry no matter whether they make hardware, software, cell phones or satellites. Best of luck in the future to the good people at Sun.