The news came out earlier this week that Oracle is going to purchase Sun. At first I thought that was an interesting combination as I think of Oracle as being a database and turnkey solutions company and Sun as being Java and hardware. With almost no overlap I wondered what the motivation could be. I have to admit I liked the idea better than IBM purchasing Sun where there was almost total overlap in products. There are all sorts of reasons like Oracle owning Java and BEA lets them be the heavyweight in the Java space and compete against IBM. There is also the idea that by purchasing MySQL Oracle can either monetize it or kill it depending on how they see it affecting their database sales. In the end I think I was most enlightened by this press release by Sun.
"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."
It seems to me that Oracle is on top of the platform game now. Previously Microsoft had the most extensive platform and I am sure there will be lots of discussion and debate over who has the most comprehensive vision now but Oracle does have a point that they have the ability to go from the hardware through the OS (either Solaris or Linux) to the database and applications that run on top of them. I personally think this will resonate with a lot of organizations that are looking to cut costs and get better application integration. I have been preaching the platform vision for the last 18 months or so and firmly believe that standardizing on a platform (any platform) will yield some of these benefits but the platform vendor has to make sure integration happens easily and then the organization has to execute on that vision to get all the benefits.
In then end it will be interesting to see how much integration comes from the Oracle suite of products. I don’t expect to see products magically integrated tomorrow but in the next few years I am sure there will be better synergy as new products and versions are released. For now if I were IBM or Microsoft I would make sure that I have my platform story straight and that I can execute well while Oracle and Sun are distracted with the details of pulling the products together because there will be more competition in a few years. That is good for the industry as it will drive each company to innovate and help us to find new solutions.