Oracle acquires Sun: Who needs to look out now? April 20
As a Java developer who does a lot of work with Oracle products including Jdeveloper and ADF, my head is still spinning a little from the news that Oracle is buying Sun Microsystems.
Oracle buying BEA hurt a little, though it was completely expected and a great move on Oracle’s part, I was a little sad to see the application server competition field drop by one but I was very happy that Oracle was smart enough to choose Weblogic. At that point it was really the only the decision they could make.
With Oracle buying Sun there is a lot of synergy, there are many technologies that are duplicated among both companies. Oracle owning both should make those technologies better and enable them to compete with the leaders in those respective areas. The big ones that stick out for me:
!. Oracle’s JDeveloper and Sun’s NetBeans
Could they really afford to drop NetBeans, probably not, but can they afford to drop JDeveloper, no, not really. Here the only thing that really makes sense is to merge the two, probably adding in the ADF wizards and goodies like that into NetBeans. At least, that is what I hope they do. JDeveloper isn’t bad, but I only ever use it to develop ADF projects and I bet many, many people are in that same boat. Combining the two could end up giving Eclipse a run for it’s money, hopefully the competition just spurs both to be better.
2. Oracle’s Oracle VM and Sun’s Virtual Box
I haven’t had much experience with Oracle VM, but I have lately become a huge fan of Sun’s Virtual Box. It’s a great product and it lets me do everything I want for free. Will this continue to be the case? I don’t know. I’m not an expert on virtualization in the enterprise, I use it for desktop VMs, but I hadn’t seen much about Virtual Box working in that space. I would imagine Oracle VM is all about virtualizing the network and competing with VMWare on that level. With the two together VMWare’s got some competition.
3. Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux and Sun Solaris
Oracle had a great jumpstart to their linux platform basing it on the RedHat codebase way back when. Solaris was my first exposure to any type of Unix (Solaris and AIX, actually) and it has been around forever. If the adoption of Linux has hurt anything, it’s probably been Solaris and through that, sales of Sun’s hardware. Oracle says that their owning of Solaris will enable them to tune the Oracle Database software to run even better on it, and since according to Oracle, most of their database customers are using Solaris, I think they’ll probably do that. I have no idea what will have to Unbreakable Linux though. Who has to look out with this one? I’d say IBM. Buying Sun probably would have been good for them in the products space, I think the only area IBM is going to be competing in future is going to be services. RedHat has Ubuntu to worry about on the desktop side and now a bigger threat from Oracle and Sun on the server-side, they have their work cut out for them.
4. Oracle Database and Sun’s MySQL
MySQL has a huge customer base, most of them probably non-paying. I think with this one, Oracle just adds it to their ever increasing repetoire of niche databases. It won’t go away, but I see less adoption in the future, maybe a boost for PostgreSQL if they can get their act together.
5. Sun’s Java and Oracle’s ADF
Oracle has always been a big player in the specifications for the Java language. I’m sure someone else will go into all the details, because I honestly don’t know them off the top of my head, but I do know that many technologies and ideas that ADF is based on where either approved JSR’s or close to approved JSR’s. Does Oracle’s acquisition of Sun and Java mean that they will be better equipted to push trhough whatever they want to add to the language? Well, I don’t think it will be quite that easy, but I’m sure it makes it easier.
I’ve always been a Java guy at heart, I work with Oracle technology sometimes, and I think they have really come a long way, but Oracle owning Java does kind of scare me a little. One thing Oracle does really well, and JDeveloper is great at this, is making complex technologies easy to use. It is what Microsoft does really well. .NET makes easy the things that Java makes hard. ADF actually does a lot of the same. The combination of ADF and Java together could pose a big threat to Microsoft’s .NET if Oracle does it right.
My first thought about Oracle owning Java is that many developers are going to jump up and down about it and complain. Some will probably jump ship, maybe to .NET but probably to Ruby or PHP or something else. I don’t think many coroporations are going to change the direction of their IT departments though, so for them, it will be .NET or Java as it always has. In the end, I thnk most Java developers are going to remain Java developers and hopefully Oracle’s backing of Java will just end up making it a better language to work with.
Microsoft might have more to worry about with Oracle owning Open Office now also. I hope that Oracle continues to invest in it, or it’ll end up being Microsoft Office vs. Google Apps and that’s about it. I’m all for cutting edge, but Gmail hasn’t come out of Beta yet and I’d like to see Microsoft have some competiion in this area.
So I wanted to get my thoughts out there while they were floating around in my head and hopefully yours so I could hear your opinions on the topic. Please let me know what you think about this acquistion and what you think it means to the future of technology and competition in the field.
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