Oracle snaps up SunSees the lightBy INQUIRER NewsdeskMonday, 20 April 2009, 17:34SunBIG DATABASE OUTFIT Oracle has said it will lash out some $7.4 billion (£5.1 billion) on Sun Microsystems or $9.50 (£6.53) per share.IBM's offer to buy Sun was sadi to be worth $9.40 (£6.46) per share, but that deal fell through earlier this month when Big Blue go cold feet.Oracle said it expects the purchase to generate more profit than the previous acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined. It forecast the acquired business would contribute over $1.5 billion (£1billion) to its non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, and more than $2 billion (£1.4 billion) in its second year."The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems," said Oracle chief executive 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."Oracle said that Sun's Java software is the most important software it has yet acquired. Oracle uses the software to build its Fusion Middleware.
Sparc doomed, say beard-scratchersOracle may let it fizzle outBy Nick FarrellTuesday, 21 April 2009, 12:40ORACLE'S BUYOUT of Sun could be the final nail in the coffin of Sparc, according to the strokers of beards and people in the know.Oracle have made it clear that it was Sun's software business was all it was interested in, which leads many to wonder what it will do with Sun's hardware.The word on the street is that Sparc, which has been losing ground to rival Unix server vendors like Hewlett-Packard and IBM could be sold off, or scrapped.The Standard has been doing a straw poll of its tame analysts. They noted that Oracle boss Larry Ellison implied that Solaris is more important to Oracle than Sun's Sparc chip.Oracle has already built high-performance servers with Hewlett-Packard for data warehouses based on industry-standard hardware, it does not really need Sparc.Specialised chips like Sparc have not been selling as well as companies move to industry-standard servers. Sun had been slowing the development of the chip because it lacked the cash to keep up. Already some of Sparc's development had been outsourced to Fujutsu.However it is unlikely that Oracle will pull the plug on Sparc right away.Gabriel Consulting's Dan Olds said that Oracle would be unlikely to stop developing the Sparc chips right away, and may continue to offer systems based on the processor,But J. Gold Associates' Jack Gold said that Oracle did not have any incentive to continue Sparc development as it goes against its policy of being as open standards as possible. µ
Oracle will keep Sun's hardware businessEllison sees opportunityBy Robert MunroFriday, 8 May 2009, 16:47WHEN ORACLE announced its surprise purchase of Sun Microsystems last month, most observers assumed that the software company would sell off, wind down or abandon Sun's hardware business including its signature lines of Sparc chips and servers.However, in an interview filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and posted on Oracle's website yesterday, CEO Larry Ellison declared that the company will keep Sun's hardware division."We are definitely not going to exit the hardware business," Ellison said, adding that he sees opportunities in hardware for Oracle.He explained, "While most hardware businesses are low-margin, companies like Apple and Cisco enjoy very high margins because they do a good job of designing their hardware and software to work together. If a company designs both hardware and software, it can build much better systems than if they only design the software. That's why Apple's iPhone is so much better than Microsoft phones."Oracle's intention is to sell integrated systems for which it will design and build both hardware and software. Oracle already has significant software product lines that it offers customers in its databases, middleware and enterprise applications, so the addition of Sun's hardware, Solaris Unix operating system and Java to Oracle's portfolio undoubtedly should worry the other large enterprise IT vendors such as IBM and HP."Once we own Sun we're going to increase the investment in Sparc. We think designing our own chips is very, very important. Even Apple is designing its own chips these days," Ellison continued."Right now, Sparc chips do some things better than Intel chips and vice-versa. For example, Sparc is much more energy efficient than Intel while delivering the same performance on a per socket basis," he said. "Sparc machines are much less expensive to run than Intel machines."Ellison also said Oracle wants to continue Sun's partnership with Fujitsu, which contributes to Sparc development and sells its own line of Sparc servers. µ
