I had previously written about Sun buying MySQL. Since then I had some more time to process the event and wanted to add some deeper thought about the matter. The same day that Sun acquires MySQL, Oracle buys BEA Systems. I mention this because it is an interesting set of events for both companies. Sun continues down its path of becoming an open source software company while leaving behind the proprietary world of its hardware. I know Sun did acquire StorageTek back in 2005 for 1.4 Billion USD. I do think that purchase was a mistake but that was under the watch of Scott McNealy. Sun, just like IBM, has seen the writing on the wall.
However, Oracle, who had tried many months before, finally came to an agreement to acquire BEA Systems. There was bit of press warfare going on between Oracle and BEA. Oracle made a low ball offer for the company and Oracle refused to pay anymore. Well, Sir Larry must have had a change of heart because he paid up. Oracle and its many products are all proprietary. Also, BEA Systems and its products, though some are built and utilize Java, are proprietary. They both should make some serious cash as customers pay big time money for the licenses and support from those two companies. However, I am intrigued as to what is going to happen to the Weblogic Application suite and the Oracle Application Server suite since these are competing products. If you utilize Oracle Forms you don’t have any choice but to use Oracle Application Server, which one of the Business Unit applications the Data Center requires Oracle forms.
With IBM, Sun, HP, and others embracing and moving more toward providing and interacting with open source, I am curious as to why Oracle has hung in there and focuses on being proprietary. First Peoplesoft in 2004 and now BEA Systems this month. I know Oracle offers the Unbreakable Linux which was a play to compete with Redhat and take some revenue away from them. We haven’t used Unbreakable Linux and don’t plan to. It seems that Oracle really isn’t taking any significant market share from Redhat and there have been issues with Oracle supporting Linux. Maybe with the BEA acquisition Oracle will change the Weblogic support model to be like Redhat’s JBoss application server to again try and take some cash away from Redhat.
Who knows what Larry and Oracle will do next? I’m surprised Oracle has not gone after a hardware vendor. Then they can pretty much offer the whole stack, Use Apache in the web tier, Weblogic or Oracle Application Server in the Application Tier, all connecting to Oracle Databases Enterprise or RAC. BEA has Tuxedo for an SOA type architecture, which has connectors into CORBA, Weblogic, and can even touch back into the legacy tier — the Unisys Mainframe world with the E-Link and OSI-TP products. It will be a nice portfolio of products for Oracle, but with the Open Source movement continuing to gain momentum it begs the question to see who wins the tug-of-war — proprietary or open source software?
