Sun Acquired by Oracle to Make “Apple of the Enterprise”

In a surprise move, Sun Microsystems has been bought by Oracle.  The details are still a little lacking but few knew that while talks between IBM and Sun were breaking down, that Oracle was conducting covert negotiations.

Much of the outcome from this acquisition will be determined by how Oracle decides to utilize Sun’s Solaris OS as well as its vast IP in the hardware business.  Larry Ellison has stated that his goal is to have Oracle be “the Apple of Enterprise” and this would theoretically enable him to do it.  Though that may be the marketing line, the reality is that Oracle will continue to make its money pushing its database products and there will be a long integration and R&D process before anything tangible comes out from this.

The big question marks from this announcement is what will happen to MySQL, Java, and Sun’s cloud offerings.  Ellison has stated on many occasions that he’s not a big fan of cloud.  I will be his tune will change in the coming months especially as Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and IBM announce some cloud offerings to Enterprise.