Summary
I thought that the IBM/Sun deal made a lot of sense, this outcome must be IBM's worst case scenario. Having put Sun into play, IBM's major global competitor has now snapped up a deal at, what is to Oracle, a very affordable price and acquired the #3 or 4 market share database, Java and, maybe most importantly, a leadership position in the open source market.
Analysis
While IBM's analysts and management must be wondering how to counter this move, Oracle's analysts and management must also be wondering how they will handle this acquisition. For example:
1. What do we do with the hardware business? Maintain (yes) but for how long? Sell it on? How does this impact Oracle's partnership with HP?
2. What do we do with the open source community? The Oracle/open source cultures look like a poor, if not actually a bad, fit.
3. How do we manage 13 million MySQL db users? Maintain (yes), migrate (some)? How do we monetize this business?
4. What do we do with Java? How does it fit with Oracle tools strategy?
5. More middleware?
All-in-all, a very interesting move from a stragetic/competitive persepctive but one riddled with practical conundrums.
