Oracle buys Sun – To Provide Integrated Hardware, Software, Services around Java

In just over a week after talks between IBM and Sun Microsystems collapsed, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison stepped in to close one of the biggest deals ever in IT. On Monday, Oracle announced that it will take over Sun in a friendly bid priced at $9.50 per share, valuing Sun Microsystems at just over $7 billion USD. The deal was a bright spot on Wall St. where the overall market was down over 250 points at close. Analysts are suggesting that this could lead to a 40-70% cut in jobs at Sun, whose financial problems obviously spurred the deal.

Like Silicon Graphics in bankruptcy again and now merging with Rackspace, Sun has been unable to recover from the dotcom bubble of 2000-2001. The biggest problem appears to be that Sun was unable to redesign and manufacture next-generation servers without falling behind other hardware companies and chip makers, nor were they able to monetize sufficiently their software platforms. Thus, the gains for Oracle are huge – the Java programming language, the MySQL database platform, and the Solaris operating system, all owned by Sun are the foundation of the internet in many instances, old and new.

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