Oracle Corp. has agreed to buy
Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion, the companies
said this morning [1], putting a new twist on the emerging battle for the enterprise data center. The deal comes just weeks after the collapse of a bid by IBM to purchase Sun at a similar price point. IBM’s last offer had been rumored to be valued at about $9.40 a share, while Oracle will pay $9.50. Shares of Sun (JAVA) closed Friday at $6.69.
The deal also allows Oracle to acquire MySQL, the dominant open source database, which was
acquired by Sun [2] last year. Oddly, in the press announcment Oracle doesn’t mention MySQL, but cites “substantial long-term strategic customer advantages” in acquiring two other Sun technologies, Java and Solaris. Oracle’s Fusion Middleware is built on top of Java.
By buying Sun, Oracle also moves into the hardware business in a more significant way. Oracle partnered with HP last year on a
database server [3], which marked its first foray into hardware. The deal also gives Oracle an entree into the emerging market for cloud computing, where Sun recently announced a
new platform [4].
“The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,” said Oracle CEO 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 and Sun have been industry pioneers and close partners for more than 20 years,” said Sun Chairman Scott McNealy. “This combination is a natural evolution of our relationship and will be an industry-defining event.”
n recent months Sun has joined the growing crowd of companies providing data center design services to help companies improve the energy efficiency of their facilities, launching
consulting services [5] to help customers retrofit existing data centers and design new ones. Sun has sought to showcase its green approach with retrofits of major data centers in
Santa Clara [6] and
Broomfield, Colo. [7]
Sun was also an early player in the market for data center containers with its Blackbox (since renamed the
Sun MD S20 [8]) and has acquired open source cloud computing startup Q-Layer.
Rich Miller is the founder and editor-in-chief of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.
Article printed from Data Center Knowledge: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com
URL to article: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/04/20/oracle-agrees-to-buy-sun-for-74-billion/
URLs in this post:
[1] said this morning: http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2009-04/sunflash.20090420.1.xml
[2] acquired by Sun: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/01/16/sun-acquires-mysql-for-1-billion/
[3] database server: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/09/30/a-look-at-the-hp-oracle-database-machine/
[4] new platform: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/03/10/sun-cloud-will-live-at-the-vegas-supernap/
[5] consulting services: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com../archives/2008/10/22/sun-rolls-out-data-center-design-services/
[6] Santa Clara: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com../archives/2007/08/21/sun-unveils-eco-responsible-data-centers/
[7] Broomfield, Colo.: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com../archives/2009/01/26/suns-colorado-consolidation-saves-millions/
[8] Sun MD S20: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com../archives/2008/01/29/sun-rebrands-blackbox-as-sun-md/
[9] Rich Miller: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/author/richm/
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