So Oracle ends up owning Sun Microsystems. I couldn’t believe it at first, thinking somehow that it was all just a ploy to get IBM to pull out the Big Checkbook. And while the deal may have begun with that thought glowing in the mind of Jonathan Schwartz, it ends with the heart of Sun moving a few miles up 101 to where it will certainly die.
IBM doesn’t want Sun and is gleeful with the idea of Oracle taking over, as you’ll learn if you read the internal IBM memo copied below. Big Blue does a very good job here of explaining its thinking and most of it makes sense. No white knight.
But what will Oracle DO with Sun? Make a lot of trouble for IBM, or try to, I think, but even doing that will be a challenge. Java is deliberately unprotected by patents and subject to enough industry oversight that Larry Ellison can’t just kill it or somehow make it proprietary overnight. MySQL could be killed, but for Open Source that just means it would branch and be reborn a day or a week later mostly intact and protected by nerds who would by then be very, very angry. On a positive side Oracle will undoubtedly make some very useful database appliances and may well come to dominate that as yet non-existent product space.
But for the most part what Oracle will do with Sun is show a quick and dirty profit by slashing and burning at a produgious rate, cutting the plenty of fat (and a fair amount of muscle) still at Sun. If you read the Oracle press release, the company is quite confident it is going to make a lot of money on this deal starting right away. How can they be so sure?
It’s easy. First drop all the bits of Sun that don’t make money. Then drop all the bits that don’t fit in Oracle’s strategic vision. Bring the back office entirely into Redwood Shores. The cut what overhead is left to match the restructured business. Sell SPARQ to some Asian OEM. Cut R&D by 80 percent, saving $2.4 billion per year. I’m guessing sell StorageTek, maybe even to IBM. And on and on. Gut Sun and milk what remains.
The plan has to have been on the table since last Fall when Andy Bechtolsheim, the mine canary of Sun’s executive suite, left the company for the second time. Even then it was clear that the options were a good sale or murder-suicide.
I blame Schwartz, of course, but I don’t blame him, too, because I think he had little choice. He just wasn’t a lucky guy, it turned out.
So what’s next for Sun? Nothing, I think.
Here’s the internal IBM memo on the deal:
PPublished on 21 April 2009
News home > Top stories >
Oracle enters a twilight zone
The acquistion of Sun creates opportunities for IBM.
The surprise announcement of the Oracle deal to buy Sun Microsystems creates
some new opportunities for IBM. Since its days as a bright star in the dot-com
era, Sun gradually lost its place in the UNIX server market it once dominated.
How does IBM stand to gain, if and when this transaction closes?
Momentum
First, momentum. According to IDC’s latest report, IBM’s share of the $17 billion
UNIX server market grew to more than 37% in 2008 while Sun’s share fell to 28
percent; since 2000 IBM has gained 19 points of share, while Sun has lost 7
points.
Since 2006, the number of clients that have migrated from Sun to IBM Power
Systems has grown 10% annually to more than 750 clients as of 1Q 2009. IBM’s
Migration Factory has eased the transition for these Sun clients to the Power
platform with its leadership performance and virtualization technologies. In
addition, IBM technologies such as its Infosphere Information Server have enabled
a steady stream of Oracle clients to migrate from Oracle’s high-maintenenace-fee
database to IBM DB2 and Informix data servers. The fact that Oracle and Sun will
share the same address does nothing to change these trends.
Openness
Second, openness. IBM offers every client the greatest choice and best value in
both hardware and software to meet their business needs. IBM will continue to
support Power Systems clients that have chosen Oracle’s middleware or database,
just as we will continue to support the IBM middleware and data server needs of
Sun server clients.
Oracle, after acquiring many software vendors partial to IBM server platforms, has
long promised to protect the compatibility of IBM servers, notably Power; Oracle
clients will continue to demand this compatibility moving forward.
Oracle’s self-serving interpretation of “open” sharply contrasts with IBM’s
championing of Linux and the broad open source community. Despite this, clients
committed to IBM middleware have forced Oracle to maintain long-term
compatibility with IBM software through previous Oracle acquisitions of IBM
Business Partners such as PeopleSoft and Siebel, and this bodes well for Java
News
4/21/2009
http://w3.ibm.com/news/w3news/top_stories/2009/04/stgswg_sunoracle.html
technology. Oracle is unlikely to make sweeping changes – it’s the subtle changes
we’ll watch for. MySQL, an open-source competitor to Oracle’s database that was
acquired by Sun last year, should pose an interesting test of Oracle’s openness.
Sun’s billion-dollar acquisition was hurting Oracle. If they kill MySQL they could
alienate the open-source community, which loved Sun. If they keep it, they may
not have the ability to capitalize on it.
Client confidence
Third, client confidence. IBM’s consistent roadmaps and disciplined delivery enable
clients to effectively gauge the long-term value of their investments in systems,
middleware and services. Sun’s much-publicized business problems will not be
erased in the minds of clients by the Oracle acquisition. If anything, significant
questions are raised. For instance, the omission of any mention of SPARC in
yesterday’s statements from Sun and Oracle is certain to make Sun hardware
loyalists very anxious about a future where Oracle is calling the shots.
Earlier this month the latest of a long line of executive departures from Sun was
its lead processor designer who headed development of Sun’s long-promised and
much-delayed next-gen RISC processor, codenamed “Rock.” The future direction
of Solaris in the hands of Oracle is also unknown, while IBM’s substantial
investments in the future of AIX and Linux are ongoing and well known.
Cost advantage
Finally, cost advantage. In today’s economy, clients are looking to reduce the
heavy maintenance costs associated with Oracle database use. IBM hardware and
software technologies together provide a significantly lower total cost of
ownership.
Several Wall Street analyst reports yesterday saw Oracle’s move as defensive in
response to a dwindling ecosystem. Other observers see the Sun deal as an
attempt to emulate IBM’s successful solutions strategy. However, Oracle’s ability
to manage this type of integration is unproven. Oracle’s remains an application-
led play while IBM has a thriving software ecosystem of application developers
and a much different acquisition style.
Whatever changes take place within Oracle and Sun, one thing that remains
unchanged is IBM’s position of strength and our proven ability to win against both
these competitors.
More details on the Oracle-Sun announcement are posted on the Market Insights
Web site .
For more information concerning this article, please contact Smith, Bruce P.
(brucesmi@us.ibm.com).
As a Ubuntu user I’m curious as to what will become of Open Office?
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if funding/development for OpenOffice actually increased under Oracle.
Thing is, Larry Ellison still has it in for Microsoft, and may figure that anything that can cause extra heartburn for Microsoft is probably worth the investment…
Well that’s just it though.
None of this has anything to do with IBM, except that they happen to have been in talks to do it. This has everything to do with Microsoft, and will affect everyone. This is the genius of Ellison. Not only does the Sun thing give ORACLE a full stack, but it puts them pretty heavy into the consumer space in a way that IBM doesn’t seem to be noticing. This is because IBM is either being obtuse, or being stupid. Or maybe they simply understand that whatever happens, they will adapt, the way they always do.
If I were going to make predictions, I would say that next in line for oracle would be misc vendors related to the consumer space that will confuse the hell out of everyone. If I had to venture a guess, watch for them to snatch up Corel or somebody like that. By the time anyone figures out what’s going on, it will be too late. Then, Adobe… then, eventually Apple. It’s only a matter of time. Ellison is turning out to be the most patient man in the business. This makes him very dangerous to Microsoft.
New word? … a produgious rate …
It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
Now, now. There’s no reason to be flippulant…
rofl…
Sun had to do something. They never made the break into services that IBM did. I guess a graceful hari kari with the sale of some of the vital organs to payback shareholders beats driving it in the ground.
[…] Read more at https://www.cringely.com/2009/04/sunset/ […]
non-existent product space ?? Granted it is small but growing.
GreenPlum, Netezza and a couple of smaller firms are around, biting slowly into Teradata turf.
As for Sun itself, I fear you are right.
All IT products are commoditising if they run on x86 hardware.
A great loss for the industry as whole, but Suns sale is not unexpected.
It is the future of OpenOffice that I am most concerned about.
How will Oracle respond now to what will IBM do with the data mining IP they bought last week.
Energy efficient high performance DB2 based data-warehouse on Zos anyone ?
So why did IBM make a bid in the first place?
I also worry about OO.org. I guess Oracle will just fire all the engineers working on it to save money. But I hope IBM will team up with Novell and go forward with the more-open version, go-oo.
As for IBM’s memos, Bob, what do you expect? They tried to buy Sun and lost. However IBM would like to spin that, it is a public defeat for the company. They wanted something, were prepared to pay billions for it, and did not end up buying it. So of course the official IBM line will be, ‘This is great news for IBM!’ I’d be more interested in internal memos that griped about it and predicted hard times for the company. Then we’d know the memos didn’t come out of the marketing departments.
Who knows, though? Maybe you and the IBM memo-writer are correct. All the other reports I’ve seen on the Oracle deal seem to align with your prediction that Oracle will kill all the innovation and R+D that made Sun what it is, er, was.
That’s an internal IBM memo? Looks like some sort of press release or magazine article. Is my browser missing some crucial detail?
Everything leaks out within minutes these days, so internal PR has to be written for external audiences as well.
What happens to ZFS? And have you considered the system-wide spell check in Mac OS 10.5?
Okay, honest question, here: Why Oracle would care about pissing off the open source community by killing off MySQL? I get it with Sun, but remind me how open source good will effects Oracle. Thanks.
MS Office is a cash cow. If OO.org gets a boost it could take some fat off that cow. Larry doesn’t like BillG. And I bet your failure to even mention OO.org in this column is deliberate. OO.org may be the MS-killer Larry’s been looking for.
The line in the sand has been drawn. The epic battle has begun. I hope Oracle is smart with assimilating Sun and succeeds big time. I’m stoked!
What is SPARQ?
Oracle will kill off Sun’s hardware business and sell it to Fujitsu — Sun’s number one supplier of SPARC chips. Sun’s h/w business is worthless anyway and, if Ellison coulda, he woulda bought Sun without it.
StorageTek will get sold off as well… As Bob predicts, probably to IBM.
ZFS and OpenOffice will become pure open-source projects. Apache might take OO. The Linux Foundation and/or FreeBSD.org might take ZFS. ZFS is already an experimental feature in FreeBSD 7.
MySQL is interesting… As Bob notes, if Oracle kills it, it will fork and appear the next day as “YourSQL” or some such (pissing off Google big time in the process). If Oracle doesn’t kill it, MySQL could present some interesting opportunities for Oracle at the low end (think appliances here). Oracle could use it to expand it’s reach to smaller enterprises where Oracle’s traditional products have been way too expensive.
If you read Gartner, and I only see the PR condensed version, DB2 off-mainframe is falling behind every year since 2000. I, and others, speculated that the reason IBM wanted MySql in the first place was to spruce it up, and call it DB2. What those who’ve never been in a DB2 shop don’t understand is that most DB2 installs on are z/OS, and most of those are running 1970 era COBOL code. In such cases, very little of Relational is ever utilized. MySql as simple sql parser in front of the file system is just all that a COBOL (or java) coder needs. MySql == DB2. That was the plan. Now IBM needs Plan B.
I suspect a bit of whistling past the graveyard in that leaked (horrors, how did that get out!!!!!!!!!!!) email. 750 Power customers? This is a big deal? Those are mainframe numbers. Oracle needed, and now has, a weapon to finally kill DB2 off-mainframe. Like it or not, the Intel multi-core/processor machine is ascendant. The off-mainframe database is where the future lies. IBM cannot possibly want a future of being just another Intel OEM, with customers running Open Source software on same. There is no future there. Oracle has built up a portfolio of software for which there is no easy Open Source alternative.
Remember: Oracle is a MVCC architecture database. DB2 is a locker. SQLServer was a pure locker, and has added MVCC (sorta, kinda) in 2008. Postgres is MVCC and Open Source. This architecture difference is not trivial. Why IBM chose to port IMS to DB2, calling it pureXML, is impossible to fathom. It was not a value add for customers in a web environment. The MVCC architecture is widely agreed to be superior there. IBM has to believe, why I cannot fathom again, that its mainframe machine will dominate the future. Its database off-mainframe is not going to.
Finally, IBM had a compliant bitch in Sun vis-a-vis java. That won’t be the case with Larry.
I see several possibilities:
* Killing off of SPARC hardware. Like the PowerPC chip, SPARC simply didn’t keep up with Intel. In the end, you have a platform that doesn’t quite perform as well and is more expensive. SPARC was a nice platform back a decade ago, but as Apple realized, the x86 platform won the desktop.
* MySQL will be partnered with Oracle as a low end database. It might even be rebadged as Oracle Lite. Whatever happens, Oracle won’t kill it. Instead, it will become a vehicle to get people to buy Oracle support and lead them down the road to purchase the full blown version of Oracle. I even suspect that some of Oracle’s functionality will be moved into MySQL. Oracle actually needs MySQL to florish because there are quite a few other open source SQLs out there waiting to take over. If people even think MySQL’s status is in jeopardy, they’ll jump to PostgreSQL in an instant.
* Java will be kept. It’s too valuable for Oracle to drop. Almost 40% of Oracle applications use Java as their engine.
* OpenOffice may be sold off, but I don’t think Oracle will kill it. Truth is that Open Office as a MS Office killer is a few years too late. MS Office isn’t as important as it use to be. Back in 2000, everyone needed MS Office. I’ve noticed that most home PC buyers are no longer getting Office, and even in the corporate world, MS Office is losing its grip. Many companies use Wikis for internal documentation now. If I was Oracle, I wouldn’t spend too many resources improving it.
I think Sun is actually better off with Oracle than IBM. IBM had competing database, OS and hardware businesses, and all of that on Sun would have been killed off. Maybe MySQL would have been sold off or moved to a full OSS foundation, but that’s it. The only thing IBM was really interested in was Java.
ORCL already owns significant chunks of mySQL, including mySQL’s only non-toy storage engine. MySQL also speaks an odd dialect of SQL and has some, shall we say, “idiosyncrasies”. With ORCL offering special limited licenses of their flagship database server at special prices, including free, I can’t find a compelling reason for ORCL to keep mySQL around when they already have a time-tested, decent-performance, well-characterized database engine with a near-painless upgrade path to the moneymakers.
Speaking of upgrade path, I imagine they’d rather PostgreSQL owns the FOSS space. PostgreSQL’s dialect of SQL resembles Oracle’s closely enough that porting shouldn’t be much more than changing the ODBC/JDBC data sources around.
Those internal IBM memos are just PR / spin. No serious programmers look to IBM for anything – neither hardware nor software, and especially not for databases or operating systems – come on! As an ardent fan of Sun now given the choice between IBM and Oracle, I’ll go to Oracle, thank you very much. I trust their database, and of the two companies, which one have you been trashing in your columns for the past several years for having squeezed the crap out of their services division? (IBM).
IBM DB2? Sigh. Makes me sad. I’m a DB2 expert, which is completely useless because no one uses it. Look in the job ads. It’s all Oracle and SQL Server.
For all the praise heaped on ex-IBM CEO Gerstner the man was (quite frankly) a pig (which is insulting pigs). Many flagship products like DB2 died under Gerstner, but you won’t read this anywhere in the sycophantic business press (or has mass debatory auto biography which should have been called “The sound of two hands fapping”). For the skinny got to the Amazon web site and look up his book “elephants can’t dance”. You will find the truth in comments from employees. This is the only place on the web you will find this stuff.
MySQL. Oh LOL. I’ve tried using that in a business setting and my friend it absolutely stinks. SUN bought a lemon. It’s popular with dinky web sites because it’s free, but it’s still crap you’re an idiot if you run your business off it. In getting MySQL, Oracle has acquired a piece of crap no one with a brain will ever pay a penny for, but it does kill anyone from setting up competition in the latrine end of the market.
Buying SUN as a whole strikes me like HP buying Digital. You get a few customer lists (which you could find in the phone book anyway), but that’s all. ORACLE has wasted their money, and IBM was lucky (instead of smart) not to buy it.
PS. Bob I notice your copypasta IBM memos were misformatted thanks to IBM’s 80 character punch card limit. We are forever cursed.
Yep, our office used to have 12 servers running SQL Servers databases and were trying to cut our costs. We looked at MySQL quite seriously for 4-5 months, porting over about 60 db’s and testing with out existing middleware, apps and web servers, but so many features were not ready or mature enough, the stored proc’s were awful, no active cell-triggers, replication was fail-prone, not enough logging to find out where things went wrong, and performance just plain sucked, even when just two separate sessions tried to perform an inner-join on a computed column – bang! watch the server grind to a halt. MySQL is just for home-based expense applications or learning about SQL. Maybe even for moderate use business web sites but that would be all I’d risk with it.
You know, I read all the educated and erudite comments above – and I do understand the big corporate motivations (sort-of!) thanks to Bob’s helpful explanations, but…
I guess I’m just a person who actually has to use this stuff… Using an Oracle system all day long (part of a very big corporate network) I find it is painfully slow, prone to unexpected closedowns/lock-outs and frankly stone-age in comparison with a lot of other, less-well regarded, software. It also uses Java for it’s procurement system – and that’s even slower. I feel the trouble is, a lot of corporate waffle goes into selling this stuff without someone actually stepping back and taking a look at what they’re foisting on the poor suckers who have to use it!
Ok, this may be down to the local implementation rather than the core software… Perhaps… I’m not convinced. But I’m not qualified to say.
For an end-user this type of corporate posturing – wasting billions at a time when the economy it’s totally wrecked – seems like pure madness. These guys and gals should take a look at the rest of us having to use this stuff and stop focussing on their petty rivalries, their profligate waste of money, and actually design systems that work and work well.
Bob- It’s SPARC, not SPARQ.
[…] Read more from the original source […]
Oracle may depose 10,000 Sun Microsystems employees, but it’s not going to pawn off the hardware, cripple MySQL, abandon OpenOffice.org nor attempt to mess with JAVA. Larry is going to integrate all Sun’s resources and more into untapped the SMB enterprise appliance market.
I know this is a real petty thing to write about (considering that your readership often makes tons more spelling and grammatical errors in the comments section, myself included), but I’ve noticed since you’ve departed the PBS environs, gradually your copy has been getting sloppy. I have no idea of your tried and true methods, but it is disconcerting reading your posts and constantly stumbling over mistakes. Can it be “the rush to publish” like some web bloggers? Usually, you write when you feel you truly have something worthwhile to comment on that would interest your readership and usually what you write about is very timely. I know one cannot rely on the spell checker in either a web-browser or text editor, despite recent advances, and I’m not aware of any affordable or reliable software that corrects one’s grammar, in any language. I’m assuming when you worked at PBS, there was a (human) editor who checked your work before publishing on the site (even if that editor was none other yourself). While I appreciate the timeliness and immediacy of web reporting, I do get a little down when grammar and spelling standards go down.
That “internal” memo from IBM is ridiculous. Do they seriously expect anyone to believe that they think Oracle wasted their money? IBM wanted Sun, and now they’re trashing Sun as though they were the worst company in the industry. Now, Sun may very well have been the worst company in the industry, but if IBM really believed that, they wouldn’t have been trying to buy them. IBM is facing a situation where two of their biggest competitors just merged, and IBM is now collectively crapping their pants. That memo was intended to calm down the fear, nothing else.
MySQL has already been branched. Monty Wiedmus, the founder of MySQL, has started the MariaDB project with the goal that MySQL will not ever go away. He spoke at Linuxfest Northwest 2009 this weekend and it was obvious that he wasn’t satisfied with the direction the project has been going for quite some time. So he is building a company that can keep it alive and provide an atmosphere for its developers to thrive. Sun/Oracle now basically owns the MySQL trademark, but not the brains behind it.
See http://askmonty.org/wiki/index.php/MariaDB for more details.
Sorry, I misspelled Monty’s name in the previous post. It should be Monty Widenius
MySQL could be a huge legal risk to Oracle. Just look back a couple years ago when SCO sued IBM. IBM was accused to have used AT&T code in the development of Linux. It exposed one of the potential risks of Open Source projects — where did the code come from? A project like Linux can have contributions from countless developers. How do you know if the work of each developer was original and/or that developer controls the intellectual rights? If there is the slightest chance of cross mingling of Oracle and MySQL code, it could become a legal problem for Oracle. From a legal point of view Oracle would be wise to dump MySQL as soon as possible.
Oracle is a tightly run business. They watch their finances very closely. They are masters at setting prices at the maximum the market can bear. Oracle will not invest more money in OpenOffice because Larry does not like Microsoft. They will not invest more money because they are more inclined to be generous in supporting OpenOffice. If they can not make a lot of money from OpenOffice, they will get rid of it.
Sun as a company would have been 100x better off becoming part of IBM. IBM did not “lose” the bid to buy Sun. IBM learned something about Sun they did not like, they set some conditions, and Sun rejected the offer. Now if Sun’s exec’s walk away with a lot of money and Oracle guts the company, we’ll know what the true motivations were.
Isn’t it interesting that if IBM had bought Sun there would be many antitrust concerns; however if Oracle buys them and guts them it is not a problem.
MySQL is released under an open source licence but is also available under several proprietary licences. Since Oracle now owns Sun who owned the MySQL AB they now own the copyright on MySQL. As such they can take that code and include it in any of their products under any licence they choose and there is no risk of them having to GPL the main Oracle DB since they can licence the code to themselves under whatever terms they choose.
MySQL is not, and never has been a pure GPL product, the code was made available for free under a GPL licence but you could always get the code under more proprietary licences if you preferred.
Since it hasn’t been mentioned (AFIK), turns out that IBM got over its infatuation with Sun/MySql rather quickly. The 22 April Wall Street Journal (but not the IBM site that I could find) reported that IBM had “integrated” PostgreSQL in the 9.7 version of DB2 (only Linux/Unix/Windows, I gather so far) under the name enterpriseDB, a company which is a commercial support source for the database. Postgres is MVCC and syntax close-enough to Oracle that enterpriseDB claims compatibility.
Makes one wonder what IBM wanted from Sun. Also turns out that the enterpriseDB relationship goes back a few years. Hmm.
Sun Microsystems didn’t die, …….. it just set. The one constant, ….. change.
I remember back in the day all the talk about Sun maybe buying Apple to save it.
Think what would have happen then.
1,000,000,000 aps ….. just sayin.
At least I won’t be getting the perennial “Why don’t we replace all our PCs with Sun Ray terminals?” question after our CIO runs into the Sun rep at some event. Although the way visualization is going, it might actually make sense soon.
The PC has been just a kind of not-so-smart Xterm for a couple of decades. Nobody noticed, of course, since the KiddieKoders never paid attention.
Most of the comments, and most of the world is looking look backward. In politics, those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. In technology, those that re create history are doomed to failure. As CEO of both a former Microsoft Direct and Sun Direct OEM, I could see a distinctly different picture of the future. My contacts (thus managers) at Microsoft were sales and marketing people. They were focused on this month and this quarter. My personal contact at Sun was an nerd engineer that had more in common with my gifted nerd employees than my business vision. I became a CEO by paying attention to the nerds. I was a hippie kind of nerd myself. I still remember the 20+ number strings inspite of the drugs from years ago..
The big question is not what is Oracle going to do with Sun, but what COULD Oracle do with Sun. The first thing they could do is make the personal computer personal. They could expand on the ancient but correct client server paradigm. Most importantly, they can bury Wintel. Think like Ellison.
To do this they may need a merger with Google. Or just emulate Google. (I suggest a merger)
Hello Blackberry meet the notebook (or the the PC or DOS) as a true client in a client server world.
Five years ago, before my vision ran out of money as a PC OEM, our new PC was envisioned as what was earlier called a network appliance. An Internet appliance was a more suitible term. But the basic IO was from a headset with a forward looking camera (who wants a camera focused on them) and microphone and a thumb to index finger “touchpad” and speech recogition. (move your thumb and index finger together and imagine a mouse or a touch pad) They were both wireless and bluetooth at that time. The display was a FOLED or Flexible Organic Light Emitting Diode. This was contained in a pen in a pocket protector or a shirt pocket and rolled out not dissimaler to the Torah.
Imagine this as the new PC. It costs less than $199. There is no Intel Chip. There is no DOS or Windows. It is your PC, it is your phone and email. The equivalent of MS office applications are Google office, or an internet version of Star (open) office or Java applets. Some are not free but usage is a micropayment. Thousands of other applications will become available as a micorpayment. Software geeks all over the world will build apps and reep micropayments. There is no hard disk or CD ROM. The OS is a tiny fraction of Open Solaris. Most of the bits have been stripped as there is no DOS. The data is stored on the Oracle Server. The Oracle database is ubiquitous and uses clustering technology. The document search algorithim could be modidified to include a company header if wanted or required. Phone calls, emails, browsing, mapping and video are just an app on the appliance. This is computing as a service. The recent Apple adds suggest just such a world in the phrase, “we have an app for that”. But Apple is all client, no server. This is where Oracle steps in to provide a server solution.
The very nice part is a client that does not have DOS or a disk operating system. The client will never get a virus, will never have to backup, will never lose data, will need far less support and users can make their own decisions. There is no need for backwards compatibilty. The client will never upload anything. The PC will become more personal. And their decisions and data will reside on a secure server.
Most importantly complexity will diminish.
The two distinct sides of the client server computing paradigm can be as many bits as they want. The clients will only need one application. The browser. Microsoft may have built the last OS that is backwards compatible with Vista. It is in many areas not. The complexity insures the future of Microsoft (NOT) Was not complexity not at the core of the failed IBM strategy?
Most importantly what are the nerds doing?
The nerds love open source. The nerds love opportunity and a challange that they can solve. This means reduce complexity to improve opportunity. The potential genius of the Oracle acquisition is to move complexity to the server and innovation to the nerds. This was where Schwartz was headed I think. We would return to the situation where one great mind could make a difference and make money.
All of these software companies need a credible hardware component. It could be Sun.
In deference to a very smart guy, Cringely, surfing is best done on the front of the wave.
It will be interesting to see if Ellison is smart and can understand the opportunity.
What you’ve described is closer to the Xterm/server (or pixelized 3270/370) world than client/server. The Xterm need only run screen editing code, unlike client/server systems in which the client does application calculation on sparse data. Think a network of CAD workstations; that was, in fact, where client/server architecture came from.
If the security issues can be solved, not just to people’s satisfaction but REALLY, then your scenario is the future: Xterm/multics on a global scale. Centralized data was/is/always will be superior. Now, if only we can find enough bandwidth.
I’d load up on ARMH stock, by the way.
How personal is leaving your data on someone else’s server?
Looking at history, how many times have the “big guys” walked on the “little guy”? More recently, how many times have “secure, professional” companies lost or leaked private information they declared, in their privacy policies, that they would keep confidential?
The vision of a future where all our data is in some corporation’s database is a vision that many people will choose to shun. Granted, many people will go for it as well. The question is how many, and how long it will take before the big guy, once again, makes a “mistake” and loses face. If someone could build the system without allowing the corporation all ultimate power over the data, perhaps it would work. However, corporations are not run that way.
My concern, and I make no claim to being the first to voice it, is that the Fortune X00 will move lots of data to some Cloud, which isn’t under their control. Your Bank Of America, for example; not that I have any information that BofA is specifically going to do so. But as an example. There will be fine print in a 100 page Terms of Service booklet, absolving them of all liability if your data goes wandering. Capitalists tend to be evil; Google too.
Hi Jerry,
There are already many online data backup or data repositories. Data is encrypted and only the owner of the data has the encryption key. This is like RSA model has a USB key fob coupled with a SSO (single sign on) username and password.
Axe
AxeGrinder, some interesting thoughts and I think you’re mostly headed in the right direction- I completely agree about micropayments being the key- but I don’t think you’ve fully thought it out. For example, the browser is too shitty to ever be a viable implementation of client-server, we’re going to need something new, along the lines I outlined here. Also, open source is an important new trend but it has gotten nowhere in business, I explain how mixed source is more likely to get us there. But the linchpin of all this is micropayments, until you can monetize we won’t get as far as fast. The good news is that there’s been a lot of buzz about micropayments recently and I’m working on a micropayments frontend myself, so hopefully we can kickstart tech again soon. 🙂
That first link is missing an end quote, should be this</a. A preview button for commenters would be nice, Bob.
And I prove it by screwing up yet again, here’s the link. Feel free to delete these two comments and fix the url in the first comment.
When IBM balked I was all for Oracle to takeover Sun. As an early user of both systems (1990’s) and seeing their decline in workplace (2000’s) I think they fit well. I don’t think Oracle paid the price just to keep Java, maybe to keep if off of IBM’s hands. Java will survive no matter what and Oracle never needed to control Java to use it in its products. How would killing or selling off the other Sun assets like people are saying benefit Oracle in the long term? Nil. People forget Ellison is the one last dotcom icon alongside Gates and Jobs that does have some vision. Remember dumb terminals? Oracle and Sun had visions of network/cloud computing before there were even such term. Too bad they had to wait for the infrastructure, browser, and search engine revolution to happen before it could be realized. MySQL actually helps Oracle fill a product niche they needed but did not have – for customers who are thinking about moving off Oracle for whatever reason, by keeping them from going to another platform (DB2, SQL Server), and it should make more money for Oracle than for Sun, having direct database customers know how to sell DB services.
OO.org is one thing that may get dropped. I wonder what desktop penetration it actually has or how much revenue it can ever generate. I think OO.org is too bloated and too late. By the time it overtakes MS Office on the desktop, MS Office would be running alongside Google Docs and iWorks that offer the freedom and integration of desktop, mobile, and cloud storage.
I have a good friend who used to be a highly successful Oracle sales manager. He was one of these gifted people with very strong technical skills, who could represent Oracle’s capabilities extremely well. In his region he was IBM’s worst nightmare.
Being an extremely good and successful sale manager in Oracle has its risks. When they start making too much money from selling lots of products and services, it raises the attention of Oracle’s management. If you make too much money, you are asked to leave.
Oracle runs a very tight ship. The folks at Sun are about to get hammered and I feel sorry for them.
That IBM memo looks “leaked” more than leaked. IBM has been behind the performance curve with AIX relative to Solaris for a long time, and DB2 for BI/DW workloads is really, really bad, yet that’s the database growth market. I think the memo is IBM wishful thinking on Oracle’s dealings with Sun. Unfortunately, that part may end up being accurate.
MySQL and Oracle make sense – it’s the low-end SQLServer killer that’s been missing at Oracle, and reestablishes the company in the web market where it lost its footing in 2001, even if the revenues it sees are small.
Hi Bob,
Is there any reason this particular story was not accompanied with a podcast version? So far, for me, this is the only posting without one…
Interesting take, and even more interesting with the update: The Sequel Dilemma
Regards,
Griff
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