Oracle & Sun – What to do with the hardware business
August 27th, 2009
The questions are going to continue here until Oracle officially owns Sun and perhaps beyond. Will Oracle sell the Sun hardware business? As I have said in the past, I do not think they will. I could certainly be wrong and many industry analysts think I am. Here are a few new data points to think about:
- The rumor mill continues to churn and CNNMoney.com is suggesting that HP may want to purchase the Sun hardware business. HP has the cash, but does the investment make sense? Would Oracle sell Solaris as well? HP would be in a tough position if they bought the hardware but Oracle still owned Solaris. Interestingly, in the article, CNNMoney points Mark Hurd at HP out as the unnamed “Party B” in the Sun regulatory filings.
- Oracle ran this front page ad in the Wall Street Journal today promoting Oracle DB on Sun SPARC. Is this just Oracle bluffing? Perhaps.
- If Oracle wants to be in the appliance space, I believe they need to sell general purpose servers. Without the volume that comes from selling general purpose servers, the cost of the appliance platform goes through the roof. Oracle would also have a difficult time getting specialized hardware without paying a premium for a small production run of servers.
- Oracle and Larry Ellison want to own the IT budget. The “save money on hardware and spend it on Oracle software” go to market strategy was nothing short of brilliant. Keeping the Sun hardware business is Ellison’s opportunity to compete head to head with IBM. Oracle would have all the applications and the hardware to run it on. That would be quite a legacy for Ellison.
The US Department of Justice as approved the acquisition. Now, the European Union needs to make a decision before we will get any more answers.
