Implications
Sun was a super-hot company during the dotcom bubble period, with much of the Internet using its high-end servers running on its own SPARC processors. Since the bubble burst, however, its profits and share price have plummeted as x86 based servers have dominated the market via companies like HP and Dell.
Oracle seems to be saying that expects to offer software + hardware complete solutions to enterprise and, given its dominance of the enterprise software market (as opposed to OS and productivity, although Oracle will own Solaris and Open Office too), this complete solution could prove very enticing.
An additional benefit to Oracle and future customers of these future solutions is the fact that Oracle now owns the programming language Java, on which much of its software is based. Not only does it not have to pay licenses to Sun anymore, but it now has total control over the development of Java.
And don't forget, Oracle also further strengthens its position in the database market, with Sun having aquired MySQL last year, at the same time as Oracle bought middleware company BEA.
As you would expect, there has been a flurry of activity around Sun's shares, which were up 36 percent to $9.10 at time of writing. Oracle investors weren't so impressed by the deal, however, with its shares down around three percent, but recovering.
