The recent announcement of Oracle acquiring Sun Microsystems is the final milestone in my association with a company that spanned over 20 years. As a technical editor for Computer Design magazine in 1982, I remembered interviewing Andy Bechtolsheim and Vinod Khosla for an article on the original SUN workstation that Bechtolsheim designed while still a graduate student at Stanford University. As a user and (sometimes) workgroup administrator, I experienced first hand why the reputation for reliability and performance of Sun’s servers and Solaris operating system made it the darling of so many corporate IT organizations (or at least until the the dot-com bust). As a former employee, I toiled through the many attempts where Sun sought to capitalize on its huge investment in the Java programming language by placing big bets on its iPlanet alliance with AOL/Netscape Communications, Java Enterprise System, and open source efforts involving Glassfish and Liferay.
So what will become of the company that once prided itself on innovation and commitment to open standards? Oracle estimates that Java and Solaris are the crown jewels that will be quickly exploited due to tighter integration with the company’s existing database and enterprise middleware offerings. Such retooling could provide Oracle a significant competitive advantage over such rivals as IBM (see article) and Microsoft (see article), as well as contribute $1.5 billion to Oracle’s operating profit–excluding charges and other items–in the first year after the acquisition, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year.
Moreover, Larry Ellison said the acquisition gives Oracle the ability to engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together with customers benefitting as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up (see article). This will also give Oracle an incentive to continue as the steward for open specifications focusing on the Java Community Process and OpenSolaris.
Still, all may not be as rosy for colleagues working on open source initiatives (such as the NetBeans developer tools and the Glassfish application server) that compete with more popular offerings. Such projects could soon be on the chopping block on top of the 6000 job cuts already announced by Sun (see article).
In the end, perhaps Sun Microsystems became a victim of its own success. As a startup, it quickly overtook larger rivals such as Digital Equipment and Apollo Computer by providing workstations and servers based on cheap microprocessors (the Motorola 68000 family) and open source software (UNIX 4.3bsd)–yet it could not compete with cheaper offerings from Dell, IBM, and HP using Intel microprocessors and Linux. As an innovator, it invented the Java programming language — yet it could not transform its investment into a competitive advantage (as happened with AT&T with both the C and C++ languages).
4 responses so far ↓
Plan B « Moving On // April 29, 2009 at 2:45 am |
[...] I got a better understanding of consulting from the W-2 and 1099 tax consequences, and since there are still opportunities being posted, that may be a viable Plan B. I’m sitting on the fence on the contracting thing because it potentially messes up the unemployment checks whether I go on a W-2 or 1099 basis, but I don’t want to be out of work too long. Still, this may be a delusion anyway since it is likely that 5000 additional ex-Sun employees will be joining me (see Parting Ways). [...]
Picking Up The Pieces « Moving On // April 29, 2009 at 3:51 pm |
[...] under Uncategorized With the recent announcemnt of Oracle acquiring Sun Microsystems (see my post Parting Ways), I am reminded of the numerous layoffs I did survive during the past 15 years. During those times [...]
joeaseo // May 8, 2009 at 2:12 am |
Following the Sun-Oracle announcement, I posted my memories of being a layoff survivor nagged by the self-centered fears of losing what I have or not getting what I want, with the additional stress of doing the work of those laid off. I urge you to look at what it takes to pick up the pieces:
http://joeaseo.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/picking-up-the-pieces/
Parting Ways (Redux) « Outside Looking In // July 3, 2009 at 9:08 pm |
[...] July 3, 2009 · Leave a Comment With rumors of the Rock project (intended to be the next generation SPARC microprocessor) being cancelled two years after Jonathan Schwartz’s announcement on his blog, Sun Microsystems may have finally conceded its independence as a systems vendor before its impending acquisition by Oracle (see Parting Ways). [...]