Oracle’s Ellison adds another episode to the “Larry Being Larry” show

In his hour-long Q&A session following the Oracle + Sun press briefing, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison addressed a wide range of topics both seriously and playfully from his brazen confidence about the newly combined company fundamentally changing the way IT will buy products to trash talking competitors to lambasting the press. Some moments of the performance will certainly find their way onto “The Best of Larry Being Larry” DVD.

Much of the trash talking focused on IBM, a competitor Larry continues to have a curious love-hate relationship with. He again said he believes the Sun acquisition will allow him to recreate the IBM of 1960s, a company that delivered seamless hardware-software solutions bundled with great technical support.

But apparently a lot of things Big Blue has done since the 1960s has caused it to drift away from the “IT gold standard” it came to represent, which Larry now believes he can resurrect with Sun’s help.

With one hand Larry gives the old IBM a pat on the back: “Our vision for 2010 is the same as IBM’s in 1960 - deliver seamless systems. That strategy made IBM the most successful company in the history of the world. We like that model.”

And with the other hand Larry gives the present day IBM a backhander: “How many servers can IBM put together for OLTP applications? Umm, one. Just one server attacking really big jobs. They can’t scale out, do clouds or clusters. It fascinates me why IBM didn’t come out years ago with something like our Exadata Database Machine. We have huge advantages over them.”

Or completely dismissing their chances to succeed in the database business: “IBM is so far behind, they don’t have any chance at all. In databases, they are a decade or so behind us. I’m serious.”

Boldly, he believes the Oracle-Sun approach to selling stacks of integrated systems along with support directly to the largest customers will significantly alter IT industry’s approach to how it receives, installs and supports mission critical components:

“At the heart of what we are trying to do, and what customers are really looking for, is to completely change the experience of buying systems from databases to middleware to development tools. No one has ever had all that inside one company and did so with open technologies.”

Some other quotes for the The Best of DVD:

On press reports just prior to this week’s event speculating that Oracle would lay off half of Sun’s workforce:

“The people who reported that should be ashamed of themselves. The truth is we are hiring 2,000 people over the next few months and that will be twice as many people as we are laying off. We will make $1.5 billion (in profit from Sun products) in the first full year. Sun has a fabulous installed base and pipeline of technology.”

On Oracle’s plans for Sun’s MySQL open source database, the product that caused the European Commission to hold up the deal for almost four extra months:

“MySQL will be made better. We will do a better job at improving at it than has been done for the past five years. For instance, we have our own version of Linux that we have added new features to. We also want to make both Solaris and Linux better. Our goal is to make all these systems better technologically because we can make more money for products and support.”

On what he valued more, wining the America’s Cup or winning a deal against IBM:

“I don’t have to choose.”

On whether he plans to buy the Golden State Warriors:

“I’m trying, I’m trying, but unfortunately you can’t have a hostile takeover of a basketball team.”

On whether Oracle is missing out by not competing in the consumer electronics market ala Apple:

“We are not good at a hundred different things, but we are good at a small number of things and that is what we need to do. I am not sure Oracle is the right company to take on Apple in telephones. Instead of making phones we’ll make Java that goes into those phones. It would be very dangerous for us to go into consumer electronics.”

On plans for going after the high end of the market with Solaris-based solutions as opposed to focusing on opportunities at the lower end:

“Unix still does well at the high end, which is where Solaris is going. We won’t be making it for single systems though, but for a cluster of computers. The high end to me is not Intel vs. SPARC, it is more like a cloud of SPARC machines in the data center. It will be a long time before Linux catches up there. I am a Linux fan, but I don’t think the high end is in danger for us at all.”

On whether the acquisition of Sun now makes Oracle too big a company to consistently deliver innovative products:

“Everyone said IBM was in trouble because of its size and that was just nonsensical. This idea that you are too big to innovate is just insane. A long as you have quality people - and we have quality people in quantity - I will never hear me tell you Oracle is too big to innovate.”

I had mentioned in a blog last week that with its newfound power and position in the IT industry thanks to the Sun deal, Oracle might display a bit more humility than hubris. Larry and company might be more humble eventually, but not this week.

But Larry didn’t have all the best one liners. In his opening remarks Oracle President Charles Phillips, under siege from jilted mistress YaVaughnie Wilkins’ billboard campaign highlighting their once romantic relationship said, “welcome to this important day in the history of enterprise computing. Hopefully you have had a smoother week than I did. But on to bigger and better things.”

Here comes the Sun

It’s finally done.

After nine long months of wending its way through all the necessary international government agencies, Oracle’s $7.4 billion bid to acquire Sun Microsystems has been approved and so officially declared not to be a health hazard to the IT industry. There are still China and Russia’s sanctions to gain, but no one is expecting any hand-to-hand combat there.

So now what? We’ll get some answers to that this Wednesday (January 27) when Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, President Charles Phillips and a platoon of Oracle and Sun executives outline some of the short and long-term plans for users, partners and the press.

I suspect there will be further details about leveraging the higher-end of Sun’s server hardware line as both standalone products and as part of hardware-software stacks, how the company plans to ensure the viability of the open source MySQL database, why it won’t lay off half of Sun’s 30,000 plus workforce, and a deep technical dive on a number of Sun technologies designed to enlighten Oracle users.

What will be interesting to me is what might be said, or not said, about some of the Sun products and technologies Oracle officials have not talked much about over the past nine months.

For instance, Sun has more than MySQL in its open source lineup. The company has a promising Web server, Glassfish Enterprise Server, which has been downloaded in some pretty impressive numbers that could be a nice compliment to Oracle’s Weblogic proprietary offerings. Sun also has the well known OpenOfice.org suite of desktop applications. That offering hasn’t put much of a dent in Microsoft’s office sales, but in the hands of Oracle it could become part of a client-server bundle that could make users think twice about renewing their software licenses with Redmond.

While Oracle doesn’t figure to mess too much with Java given its status as one of the most important programming standards in the market, I am interested to see in what direction the company might take it. Some have speculated Oracle will maintain the existing standard, but could also create a variant more specifically tailored for Oracle environments.

With Solaris in hand, Oracle is now in the operating systems business for the first time. It will be interesting to see how much strategic importance the company places on its own OS relative to those of its competitors/business partners it has dealt with for decades.

And what is inside Sun’s technology candy store? Sun has poured billions into development of hardware and software products over the years, some of which were never delivered or put on hold because of tough financial times. Will company officials talk about some hidden hardware gems that could help Oracle’s budding cloud computing and older grid computing software run faster or more efficiently?

And will Mr. Ellison and cohorts give any indication about how they might approach licensing server hardware (not by the processor, Larry, please), or coordinate maintenance and support of users common to both companies, or if and how they will combine data centers?

It is probably too much to expect detailed answers to all of these questions, although Oracle is certainly giving itself enough time (five hours) this Wednesday to address any and all of these matters.

Whatever it reveals, Wednesday figures to be the first day of a very interesting era in Oracle’s already colorful history. It has a real chance to significantly redefine itself, not easy for a 32-year-old, $25 billion company to do, and in the process also change the competitive landscape of the IT industry.

With this new-found power and position let’s hope Larry and company handle it with more humility than hubris.

Oracle gets the green light from the EC to acquire Sun

After over three months of investigation the European Commission (EC) has officially approved Oracle’s $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems which could see the combined company significantly change the competitive landscape of the IT industry.

“I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned. Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products,” said Neelie Kroes, the European antitrust commissioner, said in a prepared statement.

Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun took almost nine months to the day to gain approval by both the U.S. Department of Justice and the EC, with the latter’s investigation dragging on for over three months.

Go to this article to learn more details about the EC’s approval of the Oracle-Sun deal.

Oracle and the European Commission head down the home stretch

Oracle and the European Commission (EC) continue to slowly and painfully creep closer to  resolving its conflict over the former’s nine-month long attempt to acquire Sun Microsystems.

According to various news reports over the past couple of days, both parties are close to announcing a deal that could come as soon as this week. The EC’s deadline for issuing its ruling is January 27, but sources cited in most reports indicate it likely will be formally announced by week’s end.

What’s something of a mystery is what exactly has held this deal up since mid-December. About six weeks ago the EC issued a statement that Oracle had made a number of breakthrough concessions that had addressed all of its concerns, most of which focused on Oracle’s proposed ownership of the open source MySQL database. The agency was “optimistic” that the proposed $7.4 billion acquisition posed no threat to the European database market. With that statement many felt a formal announcement was just a day or two away.

And then — nothing.

Hopefully we can chalk this latest delay up to the umm, mercurial nature of the EC and nothing more. If this delay centered around issues other than MySQL, that would be rather unfortunate at this late date.

But reports indicate that both parties really are ready this time to end this long, strange dance. What is giving recent reports added credence is Sun reportedly readying three different email announcements to be delivered to its employees in the next day or two. One e-mail will be to those employees letting them know they will be keeping their jobs, a second will go to those who will be terminated, and the third will be sent to those being offered a temporary position that will last through an undetermined transition period.

There is no indication from reports how many Sun employees will receive e-mail Number 2. There were scattered reports last month that Oracle planned to eliminate half of Sun employees after it acquired the company. Those reports were quickly followed by a public statement from Oracle chairman Larry Ellison that there was no way they would cut that many jobs and that his company would be depending on Sun employees more than ever to make this deal work.

Let’s hope for the sake of the sake of Sun employees many, many more receive e-mail Number One.

Oracle patches fix ‘severe vulnerabilities’ in Database Server, Oracle Secure Backup

In Oracle’s last Critical Patch Update, the company released 38 fixes for 21 affected products, most notably some repair work for Oracle 11g, Oracle Application Server and Oracle WebLogic Server. This batch marked the first time that three fixes for Oracle’s core database had the highest vulnerability rating.

What can we expect this time around?

Oracle’s latest Critical Patch Update, to be released Jan. 12, contains only 24 new fixes, according to Oracle’s pre-release announcement. Affected products include the Oracle Database, Primavera, Oracle Application Server, Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle WebLogic Server.

These vulnerabilities are rated on the CVSS 2.0 scoring system, with metrics that include ease of exploit and impact of a successful attack. Vulnerabilities are scored from 0.0 to 10.0, with 10.0 representing the most severe vulnerability.

Three products in this Patch Update contain vulnerabilities with a 10.0 score  including Oracle Database Server and Oracle Secure Backup, both part of Oracle Database products, and the Oracle JRockit in the Oracle BEA Products Suite.

At this time last year, Oracle had 41 security fixes, and we asked the question: Are Oracle’s Critical Patch Updates really that critical?

We received a variety of responses.  Some of you didn’t install them because you thought they were “just patches for pretend problems, invented by some security ‘expert’,” while others felt the patches were indeed critical, and fairly easy to apply.

Have your views on Oracle patches changed in the last year? Do you install them? If not, why not?

Will developer suit against Oracle defuse Fusion?

It looks like Oracle is heading into the New Year with not just one, but two, legal battles to fight.

In addition to its antitrust hearings with the European Commission - from which we have still not heard any definitive news - Oracle has now been slapped with a lawsuit by the Georgia-based MB Technologies, the developer of a toolkit called Bindows.

According to MB, Oracle is violating a license agreement and unlawfully using the toolkit, which allows users to create an interface for their Web applications that has the “exact look and feel of Windows,” to develop user interfaces for its upcoming Fusion applications suite.

Oracle entered into a license agreement with Hyperion in 2004, and when Oracle acquired Hyperion in 2007, the software giant stated that it would only use the Bindows technology for Hyperion products that existed at the time of the acquisition, according to this PC World article.

The article also states that in October 2007, Oracle sent MB a new draft of its licensing agreement addendum that included a section in which it said it would license Bindows for use in Fusion apps.  However, the two companies could not agree on a price and the section was removed.

Or so, MB thought. It recently learned from an Oracle executive that Oracle is using Bindows for EPM components in Fusion apps.  After attempts to agree on a price and reach out to Oracle were apparently unsuccessful, MB decided to sue for a variety of damages.

Will this affect the release of the Fusion applications suite, which debuted at Oracle OpenWorld and is set to be released in 2010? That remains to be seen, as Oracle has not provided comment or filed a response. One would think however, that with all Oracle has on its plate with the approval of the Sun acquisition still in play, the software giant would be quick to get this one out of the way.

Postgres overlooked by the EC in the Oracle-Sun deal

With Oracle and the European Commission (EC) on the verge of reaching agreement over the former’s proposed possession of MySQL, hopefully this is the last time I talk about the latter’s confounding lack of understanding about the open source market.

While the EC has now spent well over three months investigating the dangers of Oracle owning both the leading proprietary and open source databases fearing it would use its monopoly position for evil, their answer for achieving competitive balance in the market was out in plain view.

In a word that answer is Postgres. The Postgres open source database is not only a respected competitor in the open source database market, but has a feature set that allows it to compete against some higher-end proprietary database.

“If their (EC’s) goal is to promote competitiveness and have a truly independent open source project with hundreds of thousands of users that serves as an alternative to Oracle they should focus on Postgres,” said Ed Boyajian, EnterpriseDB’s President and CEO.

Granted, EnterpriseDB may be the biggest supporter of Postgres and has built its business around the product. But Boyajian makes a couple of important points as to why Postgres can keep democracy alive in the open source database market.

For instance, from the start MySQL was built to accommodate the creation of lightweight, Web-based apps developers can use to create using scripting languages, it was hardly meant to create applications capable of handling heavy duty workloads.

“MySQL helped create apps that were read intensive, Web-based, not the sort of apps created by traditional corporate developers who work with C and C++ and Java. The fact is MySQL never competed with Oracle for that type of workload,” Boyajian said.

Postgres on the other hand is designed to create true enterprise-class applications that require concurrency and data consistency, according to Boyajian, the kind of applications that can give Oracle and IBM a run for its money.

“This is not a subtle thing to the people in the database market, but it looks to be a subtlety to the EC. This is something they are not fully understanding in this investigation,” Boyajian said.

What bolstered Postgres’ position as a strong alternative to MySQL is the recent investment by IBM in Enterprise DB. With IBM’s backing — a major competitor to Oracle in the proprietary database market and strong supporter of open source - Postgres future looks pretty secure.

The other distinction the EC has seemed to overlook, Boyajian notes, is the basic fact there are two kinds of open source companies: those that are community controlled and so truly independent like Postgres, Apache and Linux; and those which are commercially sponsored such as MySQL and JBoss.

This is not to say a commercially sponsored open source product can’t be successful.  After all the creators of MySQL sold it to Sun for $1 billion, but it will be better for users to have an alternative that doesn’t come with a Big Brother lurking over its shoulder.

Let’s hope with the dawning of the New Year, the EC confirms reports last week’s reports it has come to some meaningful compromise with Oracle so we can save jobs at Sun, stimulate competition among enterprise competitors, and put all this nonsense behind us.

Oracle concessions edge European Commission closer to approving Sun deal

It’s almost done.

After three months of investigation, and some pointed exchanges between the two along the way, it appears Oracle and the European Commission are on the verge of settling their differences over Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Earlier today the EC issued a statement indicating Oracle had made a number of concessions that eased its antitrust concerns, and were now “optimistic” that such a deal would not pose a threat to the European database market, according to a story in the New York Times.

According to the report, Oracle has agreed to protect the viability of the MySQL open source database, meaning it would not discontinue it or otherwise not support and maintain it as well as they could, thereby opening up more opportunity for Oracle’s own proprietary database.

Neelie Kroes, the EU’s Competition Commissioner, said that Oracle has made “significant” commitments to support MySQL, and that once Oracle takes over MySQL promises to extend MySQL’s existing licenses for up to five years. Oracle will also pledge to make guarantees to end user organizations and individuals now using MySQL that it will not pursue intellectual property claims, according to the Times story.

In a statement Kroes said she believed the commission’s investigation would have “a satisfactory outcome.”

Another concession by Oracle involves spending over $72 million spread over the next three years on research and development that would go towards improving MySQL, a sum Oracle has claims is more money than Sun itself had spent on developing the program.

Also, Oracle promises to spend more than $72 million over the next three years in research and development to improve and refine MySQL, which Oracle said was more money than Sun had been spending on developing the program.

While the parties seem to be a matter of days from finalizing an agreement, some European observers quoted in the Times story caution that the deal is not a certainty and will not be until both parties jointly announce it.

There was no indication in the EU’s statement or  from Oracle officials  when the EU’s approval of the Sun acquisition would formally be announced.

Would Oracle’s hands on MySQL mean users’ hands off?

Up until now, most of the opinions we’ve heard about the possible fate of MySQL in the hands of Oracle have been limited to Oracle and the European Commission (EC).  Well, at least until Dec. 10 when Oracle competitors are expected to offer their views of Oracle taking charge of the world’s leading open source database.

But exactly how would Oracle taking control of the open source database affect open source software users themselves?

The 451 Group, an independent technology-industry analyst company, recently tried to gain insight into this question by surveying a group of 1,000+ members of the “Commercial Adoption of Open Source (CAOS) open source user community,” asking them about their MySQL usage and opinions on the Oracle-Sun acquisition.

According to the results of that survey, MySQL usage is expected to drop if Oracle gains control of the open source database. The report said that while 82.1% of the respondents use MySQL today, that number will decline to 78.7% in 2011 and 72.3 % in 2014. This is further borne out as 15% of open source users and 14.4% MySQL users said they would be less likely to use the product if indeed Oracle acquires it, according to the report.

But can the survey results be used as an accurate forecaster of what would happen should Oracle come into possession of MySQL?

This part seems a bit tricky. For example, the survey is only focusing on a 347-person sample when current open source users number in the millions. A much broader sampling could very likely bring a very different result.  And isn’t Oracle’s argument centered on the idea that since it does not directly compete with MySQL, it has no motive to make changes to the open source database?

Still, this survey shows that not everyone has faith in Oracle’s stated MySQL motives.  Only 4.3% of respondents thought that Oracle should sell it to another vendor, but 32.6% thought that Oracle should set up an independent foundation for MySQL. And with recent rumored reports of a compromise by Oracle in which it will set up a separate MySQL business unit, that just might be the direction in which the software giant is heading.

Are you an open source software user? Does it matter to you who owns the open source software you use?  Are you apprehensive about Oracle gaining ownership of MySQL? Let us know what you think.

Oracle reportedly offers compromise to appease the European Commission on MySQL

In his eyeball-to-eyeball stare down with the European Commission (EC) over MySQL, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison may have blinked.

Multiple reports today say Ellison is willing to setup a separate entity within the combined Oracle-Sun that would be responsible for operating the MySQL open source database business, as a way to appease the EC and bring to a swift end that organization’s three-month long investigation of the deal.

Reports say Oracle plans to present the proposal to the EC before its scheduled Dec. 10 hearing with that agency in Brussels. At that meeting Oracle is expected to present its case for why its gaining control of MySQL will not create unfair competition in the database market thereby limiting buying choices among European buyers.

Oracle’s decision to initiate a compromise comes as something of a surprise, given the decidedly uncompromising comments Ellison made less than a month ago saying he planned to “vigorously oppose the European Commission’s Statement of Objections,” and he was confident that Oracle would “obtain unconditional clearance of the transaction.”

There were no specifics in the reports detailing exactly how a firewall would be set up between MySQL and the rest of the Oracle-Sun business, particularly Oracle’s proprietary database business. Oracle reportedly however is willing to establish a separate board of directors for the proposed entity overseeing MySQL’s business.