Rumors a-flyin’

Derek Kuhr Profile: Derek Kuhr

What are the advantages of personal blogs over objective news publications that always cite their sources? For one, they’re a reliable source of rumors!

We don’t know, of course, if the rumors are true, but a couple of them went flying around the Oracle blogosphere this week.

The wildest is that Oracle will bid for SAP, its major rival in the enterprise applications space, at a lofty $49.78 per share. Talk of the bid drove SAP to the top of the German stock exchange on Monday.

Naturally, not everyone buys this story. Some dealers doubt that Oracle would be allowed to own 100% of the enterprise apps market. They argue that if Oracle makes a bid for SAP, it will be a low one that will likely be rejected, done only to show the world it could buy out SAP if it wanted to.

Another tidbit from the rumor mill suggests that Oracle may, in a move similar to its Unbreakable Linux plan announced last year, offer full support for the MySQL database management system — undercutting MySQL in the process.

One blogger notes that Unbreakable MySQL might be good for everyone, not just Oracle. Such a move could “embolden the technology, and providers,” according to Oracle + Open Source. “What’s more, those of us implementing technology infrastructure in enterprises know that having one provider for everything isn’t always a good thing.”

Do you think there’s any truth to the buzz? Or are these stories rumors and nothing more?

-Elisa Gabbert, Assistant Editor

Comment     RSS Feed     Email a friend