Aug 21 2009 7:03PM GMT

The DOJ approves Oracle’s Sun acquisition: Now what?

Shayna Garlick Profile: Shayna Garlick

It’s been four months since Oracle announced its planned acquisition of Sun, and today the Department of Justice gave Oracle the green light to move forward with its takeover. But the past four months have been filled with numerous questions and concerns –many of which are still applicable — about the deal among both Oracle and Sun users.

Here’s a quick look back at some of our significant Oracle-Sun coverage of the past four months:

April:

Oracle announces that it will buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion
Questions begin to emerge, such as: What does this mean for hardware, MySQL and enterprise Java?

May

Larry Ellison confirms that Oracle will keep Sun’s hardware business, including its disk storage and tape backup business.
Oracle president Charles Phillips discusses the Sun acquisition publicly for the first time at the Collaborate ’09 conference in Orlando. The conference also addresses some of users’ questions about the deal, such as: what will Oracle do with MySQL?
Companies prepare for closer scrutiny of their Oracle license agreements as a result of the Oracle/Sun deal.

June

The government asks Oracle for more information on the Oracle/Sun deal, specifically having to do with the way rights to Java will be licensed, which extends the Department of Justice’s 30-day review period.

July

Controversy arises over the question: What will Oracle do with Sun’s open source operating system, OpenSolaris?

August

The U.S. Department of Justice gives Oracle the green light for the Sun acquisition; however, the deal still has to be approved by the European Union (EU) before it can be closed.

Now that the deal is one step closer to completion, what can Oracle and Sun customers do to prepare? Some Sun customers are worried that big changes are on the way, but others are even more worried about another issue – Oracle’s silence about the deal and what to expect, especially with Sun’s flagship SPARC hardware business and how it plans to license Sun’s servers — by the box or by the number of processors.

What is your company doing to prepare for the Sun acquisition? How is it going to affect you? Do you feel like you have the information you need, or do you think Oracle should be doing a better job of keeping you informed?