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The Oracle Sun Repercussion Discussion Begins

This is the First Day of the Rest of the Tech Industry's Life
By Roger Strukhoff
Article Rating:
April 22, 2009 09:31 AM EDT
Reads:
 2,668

I just started following sfearthquakes on twitter, a useful service that provides the scoop whenever we get a temblor in norcal.

If it followed biz earthquakes in Silicon Valley, it'd be reporting on a magnitude 7.0 event, maybe higher, today. For the repercussions from the Oracle Sun deal have just begun, and there are several fault lines along which major aftershocks could no doubt occur.

The major threads in the repercussion discussion are:

* What is the future of MySql? John Dvorak was all over this angle more than a year ago, with a column that at the time sounded, frankly, paranoid, but which now looks incredibly brilliant and prescient:

http://bit.ly/15lYnG.

(As he said in a twitter post today, "not to brag, but I nailed something here.")

* Will Oracle now get real close to HP, and provide a blockbuster competitor to IBM? ZDNet's Dana Gardner has thought this and other aspects through in is recent blogpost:

* How will the deal affect Java and all of the community-centric initiatives it's spawned over the years? (Related to this topic, JavaOne in June should be a must-see event.)

* Will this deal help consign Microsoft to irrelevancy? Or does it strengthen Microsoft's hand (through Java FUD)?

* How does the deal affect Cisco's nascent, unformed efforts to be a big Cloud player?

* Is the deal a good thing for Cloud (by offering a new great alternative) or a bad thing for Cloud (by squeezing Google et al through both potential vendor lock-in and as a competitor)?

Of less concern to most is the fate of thousands of Sun employees--early reports indicate as many as 10,000 will be gone--and the demolition of Sun's unique, feisty, personality-driven by sometimes dysfunctional culture.

In my opinion, the glory days of Sun's culture are far in the rear-view mirror anyway. The dot-com boom was probably the worst thing that ever happened to Sun, because it ballooned the company up to an unwieldy size, and it made everyone there think they were as smart as the few truly smart people who actually built the company.

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Published April 22, 2009 – Reads 2,668
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Roger Strukhoff earned a BA with honors from Knox College, a Certificate in Technical Communications from UC-Berkeley, and an MBA from CSU-East Bay. His work recently won a "Stevie" American Business Award as best publication in its category. His volunteer work in international affairs merited a Letter of Commendation from the Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. He splits most of his time between Silicon Valley and Southeast Asia, but can also be found at www.twitter.com/strukhoff