What happens when a large software company like Oracle acquires a struggling hardware company that has passed its prime like SUN? SUN customers who were already very concerned about the viability of their supplier get even more nervous. They put hardware acquisitions on hold and start talking to competitors. The sales of the struggling hardware maker take a plunge as in 30.6% drop of revenue in the latest quarter. What does Oracle do? Tries to reassure SUN hardware customers with advertisements like this:
Oracle ad for SUN customers
Looks like a great tactic; Oracle marketing has always been a well oiled machine. So, why are the customers not buying the message? Yesterday Oracle had a chance to demonstrate their commitment to SPARC and Solaris. Instead, it went and did the exact opposite by announcing that the first combination of Oracle database and SUN hardware will not use either SPARC or Solaris. Instead, Oracle Exadata Version 2 that Larry Ellison announced yesterday is based on Intel Nehalem processors and Oracle Linux. This move does not exactly inspire confidence in the future of SPARC and Solaris. One also has to question this new found love for x64 architecture as SUN’s key technologist behind that line, SUN co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim left to do really cool Cloud Computing stuff.
The most bizarre thing is the way the webcast itself was run. Advertised as the new OLTP database appliance, most of the content was around data warehousing and most of the comparisons (none substantiated) were drawn against HP-based Exadata Version 1 warehouse appliance. Speaking of Exadata Version 1 … this thing has only been on the market for a few months and has already met its premature demise as has Oracle’s relationship with arguably their best partner i.e. HP.The way the webcast ended left a few people scratching their heads. As soon as the charts with outrageous unsubstantiated claims ran out the phone lines went dead. No beta customers, no questions not even a good bye.
I think, (and this and everything else on this blog are my opinion only) Oracle did the right thing with the ad professing their commitment to SPARC and Solaris. They should have done the same for MySQL, the future of which is completely unknown, and stopped right there. This hastily put together Exadata Version 2 announcement will do nothing but make SUN customers even more nervous and make them run to IBM and HP even faster than they have been so far.
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Hey, Oracle works GREAT on IBM System z!
Oracle announced that they are discontinuing support for Oracle on z/OS.
“Oracle announced that they are discontinuing support for Oracle on z/OS.”
Obviously to increase revenue of the SPARC/Solaris platform. From what I undersand, Oracle will still continue to provide patches to allow 10gR2 to work with z/OS and related software. But sooner or later, customers will have to move their Oracle database and applications to a supported platform like Linux on System z, or even migrate to another database management system. Either way, Oracle abandoning their current customers this way may not be the smartest business move.
Oracle’s announcement of discontinuing support for z/OS was made long (almost 2 years ago) before Oracle decided to buy SUN. I don’t know the rational but I suspect that it was a business decision to cut loses since Oracle on z/OS has never been very popular. An overwhelming majority of z/OS customers use DB2 for z/OS.
Hi, I know this is a DB2 blog and because I am an ORACLE DBA maybe I will be well criticized by the readers for this comment, so I will try to be impartial.
This article kinda scares SUN customers and actually have nothing to do with them, This article talks about Exadata, which is an ORACLE product, not a SUN one. Is there evidence regarding lack or poor support to current Sun clients?
Is there any evidence that Oracle is not doing as advertised to support and develop SUN products?
This whole post is based only in the event of the new Exadata not using Sparc/Solaris, maybe it is just to soon to achieve that and again, is there any evidence that Oracle is not working hard on it?.
Please do not misunderstand me, I do not say that Oracle is working or not working hard on Sun (I really do not know what is Oracle doing or not behind their walls), but maybe this article is just a little rushed.
Regards
Carlos Acosta
Carlos, thanks for your comment and your perspective. We have a friendly crowd here and we don’t bash people just because they happen to have opinions that are different from those that we hold. The point of the article is not to pronounce on Oracle’s intentions toward SUN SPARC and Solaris. I was simply trying to note that Oracle had an opportunity to backup their advertisement with a real actions and chose not do do so. Exadata Version 2 appliance is very much a SUN product just like Exadata Version 1 was an HP product. With Exadata Version 1, Oracle and HP went to the market together and in many cases the actual customer engagements were led by HP. Since than, Oracle left HP and worse HP customers high and dry. Basically, those who bought Exadata version 1 (not very many I hear) now have a very expensive dead-end product. That is exactly why SUN customers with SPARC hardware fear that they too are sitting on a pile of dead-end hardware, OS and skills. By adopting Intel and Linux, Exadata Version 2 announcement did not help these customers to be very comfortable with Oracle’s announcements of continuing investments in to SPARC and Solaris.
Leon, thanks for your response, I think that I understand what you mean and I respect your opinion, but I just don’t agree. I went through your web page and there are a lot of anti-Oracle articles, I think that what I do not like is the atmosphere of criticism printed in your posts.
I am an Oracle DBA but I surely am not an anti-DB2 or anti-SQLServer guy. Thinks like this happens, business happens, and surely IBM have done like this before with the tons and tons of products they have, huge Tivoli suite, websphere suite, some components were in-house and mostly were bought from other vendors just like this case.
Carlos
To say Frankly I dont like the acquisition of Sun by Oracle. I am a great fan of Sun but not Oracle.