News
Oracle completes takeover of Sun
29 January 2010
Oracle Corporation has announced that it has completed the
nine-month takeover of Sun Microsystems first announced in April last
year.
The transaction was valued at approximately US$7.4 billion and Oracle
estimated that the acquired business would contribute over US$1.5
billion to Oracle’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year,
increasing to over US$2 billion in the second year.
The US Department of Justice approved the acquisition in August last
year, but the European Commission only gave approval earlier this month.
With the acquisition, Oracle has added servers, storage, SPARC
processors, the Solaris operating system, Java, and the MySQL database
to its portfolio of database, middleware, and business applications.
 Sun
has six UK sites: at Camberley —the UK headquarters where there
are several buildings that have lain unfinished for several years,
Coventry, Linlithgow, London, Sale, and Watford.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said: “The acquisition of Sun transforms the
IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and
mission-critical computing systems. Oracle will be the only company that
can engineer an integrated system — applications to disk — where all the
pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it
themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go
down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”
Oracle
said that there were substantial long-term strategic customer advantages
to Oracle owning two key Sun software assets: Java and Solaris. Java is
one of the computer industry’s best-known brands and most widely
deployed technologies, and it is the most important software Oracle has
ever acquired. Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle’s fastest growing
business, is built on top of Sun’s Java language and software. Oracle
can now ensure continued innovation and investment in Java technology
for the benefit of customers and the Java community.
The Sun Solaris operating system is the leading
platform for the Oracle database, Oracle’s largest business, and has
been for a long time. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle can optimize
the Oracle database for some of the unique, high-end features of
Solaris. Oracle is as committed as ever to Linux and other open
platforms and will continue to support and enhance our strong industry
partnerships.
In December 2009 Oracle addressed what it said were particular
concerns by the European Commission regarding the maintenance of the
MySQL database as a competitive force in the database market. Oracle
committed to ten points:
1. Continued Availability of Storage Engine APIs.
Oracle shall maintain and periodically enhance MySQL’s Pluggable Storage
Engine Architecture to allow users the flexibility to choose from a
portfolio of native and third party supplied storage engines.
MySQL’s Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture shall
mean MySQL’s current practice of using, publicly-available, documented
application programming interfaces to allow storage engine vendors to
“plug” into the MySQL database server. Documentation shall be consistent
with the documentation currently provided by Sun.
2. Non-assertion. As copyright holder, Oracle will
change Sun’s current policy and shall not assert or threaten to assert
against anyone that a third party vendor’s implementations of storage
engines must be released under the GPL because they have implemented the
application programming interfaces available as part of MySQL’s
Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture.
A commercial license will not be required by Oracle
from third party storage engine vendors in order to implement the
application programming interfaces available as part of MySQL's
Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture.
Oracle shall reproduce this commitment in contractual
commitments to storage vendors who at present have a commercial license
with Sun.
3. License commitment. Upon termination of their
current MySQL OEM Agreement, Oracle shall offer storage vendors who at
present have a commercial license with Sun an extension of their
Agreement on the same terms and conditions for a term not exceeding
December 10, 2014.
Oracle shall reproduce this commitment in contractual
commitments to storage vendors who at present have a commercial license
with Sun.
4. Commitment to enhance MySQL in the future under the
GPL. Oracle shall continue to enhance MySQL and make subsequent versions
of MySQL, including Version 6, available under the GPL. Oracle will not
release any new, enhanced version of MySQL Enterprise Edition without
contemporaneously releasing a new, also enhanced version of MySQL
Community Edition licensed under the GPL. Oracle shall continue to make
the source code of all versions of MySQL Community Edition publicly
available at no charge.
5. Support not mandatory. Customers will not be
required to purchase support services from Oracle as a condition to
obtaining a commercial license to MySQL.
6. Increase spending on MySQL research and
development. Oracle commits to make available appropriate funding for
the MySQL continued development (GPL version and commercial version).
During each of the next three years, Oracle will spend more on research
and development (R&D) for the MySQL Global Business Unit than Sun spent
in its most recent fiscal year (USD 24 million) preceding the closing of
the transaction.
7. MySQL Customer Advisory Board. No later than six
months after the anniversary of the closing, Oracle will create and fund
a customer advisory board, including in particular end users and
embedded customers, to provide guidance and feedback on MySQL
development priorities and other issues of importance to MySQL
customers.
8. MySQL Storage Engine Vendor Advisory Board. No
later than six months after the anniversary of the closing, Oracle will
create and fund a storage engine vendor advisory board, to provide
guidance and feedback on MySQL development priorities and other issues
of importance to MySQL storage engine vendors.
9. MySQL Reference Manual. Oracle will continue to
maintain, update and make available for download at no charge a MySQL
Reference Manual similar in quality to that currently made available by
Sun.
10. Preserve Customer Choice for Support. Oracle will
ensure that end-user and embedded customers paying for MySQL support
subscriptions will be able to renew their subscriptions on an annual or
multi-year basis, according to the customer’s preference.
Oracle said that these commitments would be worldwide and would
continue until the fifth anniversary of the closing of the transaction.
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