Oracle Channel Chief: We’ll Invest in SPARC, Solaris
At Oracle OpenWorld 2009, Channel Chief Judson Althoff opened his keynote by addressing the “small elephant in the room” — Oracle’s pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Here’s the scoop.
According to Althoff, Oracle will “invest more in SPARC [Sun’s microprocessor] than Sun ever has. We’ll invest more in Solaris [Sun’s Unix operating system] than Sun ever has.”
Of course, it’s difficult for Althoff to say much about Oracle’s takeover strategy of Sun, since the deal is still pending. But the Sun talk will surely continue here at OpenWorld — since Sun co-founder Scott McNealy is scheduled to appear here at the San Francisco conference later today.
No doubt, The VAR Guy has been skeptical of the pending Oracle-Sun combo — particularly since Windows, Linux and Intel offerings have been undercutting Sun’s core Solaris and SPARC businesses.
Still, Oracle has a track record for successful takeovers — from PeopleSoft to Siebel Systems. Will Oracle-Sun succeed? First, the deal needs to achieve regulatory approval.
I’m excited about continued investment in Solaris. I hope they can bring SPARC to new markets. Remember when Ellison went on about an Oracle-Sun netbook? Okay, so maybe not a SPARC netbook, but a return of the (somewhat affordable) RISC workstation would be lovely. Don’t you think?
ZFS user: On Sunday night (Oct. 11) Sun co-founder Scott McNealy and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison spent considerable time describing SPARC’s position in data centers. Not much talk, if any, about desktop. The big focus is competing with IBM.