I'm just not sure about this one; I could have seen the IBM acquistion of Sun being very destructive and ripping the guts out of Sun. But I'm not sure that this is really much better; it is as has been pointed out an extremely defensive move by Oracle. However, a defensive move to buy a company which Oracle probably does not really understand. But does anyone really understand Sun in it's present guise because it is obvious that the current management don't!?
A software company buying a software company pretending to be a hardware company would make sense if it was to kill the hardware side of things and just leverage the software. But at the moment, Oracle seem to want to continue with the hardware side of things and even continue with the Sparc franchise. And it was bad enough dealing with Sun to get support for our Storagetek silos; dealing with Oracle fills me with horror!
As for what it means for storage? Exadata is probably dead in the water in it's current form. The ZFS lawsuit becomes NetApp vs Oracle; it feels almost an unfair fight. And of course the NetApp sales-guys are going to probably have to change the 'Oracle uses NetApp for all it's development storage' line.
As for Pillar, well Pillar are always at pains to both stress the Larry relationship but also that they are nothing to do with Oracle; it's one of the more schizoid sales pitches but I don't see anything changing with Pillar.
I am also quite excited by the carnage that maybe wrought in Sun…why? Am I some kind of voyeuristic sadist? No, I think that we might see a mass exodus (as we would of with IBM) of some very talented engineers who are determined to show the world how good they are and we might get some exciting new start-ups. If I was a VC/company with cash to burn; I'd be looking at what flotsam and jetsam is washed up from wreck and wondering what I could make from it all.
There is also something about the whole deal which leaves me feeling uneasy, last time I had that feeling, Compaq bought DEC. One hopes that Larry's eyes are not too big for Oracle's belly; I mean HP don't have an enterprise database yet….but give it a few years!
I remember back in 2001 when we were looking at SAN at Auntie, we were constantly vexed by the lack of information on all the storage startups who clearly existed but were all quiet as mice. In the end, a lot of great technology came out of those startups but importantly, only a few of them have managed to survive as independent entities and still fewer as successful ones (though lots of that tech has ended up being absorbed by the big guys with varying degrees of success).
I wonder if the ever increasing level of consolidation in the IT industry at this time will make the next round of startups more or less likely to survive independently. If I was out in startup land I wouldn’t be looking to build the next HP or Sun though, I’d be thinking more around, god help me, the cloud.