Oracle in "definitive agreement" to buy Sun

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News out today that IBM is out and Oracle is in at Sun. From a story at CNNMoney.com

Sun logo
Business software maker Oracle Corp. said Monday it has entered into a definitive agreement to buy server builder Sun Microsystems in a deal worth $7.4 billion.

Oracle said it will buy Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash, a 42% premium from Friday’s closing price of $6.69.

Oracle’s Larry Ellison is making happy sounds

“The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry,” said Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, in a statement. “Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”

Oracle said it sees “strategic customer advantages” to owning two of Sun’s most popular software products: the programming language Java and the Solaris operating system.

And Oracle says it’s looking forward to owning Java and Solaris. I can see Java…maybe. But I wonder about the cultures that have to be integrated here, especially in light of Ellison’s strongly negative comments about cloud computing about a year ago

The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?

Ah me. I do like the cranky IT billionaires. The problem I see is that cloud computing has been such a mainstay of Sun’s public persona for the past 18 months.

HPC? Hard to say. Oracle is a mainstay of the real IT world, and the software part at that. HPC is mostly a hobby for the few enterprise IT hardware makers that have stayed with it. I cannot imagine an enterprise software company indulging it. Vis? Most certainly not.

I’m not so sure about the enterprise IT server stuff. The storage stuff seems like it has a prayer of hanging around, since Sun’s Lustre/hardware combo fits in organizations where data is a big concern, ie Oracle’s customer base. All just guesses of course.

[Updated: here is the press release from Sun, and from Oracle, and Oracle already has a special acquisitions page up at their site where you can listen to the webcast and mostly stay tuned for more info.]

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