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07.21.09 What Is The Future Of Solaris/OpenSolaris?  By Jay FougereAs most of you know, Oracle has purchased Sun and all of it's associated businesses including MySQL, Solaris/OpenSolaris, Java, and Sun's hardware business. One might wonder what exactly is Oracle's motivation here; I know I certainly do. I understood IBM's motivations in buying Sun. Instead, I was blindsided by Oracle's purchase of Sun and I still wonder what exactly Oracle is hoping to gain. It has been speculated that there are only certain core technologies of Sun that Oracle wants. Let's face it, there is no real business model surrounding MySQL for Oracle unless they are simply using it as a "gateway" database to their proprietary systems. As it is, the sale of Sun to Oracle sparked several forks of MySQL; leaving one to wonder where the future of MySQL lies. Oracle's middleware products are heavily dependent on Java, but by itself Java has never been marketed nor monetized very well. Java is also Open Source Software; Oracle could fork it to suit their own needs any time they want. Java is hardly worth the $7 billion pricetag of Sun. While most folks don't think of Oracle as a Linux shop, in reality they are. Oracle has supported running their database products on Linux for years. In October of 2006, Oracle announced their own fork of RedHat Enterprise Linux; a binary compatible version called "Unbreakable Linux". Oracle has a long history of supporting it's database products on Linux.
This being the case, what need does Oracle have for another operating system? It has been argued that Oracle's database performance is better on Solaris, and I can certainly see why Oracle would want full control of the OS it's premier products are running on, however, maintaining an operating system is not a walk in the park. At least with Oracle's Linux solution, most security patches and upgrades from the upstream provider (Redhat) can be applied with very little effort on Oracle's part. Unless it can be argued that Sun simply wants complete control of their systems from hardware (Sun SPARC, which Larry Ellison claims Oracle is commited to supporting) to the operating system (Solaris) and everything above that, I don't see a future for Solaris. Otherwise, the only real option that I see, is if Oracle does intend to keep Solaris/OpenSolaris alive, it is to compete with Microsoft on the Desktop. This is the reason I thought IBM was buying Sun back in March. Oracle will have most of the kit required to provide a complete office/back office stack -- let's not forget that along with all the other businesses that came with the acquisition of Sun, there is also Star Office / Open Office. In fact, Oracle only really needs to acquire a good groupware (Exchange/Lotus etc..) package to compete with Microsoft. I guess it is maybe too early to speculate, but I will say that a lot of people were surprised by Oracle's purchase of Sun and it will be interesting to see what Oracle does with all of the assets that comprise Sun. About the Author: Jay Fougere is the IT manager for the iEntry network. He also writes occasional articles. If you have any IT questions, please direct them to Jay@ientry.com. |
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