Oracle Buying Sun: Not That Big of a Surprise

Submitted by dmarx on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 10:30.

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Today's announcement regarding Oracle buying Sun is not that big of a surprise given the recent failed deal between IBM and Sun and the precarious position it left Sun in. Although recent events made this not all that surprising, I do have to admit that I would never have believed two years ago that Oracle would be acquiring BEA and Sun in 2008 and 2009 respectively. With Oracle's acquisition of BEA, it seemed that the Big Three of the Java world were Sun, IBM, and Oracle.

Of course, Sun is much more than just Java, even if many of us who work with Java on daily basis forget this sometimes. I am sure that Oracle was attracted to several other things about Sun as well. However, Oracle's commitment to Java is obvious with their numerous Java-related offerings on Oracle Technology Network, their many Java-oriented products and services, and especially with their Oracle Fusion middleware line being heavily Java-focused.

Just as I wondered about the future of NetBeans and GlassFish with the rumored purchase of Sun by IBM, the same thoughts apply with Oracle purchasing Sun. In fact, Oracle is already heavily invested in its own JDeveloper and has contributed to Eclipse (including Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse), so NetBeans is a third IDE they will have involvement with at this point. It is difficult for me to believe they will want to commit resources to all three, but that doesn't necessarily mean it won't happen. In addition, Oracle already has more than one of its own application servers in WebLogic and Oracle Application Server (and OC4J Standalone). Again, it is difficult to imagine Oracle wanting to continue investing resources in yet another application server (GlassFish), though Oracle has contributed to GlassFish as an open source project in the past.

If I had been forced to bet money on who would try to get Sun after the IBM/Sun talks fell through, I would have put my money on Oracle. That being said, I guess I must admit a small amount of surprise when it was actually announced.