Oracle: Clinging to the Past?

I think it is natural for Leo to be critical of Oracle's acquisition. You don't expect him to praise or compliment Oracle. Larry may just sell the hardware division of Sun.

I blogged about how this may pan out here at:
http://subbaiyer.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/oracle-acquires-sun-unexpected-and-interesting/

Along with Sun, Oracle also gets to acquire a lot of technology relating to the cloud computing space. Sun had its own strategy planned out for Cloud Computing.

I can't agree. Cloud computing is just complete vertical integration. And really, acquiring Sun give Oracle a path to that market.

Expanding your line of thinking, that too much vertical integration can be a disadvantage and even dangerous to a company, what do you think of Apple's recent program to assemble world class custom chip hardware design capabilities, with its acquisition of PA Semi last year, and its subsequent hiring of three hardware stars from IBM, AMD, Qualcomm?

While the reasoning of Apple's move seems smart, could they end up painting themselves into a corner. Here's why: While in the short term they may be able to develop some innovative hardware solutions to solve short-term needs, as well as protect themselves from their unwanted "sharing" of their ideas, given the explosive pace and worldwide scope of hardware R&D, they might loose the flexibility to quickly adapt some revolutionary innovation because they are so heavily invested and beholden to their in-house efforts.

I keep waiting for somebody to say it, and nobody has, so here goes: Oracle is the next CA, and will eventually follow them into irrelevance.

Oracle's strategy, buying companies and growing the portfolio, has been executed well. The financial returns are the final scoreboard, and so far they are indicating that Larry's strategy is correct.

SAP has chosen the organic route - business objects was a bit of a detour. So far Oracle is crushing SAP, no wonder Leo is critical of Larry's strategy.

Ultimately, the market and customers will decide where the value resides.

The Sun adquisition is a purely defensive move, to protect the investments made in Oracle's Middleware software and Oracle E-Business Suite. They got scared when they saw IBM, the only real Middleware competitor, where about to take over Sun and the development efforts of Java, and therefore they made their move to buy Sun. Don't read more into it than that.

I agree with you that it is not a good idea for Oracle to pursue an Apple-like strategy to become a vertically integrated company. Oracle is smarter than that. The real rationale for the deal IMO is for Oracle to get their hands on Sun's software assets, like Java and MySql, which Oracle may get for free if they sell off Sun's under- performing hardware businesses. Larry Augustin has a good blog post on it here:

http://lmaugustin.typepad.com/lma/2009/04/oracle-buys-java-and-mysql-for-free.html

The lap of Oracle is the best for sun's and its tech like Java, Solaris and other to grow. Oracle's support for java and other open system like linux is well known to the world and I think java/Solaris will surely grow under the umbrella of Oracle.

Sometimes, when you have cash and prices go down this low, you buy things.

SAP had 16% decline in profits and will continue to slide. The author prides himself that he had a telephone conversation with "Leo Apotheker, the soon-to-be sole CEO at German software giant SAP." I think a call to Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. will balance the opinion. Larry is not "a-soon-to-be". Larry is and will be, with a phenomenal track record

This is just a war . Who will win .. no one can judge at the moment. Winners will write the history. To count SAP out is mistake only a fool can make.

SAP has a phenomenal track record and planned strategy for future. And we know they defeated almost everyone including long dead JD Edwards, Peoplesoft , Siebel in there territory of business applications. Internally, SAP is glad that Oracle picked up the war, whom they used to promote earlier to there customers for underlying database. One of the biggest reason for Oracle Database to become popular is that SAP Promoted it for its applications.

Now a friend, turned foe by collecting few lost warriors to defeat the Champion of Business Applications. But one must remember that by doing so they have annoyed lot many others read IBM , HP , Dell, Cisco and Microsoft. So battle lines are being drawn and Oracle is picking up lot of wars, too soon. SAP Still has all big players on its side even though they are competitors but they are partners at the same time.

Hope to see interesting war in the battle ground. I am supporting the king, whom are you helping ?