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‘Winning is not enough. All others (IBM) must lose.’

Larry Ellison

The art of war

So what does Oracle really want with Sun? If you subscribe to the art of war approach to the tech sector, Ellison’s move to buy Sun makes a lot of sense. To wit:

• Oracle gets to annoy IBM—and own Java—over a few pennies a share more than Big Blue was willing to pay.
• Oracle gets to kill MySQL. There’s no way Ellison will let that open source database mess with the margins of his database. MySQL at best will wither from neglect. In any case, MySQL is MyToast.
• Sun has a big installed base. All the better to upsell applications into.
• Oracle’s database runs on Solaris systems. Oracle fine tunes the systems, charges a premium and ditches the low-margin hardware.
• And speaking of hardware. Sun’s manufacturing is outsourced so there isn’t a lot of baggage—real estate, equipment and labor—to worry about. If Oracle decides to milk then wind down the hardware business it’s relatively easy.

Oracle buys Sun; Now owns Java; Becomes a hardware player