AKIBIA'S PRACTICAL GUIDE TO ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
Friday, April 24, 2009
The Near-Term Impact of Oracle Buying Sun
Oracle's acquisition of Sun is a big deal in the IT industry as two big players come together. What is Oracle's intent? How will they leverage MySql? What will happen to Sun's hardware and storage device groups? There is speculation and chatter from the acquired company's employees, the competitors, pundits and of course from the customers.
Akibia's perspective is practical, as always. Regardless of Sun and Oracle's five year integration roadmap, companies all over the world are leveraging Sun hardware systems today to support mission-critical applications. Whatever happens to Sun as a company and the Sun brand, customers are relying on these systems to do business right now.
Customers want to know their support system will not go away, and that they wont see a drop in service levels, when the merger is finalized. Many customers rightly have concerns about Oracle's reputation for high support costs. Reality is that redundant positions within Sun and Oracle will likely be eliminated. Does this mean support for Sun hardware and software will now come under Oracles software support group? There are a lot of questions yet to be answered.
Rather than wait for Oracle to dictate new support services to Sun customers, organizations should take charge of their support program and evaluate more stable support providers. These are mission critical systems, and the customer can't afford to worry about support levels as the merger plays out.
