The Enterprise Landgrab Continues: Oracle Buys BEA For $8.5B, Sun Buys MySql for $1B
from the buying-in-the-air dept
Something must be in the air today, as two big acquisitions were announced this morning. First, Oracle announced that it will fork over $8.5 billion for middleware maker, BEA. BEA has been on the radar since last October, when BEA rejected Oracle's unsolicited $6.7 billion offer. Carl Icahn, BEA's largest shareholder, had initially agreed with BEA's counter offer of $21 per share, but then later started pushing publicly for the sale. Oracle held fast to its offer of $17 per share, so it's surprising to see that they were able to agree on $19.375 per share, especially when there were seemingly no other bidders. These acquisitions continue an overall trend of consolidation in the enterprise software market, kicked off by Oracle's 2004 acquisition of PeopleSoft. Since then, Oracle has spent about $110 billion in its acquisition of about 30 companies. Oracle is in a battle with German software giant, SAP, who is also knee deep in the land grab with its recently successful $6.7 billion acquisition for Business Objects. Meanwhile, Sun will spend $1 billion for open source database maker, MySql, making a strong play in the $15 billion enterprise database market. This deal makes sense for Sun, who has been building up its stable of open source products. That said, when will the speculation begin for an Oracle-Sun merger? Both hate Microsoft deeply, and both have been trying to expand beyond their core markets. And, MySql even rejected Oracle's acquisition offer back in 2006. At some point, someone's going to think it makes sense for the two to combine.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: acquisitions
Companies: bea, mysql, oracle, sun
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
It's already started.
It's already started. I hypothesized on this near the of my blog post on the merger:
http://jcoehoorn.vox.com/library/post/sun-buys-mysql.html
I think it would be a shame if it happened, since Oracle would almost certainly just kill off the MySQL database (as far as that's possible for a product who's source code if freely available) in favor of their own.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: It's already started.
It's in everyone's best interested for MySQL to stay as open as it is with the support of a corporation.
Maybe it's just the business I'm in, but I never hear anyone remotely mention Oracle databases anymore. If we're not talking about MSSQL, then we're talking about an open source DB - MySQL or PostgreSQL.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: It's already started.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I don't care so long as they keep it going
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Symantec!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
OSS Gearing Up
This seems to be an extremely plausible scenario. I hope that should such a merger occur that is what will happen. But let's take a step back a moment from the speculative negativity and take a look at the implications of what HAS happened.
MySQL, a staple of the OSS community, has joined into Sun Microsystems, a relatively major player in the marketplace. This can, theoretically, help shore up the MySQL project ensuring it's continued existence and funding while under Sun's control. It also pushes up Sun's investment in the OSS Community. With major players like Sun and Google stepping up the OpenSource Assault, I think the future is starting to look rather bright.
Furthermore, with MySQL now owned by Sun, what changes might we expect to see in Java and it's own database interface. Java has typically worked very well with Oracle in the past, but now that Sun has a solid database system of it's own, could that change a bit? If Sun were to change some things in Java to make it more heavily favor MySQL(and why shouldn't they?) couldn't this, in fact, polarise Oracle and Sun a bit, making this theoretical merger less likely? Or perhaps the opposite effect, it will make Oracle more desperate to do soemthing about Sun.
Whichever way the situation unfolds I think it presents a valuable lesson. It demonstrates that fierce competition can still be engendered in an OpenSource Environment, despite what naysayers think. The model is being proven.
That's just how I see things anyways.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Chaos for customers
Many companies are going to be faced with migration decisions or decisions on how to effectively support a mixed environment of web application servers. There needs to be a way to easily migrate applications from one web application server to others (even if different flavors – WebSphere, BEA, Oracle, JBoss…).
My company is taking one approach to help customers with this turbulence. If you want to read more, here's a link to our press release on the matter.
http://www.phurnace.com/press/perfectly-timed-with-today-s-bea-acquisition-phurnace-plans -support-for-oracle-oas-to-bea-we.html
[ link to this | view in chronology ]