Sun Setting Under Weight of Oracle

(MoneyWatch)  The Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems was supposed to be the salvation of the latter. But instead, the delays because of regulatory compliance and, perhaps, Oracle's own inexperience in the server business may have actually accelerated the company's decline. Now IBM and HP are circling like sharks with the scent of blood in the water, and they're effectively picking off one deal after another.

The problem for Sun is that Oracle would have been perfectly happy just to have purchased the software side and was even rumored to be selling the server business to HP. But, hey, that's a rumor, and what isn't is that both HP and IBM have been actively trying to woo Sun's customers, playing on a very real source of fear, uncertainty, and doubt about what was going to happen. The latest episode was HP hiring a Sun senior VP from the global sales and service group to lead North American sales for enterprise storage servers and networking. Although not in the press release, part of hire, as I've heard, was to help Sun customers transition to HP. I think that's euphemism for poaching, but don't hold me to it.

Of course, I'm thinking that the "transition" (or poach) angle is more a PR play than anything else, because even if some loyal Sun customers are hanging in, many aren't. So Oracle has decided to strike back with a new OLTP database machine. My, wasn't that fast. Chance are, I suspect, it's essentially a software-hardware bundle. It's going to take a lot more to make customers feel that they have a future if they purchase machines from the company. And the longer it takes to demonstrate that, the more likely that Oracle eventually won't have a hardware business to sell.

Image via stock.xchng user dms1259, site standard license.