January 16th, 2008
Sun's planned deal to acquire MySQL will strengthen its open source story
Sun announced Wednesday that it is buying MySQL for about $1 billion — $800 million in cash and $200 million in options. The news comes on the same day that mega proprietary database software giant Oracle announced its intent to buy middleware giant BEA.
The deal, which awaits regulatory approval, should allay any talk that the popular open source database company is not as commercially viable as company executives have claimed. Following the company’s announced intent last year to go public, some venture capitalists MySQL lacked the level of revenues and customer volume to warrant an IPO.
In spite of that, Sun is betting big that the deal — which is expected to close in the third quarter of fourth quarter of its fiscal year — will strengthen its growing arsenal of open source products — including OpenOffice, OpenSolaris and open Java, and position itself nicely in a $15 billion database market. Still, some are wondering how such a deal might impact how MySQL is licensed going forward.
Sun said MySQL will be integrated into Sun’s Software, Sales and Service organizations, and will gain distribution through all of Sun’s channels including its OEM deals with IBM and Dell. MySQL’s CEO, Marten Mickos, is expected to join Sun’s senior executive team.
MySQL — which represents the M in the open source “LAMP” [Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl] middleware stack — lists facebook, Google, and Nokia among its corporate customer base.
“Today’s acquisition reaffirms Sun’s position at the center of the global Web economy. Supporting our overall growth plan, acquiring MySQL amplifies our investments in the technologies demanded by those driving extreme growth and efficiency, from Internet media titans to the world’s largest traditional enterprises,” said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and president, Sun Microsystems, in a prepared statement released the the press on Wednesday. “MySQL’s employees and culture, along with its near ubiquity across the Web, make it an ideal fit with Sun’s open approach to network innovation. And most importantly, this announcement boosts our investments into the communities at the heart of innovation on the Internet and of enterprises that rely on technology as a competitive weapon.”
Sun said it remains committed to offering MySQL on GNU/Linux, Windows and OpenSolaris and MySQL will be combined with Sun’s OpenSolaris , GlassFish, Java platform and NetBeans to expand web development capabilities for its customers.
Sun will announced details later on Wednesday, as will Oracle, which announced its major acquisition of BEA systems also today.
Paula Rooney is a Boston-based writer who has followed the tech industry for almost two decades. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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| 01/16/08
(nt)
