EC goes after Microsoft, Sun buys MySQL and Oracle buys BEA
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Continuing its buying spree, Oracle has acquired a maker of employee role-mapping software.
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Mixes with new crowd Oracle is ending its brief acquisition lull with one of its largest software deals. The database giant will buy Hyperion Solutions, also an Oracle competitor in the business intelligence market and an important partner of SAP, for $3.3bn, or $52 a share - a handsome 21 per cent premium for stockholders.â¦
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Sun Microsystems' purchase of MySQL for $1 billion is not only the largest open-source deal yet, it's almost bigger than all previous open-source deals combined, including RedHat's $326 million buy of JBoss, Citrix's $500 million purchase of XenSource and Yahoo's $350 million acquisition of Zimbra.
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US business software giant Oracle said Wednesday it had reached an agreement to take over rival BEA Systems in a 8.5 billion dollar deal.
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Sun Microsystems will pay $1 billion for Swedish software company MySQL, whose open-source database is used for some of the most widely visited Web sites in the world.
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&quot;Sun is in this big battle with Microsoft for enterprise commitments,&quot; Jonathan Eunice, an analyst with the research firm Illuminata, told the E-Commerce Times.
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Users of technology from both companies today expressed concern about Oracle's $8.5 billion agreement to buy BEA Systems and to fold in the latter's middleware to the Oracle software stack.The BEA board of director's vote to approve the sale for $19.375 a share comes just three months after it spurned Oracle's $6.7 billion offer in October to buy the middleware vendor.Burc Oral, a senior architect at Cambridge, Mass.-based government contractor Cell Exchange, said that while the acquisition will give users the option of buying a database and application server from a single vendor, he also expects a period of "confusion" for BEA users because of technology overlap.Oral, who also heads up the New England BEA User Group, said that he expects that the deal will likely mean the end of some products -- "a little from Oracle and a lot from BEA."Oral said that Oracle would be well served to retain BEA's WebLogic product, which has a hearty following among users, who have been provided with good support from BEA over the years. "[BEA] had their [WebLogic] product out there many years before Oracle was out there," Oral said. "[It] is very easy to use and BEA has always been very friendly to the user community with downloads and documentation. Oracle doesn't have this wide acceptance from the user community in terms of applications. With BEA life is a lot easier."But, he noted that since Oracle made its first bid for BEA in October, the middleware firm has been less responsive than usual to the user group. In addition, Oral said that users from previous Oracle acquisitions including Siebel and Hyperion appear to be "getting better value" from a larger organization that they did before the acquisition.Jim Burgard, assistant vice chancellor of university computing and communication at the University of New Orleans, said that he doesn't expect the deal to significantly impact his organization, which uses WebLogic with Oracle's PeopleSoft applications. However, he added that he "does have some concerns about future licensing and maintenance costs now that all the components are owned by one vendor."Mike Gilpin, an analyst with Forrester Research, said that Burgard's fear is not unfounded, noting that there is a chance that support costs for users of BEA's WebLogic Server, AquaLogic Service Bus, AquaLogic BPM, WebLogic Event Server, and AquaLogic SOA Management products will grow after the deal closes later this year.Gilpin did note that Oracle has promised "lifetime support" for BEA products that overlap Oracle's offerings. That means that BEA users won't have to dump their BEA products but may over time pay more for support, he said. If they do move to Oracle's technology, they'll have to pay for migration, Gilpin added."Oracle has assured us that they will be very mindful of protecting the interests of existing BEA customers, just as they have been for customers of PeopleSoft and Siebel -- and I find their assurances credible," Gilpin said "It's not in Oracle's interest to aggravate these customers, In many cases they are already Oracle customers, anyway."Todd Langille, project manager of Administrative Computing for Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., said that he has concerns over whether Oracle has a "clear coherent strategy" for its growing software portfolio, which includes many similar products.For example, he noted that Oracle bought business intelligence software vendors Hyperion and Siebel despite have its own BI tool set, Discover. "I take a look at that mix of acquisitions, and I'm not really sure what their data warehouse strategy will be with all their business intelligence products in play," he remarked.Langille did note that because Dartmouth runs both Oracle Application Server and BEA's WebLogic software, it's not as important to him which product becomes the database vendor's primary middleware offering. "We see [the acquisition] as probably a knocking down of competition, but given that we use both products, we stand to benefit from whatever intellectual properly Oracle [gains]," he added.BEA should expedite Oracle's efforts to construct a standards-based middleware architecture, Langille said. However, he acknowledged that it will take some time before any wholesale replacement for Oracle Application Server arrives."I don't think products are identical, and for that reason, I don't think one will disappear quickly," he added.Patricia Dues, enterprise program manager for the city of Las Vegas, said she hopes Oracle can use BEA technology to improve its various offerings. For example, she said she hopes software acquired from BEA can augment the analytical capability of Oracle's Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition offering recently purchased by the city."We realize what Oracle has done with other acquisitions in taking the best of both worlds. There's always room for improvement, and this sparks our interest with the acquisition of BEA," said Dues.Dues downplayed any concerns that Oracle's ongoing attrition of its software competitors - both large and small - may divert the company's focus away from existing customers or product roadmaps. "I don't see this as what Larry [Ellison] wants. I think there's a strategy behind it all. I can't say that I feel like [Oracle] is going to desert us, they have too many products to manage," she said.
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It looks like only relatively minor administrative tasks stand between the two companies becoming one. By TechWeb News. The European Union has approved Oracle&#39;s takeover of PeopleSoft, bringing the deal closer to completion.
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Sun Microsystems will pay US$1 billion for Swedish software company MySQL, whose open-source database is used for some of the most widely visited Web sites in the world.
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Microsoft&#39;s (Quote, Chart) dominance on the desktop may turn out to be Sun Microsystems&#39; (Quote, Chart) gain in the end. A letter to Sun Microsystems&#39; COO Jonathan Schwartz by the European Commission (EC) this
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Sweet Caroline Here's Sun Microsystems. Ahead of the curve with utility computing? Check. Interested in gaining the business of today's internet companies? Big check. Full of server-side software skills? Check. Behind Amazon.com of all companies in actually putting these things together as a product or service companies can buy? Yep.â¦
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to buy open-source software maker MySQL AB for $1 billion, beefing up the server maker's database offerings with a company whose technology is used by some of the world's biggest Web sites.
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IBM (NYSE: IBM), Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) and other technology companies recently "donated" portions of their software to the open-source community. But those donations are not motivated by corporate generosity; there are tactics and strategies behind these moves.
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Oracle&#39;s agreement to buy PeopleSoft for $26.50 per share, or approximately $10.3 billion, means a new era for users of PeopleSoft&#39;s enterprise applications.
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(InfoWorld) - Just a day afterÂ debuting a new initiative to produce more industry-specific functionalityÂ for users of its Dynamics business applications, Microsoft Tuesday announced it had purchased IP (intellectual property) and code relevant to the manufacturing sector. Previously, Microsoft relied on its partners to meet the industry-specific needs of its customers, but in response to feedback from those communities, itÂ is now working to add in capabilities to its ERPÂ applications in five key vertical markets -- manufacturing, distribution, retail, services, and the public sector. Microsoft said Tuesday at its Convergence conference in San Diego that it has acquired the IP and code for eBECS's lean manufacturing module. EBECS is a Microsoft partner and reseller of Dynamics AX based in Chesterfield in the U.K. The companies didn't reveal any financial details around the deal. Lean manufacturing is an approach designed to streamline manufacturing, ensuring the shortest time between receiving a customer's order and shipping that order by getting rid of any inherent waste of resources involved in the manufacturing process. Microsoft will use the eBECS module to extend the existing core functionality of its Dynamics AX ERP software so that users can better optimize their processes and connect and integrate their entire supply chains from their customers through to their supply partners, according to Glenn Bray, senior director of Microsoft's industry solutions. By the end of this year, Microsoft will make the English-language module available to its customers, with plans to integrate the code into the next version of Dynamics AX and fully localize it to support all of the 40 languages in which its ERP software is available. Partners who've been trying to attract high-end customers told Microsoft that they were keen for the software giant to become more proactive about industry-specific offerings. "They want Microsoft to stand behind a solution," Bray said. Customers are keen to know they can still count on Microsoft's support should a particular partner change the focus of their business to a different industry or run into some kind of trouble. Microsoft highlighted acquisition as one way it plans to build in additional vertical functionalities to its Dynamics ERP families along with internal development and strategic alliances with its partners. Back in January, the vendor announced a co-development effort with public-sector information management software vendor Tyler Technologies. The two companies are working together to provide public-sector accounting functionality for Dynamics AX with an enhanced version of the ERP software due to appear in the latter half of 2009. Looking ahead, Microsoft expects to create multiple relationships with partners in each of its five chosen industries, Bray said. He doesn't believe that Microsoft getting more involved in providing industry-specific functionality will lead to cannibalization of existing offerings from its partners. There'll be no requirement for partners, for example, to use Microsoft's own lean manufacturing module, Bray said. Instead, partners will be free to choose whichever software is most appropriate for them, so offerings from Microsoft and its partners addressing the same industry needs will coexist. Â
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Users of technology from both companies today expressed concern about Oracle's $8.5 billion agreement to buy BEA Systems and to fold in the latter's middleware to the Oracle software stack.