Sun to acquire open-source database company MySQL
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Sun Microsystems to plunk down about $1 billion for one of the most successful open-source software companies.
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Sun Microsystems sta in effetti lavorando a un nuovo modello di licensing per Solaris, denominato Common Development and Distribution License (Cddl), e ne ha presentato le specifiche alla Open Source Initiative.
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Almost lost in the clamor over Sun's expanded partnership with Microsoft on Wednesday was a small acquisition that will bolster Sun's HPC storage offerings. Sun agreed to acquire a majority of the assets of Cluster File Systems.
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(InfoWorld) - You've heard of LAMP, the popular open-source infrastructure stack featuring the Linux operating system, the Apache Web server, MySQL's database, and the Perl, Python and PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) scripting languages. Well, Sun plans to spotlight a variation on that mixture, replacing Linux with its own Solaris Unix OS as part of its Solaris + AMP, or SAMP, stack for building Web applications. Featured in Sun's rollout on Tuesday are versions of the open-source AMP components optimized for the Solaris 10 OS plus Sun developer tools. The Solaris + AMP unveiling is part of a multifaceted announcement of free development offerings to debut on Tuesday with Sun hoping to sell support as a way to generate revenues. While stressing that Sun was not trying to compete with LAMP itself, Dan Roberts, Sun's director of developer tools marketing, did note that Sun believes its Solaris platform presents a viable competitor to Linux. Developers can build to Apache, MySQL, and the scripting languages but deploy their applications on Solaris or the open-source variant, OpenSolaris, to get advantages such as reliability and security, he said. "We're very much competing [with] Red Hat," and Suse, Roberts said. The company is featuring the PostgreSQL object-relational database as part of the stack along with MySQL. Sun tools and other open-source technologies also are included, and step-by-step instructions on deploying the stack are offered. Analysts recognized Sun's Solaris + AMP effort as a way to entice open-source developers to the Sun camp. "Theyâre trying to make it more comfortable for those who had been working in Linux to consider coming to Solaris as an alternative," said analyst Jean Bozman of IDC. Although IDC does not rank operating systems, Sun does have tools in its Solaris arsenal, such as the DTrace tracing framework and ZFS (Zettabyte File System), that could be attractive to Linux developers, Bozman said. "It's very clear that Sun is going after the same set of developers in the open-source community," as Linux, she said. Making a stronger case for Sun, Andi Mann, senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates, said Sun with Solaris + AMP had taken the best parts of the LAMP stack, swapped out Linux with Solaris, and added other open-source technologies. "In terms of standing a chance against LAMP, absolutely, I think it's a very strong offering," Mann said. But Sun faces an obstacle in that Solaris still is considered by some to be a proprietary Unix variant, even if that is not true anymore, Mann said. "It's going to be difficult just to get mind share over Linux," he said. Users of Solaris + AMP also can avail themselves to Sun's Try and Buy program, in which customers can try out Sun hardware for 60 days. Sun also plans to unveil Solaris Express, Developer Edition on Tuesday. "Itâs a new distribution of OpenSolaris specifically targeted at developers on x86 or x64 workstations or Intel AMD-based laptops and workstations," Roberts said. Developers can use the OpenSolaris distribution to build applications that would then be deployed on Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris. "It's just like [how] a Windows developer can deploy a solution that runs on Linux." Roberts said. An integrated environment for developing applications for Solaris, Java, and Web 2.0 is featured, and a simplified install mechanism is part of the package. Also included is an improved Gnome-based desktop and Sun development tools, including Sun Studio 11 and the NetBeans 5.5 IDE. Sun is packaging more than 150 open-source applications with Solaris Express, Developer Edition. The Glassfish application server is featured as well. Also on Tuesday, Sun will offer a second iteration of its Startup Essentials Program for startup firms to use discounted Sun hardware and Solaris. New to the program is the inclusion of storage solutions and low-end SPARC systems. Discounts have been 60 percent to 70 percent less than list prices. Through its Sun Developer Expert Assistance Program, Sun offers support for $49 per request. An annual subscription featuring support for unlimited requests costs $249.
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Sun Microsystems Inc. SUNW.O  has agreed to acquire closely held SevenSpace Inc., adding to  Sun's managed services offerings, the network computer maker  said on Monday.
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(InfoWorld) - Almost lost in the clamor over Sun's expanded partnership with Microsoft on Wednesday was a small acquisition that will bolster Sun's HPC storage offerings. Sun agreed to acquire a majority of the assets of Cluster File Systems. Among other things, Sun will get the Lustre File System, an open-source software distribution widely used in large computing systems. The company did not disclose the terms of the deal, which it expects to close around the start of Sun's fiscal second quarter, beginning Oct. 1. The acquisition will be immaterial to Sun's earnings per share, the company said in a news release. Cluster is based in Boulder, Colorado. Lustre can manage and retrieve files on clusters with tens of thousands of nodes. Sun will make Lustre work on Sun's Solaris OS and will continue developing and distributing it for Linux and Solaris on multiple vendors' systems. The file system complements the Sun Constellation Architecture for HPC systems, Sun said. The two companies aren't strangers. They have already worked together on several large clusters, including one at the Texas Advanced Computing Center with 1.7PB of storage, according to the release. In July, Cluster said Lustre would start using Sun's OpenSolaris ZFS disk file system on Lustre servers that run Linux.
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Sun Microsystems on Friday will unveil more of its plans for OpenSolaris, the open-source project for the Solaris operating system.
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Open-source advocates and industry watchers saw benefits to Sun's acquisition of MySQL that could mean greater use of open-source software in enterprise IT and more financial security to MySQL.
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One of the principal products in the LAMP open source arsenal will become a Sun Microsystems product, possibly by the end of this quarter.
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The open-source database company plans to launch a test version of MySQL 5.0 later this month.
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Identity and access managed Sun Microsystems has become the latest infrastructure provider to express its love for smaller software partners in the form of an acquisition.â¦
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Some enterprise database users and industry analysts with whom BetaNews spoke today believe the purchase of open source database producer MySQL by Sun Microsystems could have an across-the-board effect on the entire database market.
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The decision by Sun to buy MySQL for $1 billion could allow Sun to to expand MySQL's reach and give database giant Oracle some new competition.
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Sun described on Wednesday a growth strategy that depends in large part on giving away software in the hope that customers will like it enough to sign up for support contracts and perhaps buy Sun hardware on which to run it.It&#39;s a strategy Sun started several years ago with a free version of its application server and that it has accelerated with such products&#160;as StarOffice, OpenSolaris, its Open xVM virtualization software, and, most recently,&#160;its acquisition of the open-source database vendor MySQL.The free software allows Sun to build communities of developers who will do pilot projects with its software and may eventually buy licenses for commercial deployment, or buy professional services to support critical applications, CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz said at the company&#39;s press day Wednesday. He called Sun&#39;s software a &quot;media asset&quot; for building communities.&quot;These are no longer simply software products, these are media properties -- networks around which communities are being built, [and] this is a means for Sun to talk to a very large developer community,&quot; he said.He put up a slide that showed a map of the world covered in pink dots. Each dot represented a download of Solaris, he said, and hence an opportunity for Sun to start a dialogue with IT people that could lead to a sale of its services and hardware.&quot;Not all customers will pay for these products before they use them -- very few will, actually,&quot; he admitted. But they all buy servers and storage on which to run the software, and the download gives Sun a foot in the door to try to capture that sale.&quot;The reason MySQL was interesting to us is it puts 50,000 new dots on that map every day, and from the community, market opportunities will emerge,&quot; Schwartz said.Sun&#39;s growth is important to customers. Its revenue funds its research and development efforts, and customers want to know there is a big community of specialists in Sun products to support their businesses.Analysts are divided about the strategy. At Sun&#39;s financial analyst conference last week, Sanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said he found it hard to see a link between software downloads and Sun&#39;s revenue growth.&quot;If you were to plot a chart showing revenue growth over the last 12 quarters and Solaris downloads, there would really be no correlation at all,&quot; Sacconaghi said.&quot;Oh, I think there would be an exceptional correlation,&quot; Schwartz replied. &quot;If you had shut those downloads off three years ago, our revenue would have been declining double-digit.&quot;He reiterated the point Wednesday. Sun&#39;s strongest growth period came in the late 1990s and was preceded by wide use of its software in universities, he said. Today, the growth of Sun&#39;s Niagara servers has been driven by making Solaris open source, Schwartz said.Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said there probably is a connection between Sun&#39;s free and open-source software strategy and its revenue growth, but even if there is not, the strategy is helping the company, he said.&quot;Even if you can&#39;t say that each pink dot equals $372, I think the things Sun has been doing with open source and OpenSolaris and Java and so forth have translated into improved relevancy and an improved perception of Sun, and at some level, logic suggests that this played a role in their improved financial picture.&quot;
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Sun Microsystems has signed a deal to acquire SevenSpace, a company whose technology is expected to expand Sun&#39;s remote-management services beyond what&#39;s possible with the computing giant&#39;s own equipment.
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In another acquisition involving companies focused on open source, proponents of the Spring Framework and Apache software have joined forces in a merger being announced Tuesday.SpringSource, developer of the Spring Framework for Java, has acquired Covalent Technologies, which provides services for users of Apache Software Foundation projects. These include the Apache Tomcat and Geronimo application servers and the Apache Axis Web Framework."Putting together the two companies that have the strongest product and services offering around Spring and Tomcat is, we feel, a very natural move," said Rod Johnson, CEO of SpringSource, formerly known as Interface21.An analyst concurred. The SpringSource-Covalent merger serves as "an alliance of two complementary technology [assets]," said analyst Steve O'Grady, of RedMonk.Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. The deal already has been completed and follows by two weeks Sun's acquisition of open-source database vendor MySQL.Through the acquisition, SpringSource plans to offer a single source of products and services to develop and run enterprise applications using the Spring Portfolio and Apache projects. The Spring Portfolio of applications has been downloaded more than 4 million times, according to SpringSource.Covalent, meanwhile, has staff members actively involved in Apache software projects and has a lead developer working on Apache Tomcat, said Mark Brewer, CEO of Covalent. He will become vice president and general manager of SpringSource's Covalent business unit.SpringSource has ambitions to provide a Java alternative to the full, complex J2EE programming model, said analyst Yefim Natis, vice president at Gartner. "SpringSource is taking the best of J2EE," Natis said.SpringSource said enterprises are increasingly opting for Spring, Tomcat, and open source over bloated, complex legacy Java platforms. These legacy platforms include Java servers from such companies as BEA Systems, Oracle, and even open source proponent JBoss, according to Brewer.Covalent, with its Apache bent, offers a simpler, lightweight solution, Brewer said. SpringSource, for its part, has had business relationships with Java application server vendors like BEA and Oracle, Johnson acknowledged. "On the other hand, if you look at the take-up of Tomcat as the platform to run Spring on, as a platform for run enterprise Java applications, there is no question that it is the most popular choice right now," Johnson said. He further noted that enterprises are moving to open source not just because of cost considerations but because these products give customers what they want.The SpringSource-Covalent merger follows Sun's $1 billion acquisition of MySQL and Red Hat's buying of JBoss in 2006 for about $350 million. According to Johnson, there are two courses for open-source companies to follow: Get acquired by a large company like Sun or build an independent business. SpringSource is looking to build critical mass and become a leader in its own right, he said."We don't need to look to a large incumbent as an exit strategy," said Johnson.Offering support services for its various Spring projects, SpringSource cites more than 1,000 paying customers and has focused on the large enterprise market. Included on SpringSource's customer list are nine of the world's largest 10 banks, the company said. Covalent has sold support contracts to more than 3,000 customers and serves more than half of the Fortune 500, SpringSource and Covalent representatives said.
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Code-tastic whispers MySQL and Google have quietly tied up a coding deal seen as an integral part of the open source database firm's software roadmap for the next few years.â¦