Global CIO Top 10 Stories: Oracle Buys Sun For Systems Push

"Very large SMP machines like the Sparc Solaris M9000 which we will continue to enhance. . . . We'll not only be focused on SMP machines, which have been around for some time though we think Sun's SMP machines are best in class, but we're also gonna be building clusters of industry-standard machines and Sparc machines. And those clusters are now called private clouds—that's the more-fashionable term for clusters—and we're using our software, our operating system—both Solaris and Oracle Linux—and our virtualization—the ability to dynamically allocate and reallocate resources, which is essential for cloud computing—as well as integrated networking and integrated storage to deliver a complete private cloud to our customers.

"So customers will be able to buy high-end SMP machines that are high-performance and high-value, or a high-end private cloud, with all of the pieces including processing, storage, and networking integrated together with Oracle-slash-Sun software. We think that will heavily differentiate our offerings from the offerings of IBM, HP and Dell, and we think we're gonna be able to compete very effectively there and that will deliver high margins and allow us to deliver that $1.5 billion additional profit in our first full year of owning Sun."

While you can find more than a dozen closely related analyses of the Oracle-Sun impact below, let me share one more overview from Ellison that underscores how dramatically the deal changed not only Oracle but the thinking among other big-time players about what they'd need to do to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing market.

This is from a January 26 column called Global CIO: Larry Ellison's Top 10 Reasons For Buying Sun, and while I've offered the short list below, you can get the full analysis at the link above:

10) Lots of customers seem very excited and optimistic about the deal's potential.

9) Sun will contribute an additional $1.5 billion in non-GAAP operating income in the first full year after the integration.

8) To rattle the tech industry and force a series of changes based on Ellison's own terms.

7) Ellison wants to save or revive or restore Sun's reputation and capabilities.

6) Ellison loves Sun's technology—ALL of it.

5) Ellison wants to push Oracle/Sun into growth markets and recast its entire image.

4) The Exadata experience.

3) Ellison's stealth endorsement of the—sshhhh!!—"cloud computing" business.

2) Ellison's passionate obsession with IBM. (Sneak peek: "We've already beaten IBM in software—on modern systems. And now, if everyone will let us, we'd like to see if we can beat IBM in hardware, or systems.")

1) It's an expression of Ellison's deepest nature: an intense competitor seeking his limits.

In framing out the Top 10 stories for this list, I almost made this acquisition the #1 story of the year. But whatever its ranking, the Oracle-Sun deal continues to have profound impacts on products IT vendors make and the solutions CIOs are deploying.

RECOMMENDED READING: Global CIO: Oracle-Sun A Bad Deal? Only A Fool Would Say That Global CIO: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison On The Future Of IT Global CIO: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's Top 10 Reasons For Buying Sun Global CIO: Oracle Needs More Than Ellison's Talk To Beat IBM's Systems Global CIO: Oracle's Larry Ellison Declares War On IBM And SAP Global CIO: Oracle's Larry Ellison Embraces Cloud Computing's 'Idiocy' Global CIO: Larry Ellison's IBM-Slayer Is Oracle Exadata Machine Global CIO: Larry Ellison's Hardware Boasts Are Nonsense, Says IBM Global CIO: Oracle Reveals Strategy And Customers For White-Hot Exadata Global CIO: Larry Ellison And The New Oracle Rock The Tech World Global CIO: Oracle's Fowler Says Systems Performance About To Explode Global CIO: Larry Ellison's Top 10 Priorities At Oracle Open World Global CIO: Larry Ellison Swaps Cloud Rants For Cloud Love With Exalogic Global CIO: Larry Ellison's Acquisition List: Who's #1? Global CIO: Larry Ellison And IBM Lead Surge In Optimized Systems Global CIO: Larry Ellison Is Rewriting The Gold Rule Of IT Strategy Bob Evans is senior VP and director of InformationWeek's Global CIO unit.

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