Oracle News Desk

It’s Payback Time for Oracle & Sun

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:45:00 EST

It’s not just that Oracle has posed MySQL as a competitor to Microsoft’s SQL Server rather than its own database. It’s also payback time for Oracle and Sun pushing the Justice Department to bring the antitrust suit against Microsoft that opened the floodgates to Microsoft being heaped with lèse majesté abuse ever since. There would never have been a DOJ suit without their lobbying efforts. It’s also payback time for Sun’s complaint to the EC about the scarcity of Windows interoperability information that eventually led to an expanded EC probe of Microsoft, its first statement of objections against the company and the first whopping great fine Microsoft had to pay.

Virtualization Expo Call for Papers Deadline December 15

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:00:00 EST

Delegates will leave Virtualization Expo with a full understanding of the interaction between virtual servers and the rest of the data center infrastructure. Indeed our overall aim is to ensure that all attendees leave the Jacob Javits Convention Center with abundant resources, ideas and examples they can apply immediately to leveraging Virtualization in their own corporate datacenter, on the desktop, and elsewhere. If you wish to submit a speaking proposal for the 8th Virtualization Expo, April 19–21, 2010, then you can do so right here

Cloud Expo New York Call for Papers Deadline December 15

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:45:00 EST

Cloud computing is a game changer. The cloud is disrupting traditional software and hardware business models by disrupting how IT service gets delivered. Entrepreneurial opportunities abound as this classic disruptive technology begins to proliferate, so it is no surprise that SYS-CON's industry-leading International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is going from strength to strength.

Oracle Spooks Slice of MySQL Market: 451 Poll

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:30:00 EST

Oracle’s ownership of MySQL could run off some open source and MySQL users according to a poll the 451 Group took among its CAOS user community, CAOS standing for Commercial Adoption of Open Source. There were 347 respondents, the researcher says, and from their answers it calculates that the use of MySQL will drop from 82.1% to 78.7% in 2011 and 72.3% 2014.

StorageIO Debuts at Top 400 Analyst List

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST

Following on the heals of being named one of three EcoTech warriors earlier in the year, and then number 5 in the top ten independent bloggers at StorageMonkeys earlier this year (plus appearing on InfoSmack), the momentum continues more recently being named as the 23rd out of the top 30 influential virtualization bloggers by Cloud Computing Expo (www.cloudcomputingexpo.com) and Ulitzer (www.ulitzer.com). If that were not enough, I was also surprised to learn recently that I have also made a debut appearance at number 79 in the Technobabble top 400 analyst and independent blogger lists as well.

Oracle Says ‘No Compromise’ on MySQL: Reuters

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:30:00 EST

Oracle has told Reuters that the New York Post story Friday claiming it had offered the European Commission a deal on MySQL is a bunch of baloney. The Post, quoting two unidentified sources, said Oracle proposed to “quarantine” MySQL inside a combined Oracle-Sun to get the European Commission to approve its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun ahead of a hearing in Brussels Thursday.

Sun Fields Cloud Desktop for K-12

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:45:00 EST

Despite its uncertain fate Sun soldiers on. Monday it trotted out a cloud-based multiplatform desktop as a service for K-12 and community colleges that can run Windows, the Mac OS, Linux and Solaris applications to nearly any client device, including its own Sun Ray thin clients. Sun claims it’s the industry’s first full-function, cloud-based desktop as a service. It runs on Sun’s Open Cloud Platform. Its subscription pricing can run as little as $1 a day per concurrent user. Ashbourne Technology Group is apparently taking it to market.

Oracle Offers the EC a Deal: NY Post

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

Oracle has offered to cordon off MySQL inside a combined Oracle-Sun to get the European Commission to approve its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun ahead of a hearing set for next Thursday, according to the New York Post. The paper, quoting two unidentified sources, describes the vague Oracle proposal as a “separate entity” that would put a “firewall” between MySQL and the rest of Oracle and says it could involve a separate board.

Server Sales Stop Slip Sliding Away – Except at Sun

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:15:00 EST

Gartner thinks the server business has stopped sliding into the abyss. Third-quarter sales weren’t as bad as second-quarter sales – well, for most everybody except Sun that is. The numbers give Oracle, Sun’s prospective buyer, another data point it can try to rub the European Commission’s nose in to express its outrage that the acquisition has been held up over MySQL.

Oracle Tries Caesar’s Divide & Conquer Tactic

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST

Oracle seems to have divided the open source ranks over the MySQL delay it’s having closing its acquisition of Sun. Eben Moglin, the GPL’s most ardent defender and delineator, the lawyer who has worked hand in glove for years with the Free Software Foundation’s founder Richard Stallman and who largely wrote the GPL, has reportedly told the EC its analysis of the MySQL market is flawed, a position that is contrary to what Stallman has told the EC.

Oracle + Sun by Spring?

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:45:00 EST

We hear – well, you know how people talk – that Oracle has been quietly meeting with the European Commission and is now expecting it to take – what with the Christmas break and all – until April or May to get clearance for its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. That would be a year to 13 months after Oracle agreed to buy the joint.

IBM Could "Reinvent" Java: Mills

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:30:00 EST

Interarbor Solution principal analyst Dana Gardner had a drink with IBM Software chief Steve Mills last week. He said Mills thinks that the Oracle-Sun deal will go through but that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is buying Sun because he doesn’t “understand the hardware business” and won’t get his money’s worth at the $9.50 a share Oracle is proposing to pay for it. Well, what else is Mills going to say; IBM supposedly walked on the deal.

Insider Trading’s Poster Boy Seeks To Suppress Wire Taps

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:45:00 EST

Lawyers for Raj Rajaratnam, the alleged billionaire kingpin behind the insider trading scandal that brought down ex-AMD CEO and Globalfoundries chairman Hector Ruiz and IBM server chief Robert Moffat, filed papers with the US District Court in New York Tuesday denying that he got insider information or that he traded AMD, IBM, Sun and Intel stock among others based on it.

Brocade Claims It’s Not For Sale

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:45:00 EST

Brocade CEO Michael Klayko said Monday that the company’s not being shopped, labeling a widely quoted story some weeks back in the Wall Street Journal claiming it was and that Oracle and HP were interested “just false.” Oracle immediately denied any interest and HP just bought 3Com. Klayko means to grow Brocade through partnerships. Brocade’s remarks were made when it posted its latest results. Sales in the October quarter were up 31% to $522 million but profits slipped a couple of million.

US Senate Pushes EC on Oracle-Sun Merger

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:30:00 EST

The United States Senate waded into the Oracle-Sun imbroglio Tuesday. Fifty-nine senators from both sides of the aisle led by one-time presidential hopeful John Kerry (D-Mass) and perennial presidential pretender Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) signed a letter to the European Commission asking it to wrap up its investigation of the Oracle-Sun merger as soon as possible pleading Sun's precarious financial position and its inability to continue to employ thousands of people endlessly under current conditions. The senators - there are only a hundred of them - tried reasoning proportion with the EC saying, "It is our understanding the Commission is concerned about competition in the database software market. However, we have been informed by Sun Microsystems that their subsidiary, which competes in this specific market, generates only €17 million in revenue and that the same market has competitors with capitalizations of tens of billions of Euros."

Sun Releases New Update for Solaris 10 Operating System

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:00:00 EST

Solaris 10 10/09 provides new features, fixes and hardware support in an easy-to-install manner, preserving full compatibility with over 11,000 third-party products and customer applications, including Oracle database and application software. With over two decades of Sun/Oracle collaboration, there are more Oracle database deployments on the SPARC/Solaris combination than any other OS and Sun is leading the way to bring high-performance solutions for the entire range of Oracle products. Solaris 10 10/09 also leverages the innovation and contributions of the OpenSolaris(TM) community, including investments by third-party companies such as Intel and AMD, to add more capabilities to Solaris 10's award-winning portfolio of enterprise features. This release also builds on Solaris' proven track record as a highly secure deployment platform, including enterprise-grade security features such as Solaris Trusted Extensions, and support for the built-in cryptographic acceleration features of Sun's UltraSPARC(R) CMT processors.

The Next Sea Change Is Cloud Computing

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:30:00 EST

I've been at this 35 years and I've seen sea changes come and go. If you step back for a moment and look from a broad perspective, we've lived through the mainframeclient/server world and the Internet world. And now, the next sea change is cloud computing. The reality is that visionaries talk about sea changes before things change at the enterprise or SMB level. The way we look at the cloud is there's potential for sea change there, centralizing the capacity to lower costs and improved efficiencies. Yes, there will be change there. Is it going to happen overnight; that today we're in a world of data center solutions and tomorrow we're in the cloud? It's not going to work that way.

SAP & Microsoft Cut Anti-Oracle Pact

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:45:00 EST

Striking while Oracle is at sixes and sevens over Sun, SAP and Microsoft, two of its worst enemies, have cut an anti-Oracle accord. Microsoft will recommend SAP’s BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application to its customers as its preferred solution, which should irritate Oracle as well as help SAP tickle its flagging sales.

Oracle Solutions Expo Online

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST

Are you facing critical business and IT challenges? Do you have pressing deadlines to meet these challenges? Do you need solution ideas FAST?

IBM Sitting Pretty on Oracle-Sun Debacle

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:30:00 EST

It's my contention that we're only now entering the true data-driven decade. And all that data needs to run somewhere. And it's not going to be in MySQL, no matter who ends up owning it.

iWay Cloud Ships for Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:45:00 EST

iWay Software, an Information Builders company, today announced its robust, enterprise integration solutions are now available on-demand with the release of iWay Cloud Services for Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2). iWay Software's on-demand solution dramatically reduces administrative costs, and does not require users to purchase, deploy or test expensive hardware, meaning companies of all sizes now have simplified, affordable access to the enterprise integration and data access solutions they need to support a variety of critical initiatives.

AppZero Founder Launches Virtual Application Appliances Topic on Ulitzer

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:00:00 EST

Greg O'Connor has over 25 years of management and technical experience in the computer industry. Greg was founder and president of Sonic Software, acquired in 2005 by Progress Software (PRGS). There he grew the company from concept to over $40 million in revenue. At Sonic, he evangelized and created the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) product category, which is generally accepted today as the foundation for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Follow him on Twitter @gregoryjoconnor. Virtual Application Appliances (VAA) decouple an application from the operating system (OS) and its underlying infrastructure. The resultant virtual application appliance contains an application with its dependencies, but with zero operating system (zeOS) component. The aim of VAAs is to enable enterprises to provision server based applications to any machine in the data center in a matter of seconds or move an application from the data center to the cloud (D2C).

Oracle CRM On Demand Users Can Now Increase Productivity

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST

Kadient, the experts in sales enablement, today announced that sales teams who use Oracle CRM On Demand can now benefit from Kadient's embedded Sales Playbooks. Kadient now fully integrates with the popular CRM platform, enabling salespeople who use Oracle to have access to situation-specific sales playbooks that provide the content, coaching and tools proven to move deals through the pipeline.

MySQL + Novell??

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST

MySQL co-developer Monty Widenius, said to have the business sense of a child by MySQL’s old management, and his hired help Florian Mueller, who made a killing on his MySQL stock when Sun lost its mind and bid a billion dollars for the Scandinavian company, paying 20 times revenues, are now insisting that Oracle should be made to divest MySQL so it can take over a fading Sun.

Oracle Upgrades its Open Source Database

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:15:00 EST

Berkeley DB Java Edition is a transactional storage engine for key-value pairs written entirely in Java that can be deployed as an embedded or so-called edge database, so developers can build applications that don’t need any manual administration. It now includes new replication features for high availability and scalability and performance improvements for highly concurrent applications.

View Slide Deck to Oracle's Keynote at 4th Cloud Expo

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST

The reality is that technology CEOs - least of all flamboyant ones - aren't in the trenches getting things to work for customers, and Wang's nuts-and-bolts presentation was meant to re-assure anyone who was listening that the company will support all types of cloud initiatives. Meanwhile, Ellison updated his remarks a bit at the company's recent OracleWorld in San Francisco, discussing Fusion and how having a single cloud provider (such as Oracle) has its advantages.

EC-Oracle Standoff Degenerates to Name Calling

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST

The European Commission Tuesday responded in kind to Oracle’s contention that its decision to potentially block Oracle’s $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun because of MySQL – whose revenues are barely a rounding error in Oracle’s books – shows “a profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics.” The EC dismissed Oracle’s argument that “MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source” as “facile and superficial.”

Statement of Oracle Corporation

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST

Oracle's acquisition of Sun is essential for competition in the high end server market, for revitalizing Sparc and Solaris and for strengthening the Java development platform. The transaction does not threaten to reduce competition in the slightest, including in the database market. The Commission's Statement of Objections reveals a profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics. It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source.

EC Objects to Oracle-Sun; Oracle Vows To Fight

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:30:00 EST

The European Commission Monday served Oracle and Sun with a statement of objections (SO) that takes exception to their $7.4 billion combination. Sun immediately told the SEC that "The Statement of Objections sets out the Commission's preliminary assessment regarding, and is limited to, the combination of Sun's open source MySQL database product with Oracle's enterprise database products and its potential negative effects on competition in the market for database products."

Sun Revenues Drop 25%

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST

Poor beaten-up Sun Microsystems confided the financial results of its September quarter to the SEC on Friday and they weren’t pretty. Sun was supposed to be part of Oracle by now and not washing its linen in public anymore but the European Commission hasn’t sanctioned the union, and isn’t expected to now unless Oracle does something about Sun property MySQL. What the EC wants exactly isn’t clear.

Cloud Expo and The End of Tech Recession

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:15:00 EST

Cloud Expo is the new PC Expo, Comdex or InternetWorld, and will be the next global IT event for the decade starting with 2010. This year's West Coast conference had 1,700 pre-registered delegates on the Friday before the conference opened. More than 500 additional registrations came in over the weekend and on-site registrations, which brought the number of delegates who registered and attended for the conference to roughly 2,250, more than double a year ago. As far as the expo floor goes, out of 50 sponsors and exhibitors, 46 companies confirmed during the conference that they will participate in the 2010 Cloud Computing Expo at the same or higher level. Most exhibitors on the expo floor highlighted the quality of the leads they got from the conference, which is due to the fact that we had no free expo option on the registration page. I personally believe Cloud Computing Expo had the most qualified audience of any technology event in recent years.

New Value in the Computing System Industry

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST

Cisco's foray into the server market, the merger between Oracle and Sun Microsystem, the acquisition of Fujitsu Siemens Computers by Fujitsu, and the acquisition of Silicon Graphics International by Rackable Systems have stirred the equilibrium in the worldwide computer system industry in 2009. The industry is expected to see more companies engage in horizontal and vertical cooperation. Looking ahead to 2010, as the effects of the global financial crisis continue to be felt, the industry is expected to face changes within the next two to five years resulting from Moore's Law, virtualization, and cloud computing. The computing centralization effect stemming from cloud computing will intensify the competition in the green data center segment. Virtualization, energy-saving, and cloud computing are to lead to more acquisitions and mergers in future.

EC to Object to Oracle + Sun: FT

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:45:00 EST

The European Commission is about to object formally to Oracle’s multibillion-dollar acquisition of Sun because Oracle is hanging tough and refusing to make any concessions concerning the open source database MySQL, a potential Oracle rival as the EC sees it, according to the Financial Times. The paper says a statement of objection (SO) could be issued in the next few days unless one side or the other blinks.

Oracle VP Maps Oracle's Cloud Computing During Cloud Expo Keynote

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

"We've been fairly quiet," said Rex Wang, VP of Infrastructure and Management at Oracle, this morning as he gave the Morning Keynote at the third and last day of the 4th Cloud Computing International Conference Expo at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Wang was referring to Oracle's relative silence to date vis-a-vis Cloud Computing. His intention, he said, was to share with the assembled delegates Oracle's thoughts on the space...

4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo Starts Today

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:10:00 EST

A round-up of the wide range of important issues and timely topics due to be discussed by over 130 industry experts at SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, opening today at the Santa Clara Convention Center, November 2-4, 2009. From Building Scalable and Extensible RIAs in the Cloud to Yahoo! Cloud @ Internet Scale.

Layered Technologies Ranked 60th Fastest Growing Company in North America

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:15:00 EDT

Each year, Deloitte compiles a prestigious list of technology companies pushing the limits of innovation, and this year global Web hosting provider Layered Technologies ranked 60th on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, achieving a position in the top 12 percent for its impressive growth and proprietary technology. Layered Tech earned a position ahead of Internet heavy-hitters Google and GoDaddy and credits its double-digit growth to investing in customized offerings to best meet customers’ infrastructure needs. One such investment was Astro, its ground-breaking proprietary technology, which dramatically accelerates the availability and provisioning of servers for customers and channel partners alike.

Oracle+MySQL Opponents Take to the Barricades

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:45:00 EDT

Monty Widenius, the creator of the MySQL open source database – which is apparently all that stands between Oracle and its acquisition of Sun – thinks that Oracle shouldn’t have his baby and that the European Commission – whose investigation into MySQL has put the Oracle-Sun merger in limbo – should force Oracle to spit it out to another company.

F5 Networks Enhances Its Portfolio with Oracle Solutions

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:30:00 EDT

F5 Networks has announced that it has completed validated integration testing of its BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and WebAccelerator products with Oracle applications, through the Oracle PartnerNetwork Application Integration Architecture for Partners (AIAP) initiative. F5 achieved Oracle Validated Integration for BIG-IP LTM and WebAccelerator with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.0, Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0, and Oracle’s Siebel CRM 8.0. By choosing Oracle Validated Integration solutions, customers can be confident that these F5/Oracle product integrations: have been tested and validated as functionally and technically sound; are integrated with Oracle Applications in a reliable, standards-based way; and that the integrations operate and perform as documented.

The Cloud Has Cross-Border Ambitions

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:45:00 EDT

There is now a thing called EuroCloud, for the moment a French-based SaaS and cloud community whose 70-odd members include IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.com, France Telecom and SAP and whose 30 supporters include Amazon. The object of the name is to share best practices and expand their business across the continent.

Oracle & Cloud Computing: Exclusive Q&A with SVP Richard Sarwal

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:15:00 EDT

"We believe that cloud is an important trend that we will support. We have two objectives. The first is to ensure that cloud computing is fully enterprise grade, meaning high performance, scalability, reliability, availability, security and standards-based for portability and interoperability. Second, we will support both public and private cloud computing in order to give customers choice," says Richard Sarwal, SVP Product Development for Oracle Enterprise Manager - and upcoming Keynote Speaker at SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Expo - in this Exclusive Q&A with Cloud Computing Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan.