Oracle + Java = Harmony
Everyone in Silicon Valley is talking about it. Some are more excited than others. However, this is not a shock or surprise to anyone. Sooner or the later this has to happen. Oracle has been a very strong player in middle-ware with its acquisition marathon, it built a “near to complete” business vertical empire. Oracle has a complete stack of the enterprise software and is a real “Information Company”.
With Oracle agreeing to buy Sun, there are plethora of possibilities for synergy. Many view Oracle as an enterprise software company and till now all the databases and products are tuned to number of servers such as Sun Solaris, Linux, HP and Windows. With this acquisition, there would be greater and tighter integration along with performance tuning for the Oracle products on Solaris OS + Sun hardware. This will also launch Oracle in the hardware race with the IBM and HP. Oh ya… Cisco has just started, but now Oracle is already in it (with this acquisition).
Oracle now will be able to steer the JCP along with IBM and other major players. Java would see a major boost and a new direction with focus on the Enterprise Software. I am especially interested to see if there would be more developments (and innovation) in JVM and other languages based on it such as JRuby, Scala, etc…
Sun has been very keen in technology innovation and the result is a full stack of Web Services, JVM, JRE, GlassFish, JavaFX and last but not the least NetBeans. Of course Sun is one company that entered into the IDE market in the earlier stages but could not make a great IDE out of NetBeans when compared to Eclipse. Along with JDeveloper, Oracle contributed great plugins to Eclipse and has been a long term supporter of Eclipse. This is one area, i am curious to see what would happen to 3 IDEs (JDeveloper, Eclipse, NetBeans).
The next big thing Oracle will definitely gain in my perspective is Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing is relatively new and has a great potential to be the next wave in the Infrastructure + Software + Internet technology. With the stack of its enterprise products and cloud computing Oracle and Sun could both have a great synergy in this area.
Not sure what would happen to MySQL database. This is a free, open source database also available in Enterprise flavor. The good thing about the MySQL is that is has a small eco system fo developers and tool vendors. Unlike Oracle, MySQL is targeted to wards small/medium scale applications and enterprises.
Finally, Oracle acquiring Sun is definitely good for struggling Sun. Oracle is very good at the business and it has a very good sales team. This, combined with the Sun’s technology would be a good news for the customers. It is too early to predict what would happen to the other technologies at Sun. But, customers are sure going to benefit from this acquisition.
Disclaimer : This is my personal opinion ONLY. None of these ideas or statements correspond, reflect or transform to any of my current or previous employers.
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(Note: Opinions expressed in this article and its replies are the opinions of their respective authors and not those of DZone, Inc.)
Comments
Marko Ciric replied on Tue, 2009/04/21 - 2:55am
Christophe Hanon replied on Tue, 2009/04/21 - 3:10am
John Denver replied on Tue, 2009/04/21 - 3:17am
I was optimistic about the Oracle-Sun deal early this morning but after reading the article by Stephen Colebourne at http://www.jroller.com/scolebourne/entry/no_java_se_7_the1 I changed my mind.
It does not look good for Java and JVM and all the projects that depend of it as Scala, Jython, Jruby so on.
Java could become closed and propetary again with a new Java trap. It is scary but it is possible.
Sigh ... maybe Oracle will just give us a community edition of the JVM with out performance and less features. Oracle only care to make money. I dont have a damn clue how they will drive the JCP or maybe they will distroye it for continue to block Harmony and IBM.
Now that Im thinking twice I think it was better the IBM deal they are more for OpenSource, Yeah maybe they could distroy MySQL and Netbeans and Glassfish but not Java and we here in Javalobby care more about Java and the JVM.
I wish Java was an ECMA/ISO as C#. Maybe Java will be as propetary as it is .Net. Or why Google didnt buy Sun, I thinki Google could be a better host for Java and the JCP.
Long live Free Java!.
John Denver replied on Tue, 2009/04/21 - 3:24am
Jeroen Wenting replied on Tue, 2009/04/21 - 3:35am
IBM and Google would be far worse for the Java community than Oracle. Were IBM to gain control that would be the end of Java as a standalone platform (it'd be no more than a fixed part of the Websphere stack), were Google to take control Java would turn into just another datamining tool for them. We'd end up with JVMs that send everything you do to Google with no way to turn it off. That's Google's entire business model.
And leaving Java to flap out in the wind would be the end of it, would lead to a constant stream of idiots putting in their favourite pet "features" or "fixing" things they think are broken because they don't have a clue.
Jess Holle replied on Tue, 2009/04/21 - 6:39am
I cannot believe how taken in folk are with IBM's open source marketing.
Apart from Eclipse, which serves as a loss-leader for the commoditized portion of the IDE and some small chunks from Alphaworks, IBM has open sourced precious little. All of their products are still closed in every sense (it would be nice to see WebSphere's source code when wondering what the blazes it is doing to your app!). Further, rather than jumping to OpenJDK and GPL'ing their JVM they're jumping to Harmony simply so they don't have to open their JVM.
Even with Eclipse, IBM (and other Eclipse backing corporations) do their best not to open up the good stuff -- note how long it took to have J2EE and web application tools on Eclipse for free. Eclipse is the bait for their higher end offereings.
IBM's openness is mostly marketeering.
James Selvakumar replied on Tue, 2009/04/21 - 10:35am
I second Jesse's comments. I think Oracle is a much better option than IBM. What significant contribution has IBM done to open source movement apart from Eclipse and a few articles in developerworks? Same way, Oracle too has not contributed significantly towards open source. Why blame Oracle alone? Atleast Oracle open sourced/donated some parts of Toplink ORM, ADF faces, JDeveloper. And Oracle is part of the Eclipse ecosystem as well.
I hope Oracle would drop JDeveloper in favour of NetBeans. This will immediately give Oracle a very good impression among millions of NetBeans lovers. And NetBeans can serve as a great platform to build Oracle's enterprise tools.
It would be really sad if Oracle doesn't bother much about Glassfish. Glassfish is a fantastic product and has garnered excellent reputation as a solid open source application server pushing JBoss behind. But if Oracle decides to drop Glassfish support, I would go back to JBoss.
In case of MySQL, I don't see any issues at all. MySQL is the most popular and most widely deployed database in the world and Oracle will benefit greatly if it continues to promote it as the choice for small to medium businesses.
As Larry has pointed out, Solaris and Java are the most valuable assets in Sun. So they should not have problem in this acquistion.
Dominique De Vito replied on Tue, 2009/04/21 - 11:27am
* NetBeans : I hope NetBeans is still going to flourish while existing community is big enough while JDeveloper mindshare is very little.
I imagine the following happy situation: JDeveloper+NetBeans to merge (all IDEs are Swing-based), while NetBeans being the company-neutral stub and JDeveloper being proposed as NetBeans+Oracle stuff (like Oracle ADF - Oracle Application Development Framework).
It's doable.
* Glassfish : Larry may be keen to keep Glassfish for the following reasons
- Oracle may keep Glassfish to fight RedHat/JBoss.
- as part of the JEE JSR expert group, Oracle still have to release a RI.
- Glassfish v3 is going to be modular,
- WebLogic and Glassfish already share some parts, like WS stack
Well, Glassfish clustering is documented, but AFAIK, not fully open sourced. Oracle may be keen to continue to release Glassfish under OSS, but without clustering, in order to protect WebLogic mindshare.
It would be better than nothing.
Jeroen Wenting replied on Tue, 2009/04/21 - 1:02pm
Johan Compagner replied on Tue, 2009/04/21 - 1:58pm
in response to: jessh
Mike P(Okidoky) replied on Tue, 2009/04/21 - 2:24pm
I'd like to see a (some) statement(s) from Oracle ensuring the community that they can rely on Java to remain open, free, and as progressive as it has been.
Oracle needs to earn our trust. Failing to do that will lead to alternative languages and systems taking on new levels that *will* compete with Java on their turf, which right now, they pretty much are not.