Earlier today Oracle executives, in an event spanning more than four hours, presented their strategy for integrating Sun's assets with Oracle. I'll just update readers on the section related to Sun's open source assets.
The GlassFish application server will be repositioned to address departmental needs, while the strategic Oracle WebLogic Server product will remain targeted at enterprise customers requiring performance and scalability. Longtime readers will recognize this strategy as one we've been using in the application server market with WebSphere Application Server Community Edition and WebSphere Application Server. It's a smart move on Oracle's part -- as we've found and as MySQL and Oracle DB usage shows, customers have different middleware needs for different projects.
[ InfoWorld's Paul Krill offers more analysis of Oracle's intentions for Sun in "Oracle's ambitious plans for integrating Sun's technology" | Relive the rise and fall of Sun Microsystems in InfoWorld's slideshow. ]
MySQL will continue to receive investment and be managed within the separate open source division at Sun, but it will have a separate sales force. Hopefully this is temporary and MySQL will be managed and sold by the Fusion Middleware division in the near future.
Recall that that GlassFish and WebLogic Server, which compete on paper but address different use cases, will be sold by the same sales force. More specifically, GlassFish will be sold by the sales team responsible for Oracle's strategic Fusion Middleware suite, yet Oracle has decided to put MySQL and Oracle DB into separate divisions and assign a separate sales team to MySQL.
OpenOffice will continue to receive investment and be managed within a separate business unit. There will be a focus on integrating OpenOffice with business intelligence and content management offerings.
Oracle announced that it provides Linux and Linux support to more than 4,000 customers. The company expects to accelerate Sun's Solaris efforts, but target its investment to drive Solaris further into mission-critical workloads, while focusing less on x86 or the SMB market. While Oracle didn't say this specifically, one has to wonder if Oracle's Solaris investments will regulate Linux to something less than "mission critical" workloads, at least alongside Oracle DB.
