Helping Dolphins Fly
We announced big news today - our preliminary results for our fiscal second
quarter, and as importantly, that we're acquiring MySQL AB.
If you're interested in the financial details for the quarter, tune in to our
conference call (see details on sun.com) today - we'll obviously have more to
say as we release our formal results on January 24th.
But the biggest news of the day is... we're putting a billion dollars behind
the M in LAMP. If you're an industry insider, you'll know what that means -
we're acquiring MySQL AB, the company behind MySQL, the world's most popular
open source database.
You'll recall I wrote about a customer event a few weeks ago, at which some of
the world's most important web companies talked to us about their technology
challenges. Simultaneously, we gathered together some of the largest IT shops
and their CIO's, and spent the same two days (in adjoining rooms) listening to
their views and directions.
Both sets of customers confirmed what we've known for years - that MySQL is by
far the most popular platform on which modern developers are creating network
services. From Facebook, Google and Sina.com to banks and telecommunications
companies, architects looking for performance, productivity and innovation have
turned to MySQL. In high schools and college campuses, at startups, at high
performance computing labs and in the Global 2000. The adoption of MySQL across
the globe is nothing short of breathtaking. They are the root stock from which
an enormous portion of the web economy springs.
But as I pointed out, we heard some paradoxical things, too. CTO's at startups
and web companies disallow the usage of products that aren't free and open
source. They need and want access to source code to enable optimization and
rapid problem resolution (although they're happy to pay for support if they see
value). Alternatively, more traditional CIO's disallow the usage of products
that aren't backed by commercial support relationships - they're more
comfortable relying on vendors like Sun to manage global, mission critical
infrastructure.
This puts products like MySQL in an interesting position. They're a part of
every web company's infrastructure, to be sure. And though many of the more
traditional companies use MySQL (from auto companies to financial institutions
to banks and retailers), many have been waiting for a Fortune 500 vendor
willing to step up, to provide mission critical global support.
So what are we announcing today? That in addition to acquiring MySQL, Sun will
be unveiling new global support offerings into the MySQL marketplace. We'll be
investing in both the community, and the marketplace - to accelerate the
industry's phase change away from proprietary technology to the new world of
open web platforms.
The good news is Sun is already committed to the business model at the heart of
MySQL's success - first investing to grow communities of users and developers,
and only then creating commercial services that attract (rather than lock in)
paying customers. Over the past few years, we've distributed hundreds of
millions of licenses and invested to build some of the free software world's
largest communities. From Java to ZFS, Lustre to Glassfish, NetBeans to
OpenOffice.org and OpenSolaris, we've been patient investors and contributors,
both. Free and open software has become a way of life at Sun. MySQL's has
similarly driven extraordinary adoption of their community platform, with more
than 100 million downloads over the past 10 years. Their users, as with Sun's,
run MySQL across every major operating system - Linux, Windows, Solaris and the
Mac; and every major system platform, from IBM, Intel, AMD, Dell, Sun and HP.
Not coincidentally, those companies are exactly the companies with whom Sun
has signed OEM relationships - so the integration of MySQL into Sun's ecosystem
and channels will be exceptionally straightforward.
So how do we plan to go after this new opportunity? In a few fundamental ways.
We've historically worked at arm's length to optimize MySQL on Sun's
platforms. Just as we did for Oracle in their early days, our performance
engineering teams will sit (virtually) with their counterparts in MySQL and in
the community, leveraging technologies such as ZFS and DTrace (which we didn't
even have in the Oracle era) to ensure Sakila flies - along with the rest of
the LAMP stack (from memcached and php, to the broader ISV community around
MySQL). MySQL is already the performance leader on a variety of benchmarks -
we'll make performance leadership the default for every application we can find
(and on every vendor's hardware platforms, not just Sun's - and on Linux,
Solaris, Windows, all). For the technically oriented, Falcon will absolutely
sing on Niagara... talk about a match made in heaven.
Second, I've asked our team to negotiate an arms' length commercial
transaction, prior to closing, that allows us to provide Global Enterprise
Support for MySQL - so that traditional enterprises looking for the same
mission critical support they've come to expect with proprietary databases can
have that peace of mind with MySQL, as well. This gives traditional enterprises
a world of new choices and competition. As I said, if there's one item
customers have been asking from us for years it's more innovation in the
database marketplace - we're now in a position to respond.
Third, we'll be announcing some exceptionally attractive platform offerings,
leveraging the success Lustre and ZFS, along with new systems platforms (like
the new 48TB Thumpers and 64 thread Niagara2 machines) to deliver eye popping
price performance. Ultimately, that's what customers want - real value,
supported globally, with quality and performance. Most importantly, MySQL's
partners are going to be the centerpiece of our solutions and offers - just as
we've done with Solaris and Java, we're going to work very hard to make our
ISV's wildly successful as we broaden the market. It takes decades to build a
broad partner portfolio, and they are an enormous part of the value customers
see in Sun, and we certainly see in MySQL.
And finally, this acquisition will kickstart a new set of investments Sun will
be making into the academic community. Why universities? As we continue to
invest in open source software development across the world, it's apparent that
nearly all roads lead to academic environments - and it's high time we (as an
industry) started watering the trees at their roots. It's one thing to say
you're committed to education, it's another to put your money where your mouth
is. Within the next 60 days, Greg will be announcing a new set of global
research fellowships designed to advance the state of engineering on the
internet. (Stay tuned on this blog, and on Greg's, for updates.)
So why is this important for the internet? Until now, no platform vendor has
assembled all the core elements of a completely open source operating system
for the internet. No company has been able to deliver a comprehensive
alternative to the leading proprietary OS. With this acquisition, we will have
done just that - positioned Sun at the center of the web, as the definitive
provider of high performance platforms for the web economy. For startups and
web 2.0 companies, to government agencies and traditional enterprises. This
creates enormous potential for Sun, for the global free software community, and
for our partners and customers across the globe. There's opportunity
everywhere.
To the folks at MySQL, from employees to customers and partners - welcome, and
we're thrilled to join you. This acquisition spells the beginning of a new era
on the internet.
---------------------------------
Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search._______________________________________________
LUG mailing list
[email protected]
http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug
%LUG is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including
attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way.
---------------------------------------
