Interesting Times

‘May you live in interesting times.’ It may be real a curse from ancient China or merely something invented by an imaginative book editor. Either way, it fits the world of enterprise software. In case you missed it yesterday, approximately nine BILLION in cash and stock went from Oracle and Sun to BEA and MySQL, respectively.

Here at JackBe we love Oracle and Sun. And not just because they give me a couple of gazillion dollar corporate acquisitions to talk about during my guest appearance on Fox Business News last night, but because we’re close partners with both companies and we have over a dozen Oracle/Sun alumni. So it’s no surprise that we follow both companies closely. In my opinion, both acquisitions are biggies for the acquirers, the acquirees, and the enterprise software industry in general.

In case you didn’t know, Sun already has two database products. JavaDB is based on Derby and is all Java. Maybe it’s not an enterprise-grade database but it’s there. And back in 2002, Sun acquired Clustra, a high-performance clustered database. Many of us at Sun at the time thought this was the Oracle competitor but it didn’t seem to go anywhere. So, I bet you’re thinking what I’m thinking: what the hell is Sun going to do with MySQL? Is Sun onto something here? Are they the one to bring some fresh perspective into the database space? Boy, I hope so. This is certainly their chance. Here are a couple of possible outcomes:

1. Sun offers a shrink-wrapped ‘DB-in-a-Box’. For a few million you get a high-performing Sun E25K server optimized and bundled with MySQL.
2. Sun creates the first database on a chip. If anyone can do it, Sun can. They own the hardware and the operating system. It’s right up their alley.
3. (My Favorite) They service-enable MySQL and make it their entry into the Web 2.0 space. Quoting directly from Sun’s press release: “This broad penetration coupled with MySQL's strength in Web 2.0, Software as a Service (SaaS), enterprise, telecom and the OEM embedded market make it an important fit for Sun.’ Sun, if you’re reading this, we’re here to help.

As for Oracle, a quick Google search on the phrase ‘Oracle acquisition’ will confirm what you probably already know: Oracle has done a lot of acquiring and BEA isn’t likely to be the last one. So, ho-hum, another part of the enterprise-solution pie is now owned by Oracle. Interestingly, in one odd way the Oracle acquisition parallels the Sun acquisition: Oracle will now have 4 distinct portal solutions (Oracle Portal, Oracle Webcenter, BEA WebLogic Portal, and the Plumtree products that are now under BEA AquaLogic brand). The Oracle Fusion and BEA AquaLogic feature sets also have a great deal of overlap. It kinda makes Oracle the 800-pound gorilla of portals and SOA.

Are you a Portal/Fusion/WebLogic/AquaLogic user who is now a little concerned about the future? This screams for consolidation of the portal and SOA product lines. And as we’ve written in the recent past, this becomes yet another Oracle-owned property that has only marginal tangible integration to other Oracle products for the immediate future. Sure, Fusion will fix it all but that’s not a journey that will be completed anytime soon. Oracle, if you’re reading this, we’re here to help.

Finally, here’s a result of these acquisitions that hasn’t gotten as much attention as it should: Sun and Oracle become real software competitors. MySQL has nibbled a $50M hole in Oracle’s database pie already. And once you remember that Sun sells a lot of hardware that runs Oracle databases (especially the big boxes that sell for up to $4M), you’ve got to wonder how these moves might impact the lucrative Sun-Oracle server-database relationship. On the portal front, Oracle’s portal domination could also impact Sun’s portal, Sun Java System Portal Server. Do you turn to a low-cost Sun alternative to avoid the confusion of the Oracle portals? Perhaps it’s too soon to tell.

Interesting times indeed. And it’s only January 17. It’s shaping up to be quite a year!

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Oracle-sized Mashups

I spent last week at Oracle OpenWorld with Larry Ellison and 43,000 of his closest friends. At the event JackBe announced support for Oracle Fusion Middleware, most notably Oracle Portal and Webcenter. Our announcement was based upon our newest mashup innovation: a powerful connection between mashups and portals in the form of a WSRP-compliant 'mashlet' connecting to our mashup API and using a portal-friendly single-signon paradigm via an LDAP authentication server. (We've got videos demonstrating this on JackBe TV and we'll be demonstrating it live on our November 29th webcast, 'Mashing the Corporate Portal'). As we've talked about many times in the past, mashups don't live alone. Mashups let the users bring together disparate information sources, even ones from the same vendor. And then send it places like RIAs, SOAs, and in this case, into portals via mashlets.

It was the 30th anniversary of Oracle and in case you missed the first 3 decades, it's an impressive growth story that ends with a whopping 300,000 customers. So it shouldn't be a surprise that OpenWorld is a monstrous show (the pictures don't really do it justice). More importantly, OpenWorld is also one of those events that can quickly remind you of how important software is to the daily workings of businesses of every kind. Take a peek at their product list and you'll see Oracle has products that store data, report on data, share data, move data, integrate data, transform data, and more. And at least 30 of these are from recent acquisitions.

Interestingly, it's that broad and ever-growing range of products that can be problematic to even dedicated Oracle customers. I spoke with all sorts of organizations both public and private: government agencies, system integrators, data processors, pharmaceutical companies, and even a bread maker. Every one had Oracle somewhere in their organization and most of them had it in many places. And I heard the same issue time and again, even in organizations dedicated 100% to Oracle: 'data from here, data over there, data to here, data to there, and no solution except formal integration or migration efforts'.

Sure, Oracle has its award-winning Fusion Middleware SOA-driven tools to integrate these sources. And Oracle already has a roadmap that ultimately merges/migrates its acquired customers into the Oracle fold. But what does an organization do while its waiting for the Fusion-driven SOA effort to reach critical mass before users can get the answers they need? Just wait? And should we tell this same organization to wait for the ERP migration to be completed before it tries to launch new information-driven initiatives? Of course not. As the kissin' cousin of databases and applications and the next door neighbor of SOAs and portals, mashups are the nimble-and-quick complement to these larger efforts. Mash and publish, growth and innovation continues.

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