Sun Acquires MySQL: Impact on the CIO?
From its place in the LAMP stack to being the platform of choice for the vast majority of Web 2.0 companies, the acquisition of MySQL means it's time for CIOs not using MySQL or Sun to review their vendor choices for a consolidated offering.
Wed, January 16, 2008
CIO — Sun Microsystems announced today that it will acquire MySQL in a $1 billion deal. Ending speculation that MySQL would be a candidate for an IPO this year, the MySQL team has instead accepted $800 million in cash and $200 million in options. MySQL CEO Marten Mikos will join Sun's executive team and the company he heads will be folded into Sun's operations when the transaction concludes in the third or fourth quarter. This is a fairly big deal—not because of the dollars involved, but because of the pairing of the two companies.
As the two companies merge operations, there will be some morphing and changes as the dust settles; at the moment, no one seems able to cite a clear downside to this development. Expect to see new or modified offerings or bundles, but none of this is likely to be earth shattering.
MySQL is one of the leading database management systems, earning a spot in the common LAMP acronym—representing the platform stack of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (or Perl, to some).
As Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz put it in his blog this morning, "[W]e're putting a billion dollars behind the M in LAMP." LAMP is the platform of choice for the vast majority of Web 2.0 companies, so the impact will be broadly felt.
In addition, Sun's strength in the enterprise arena and an expressed commitment to optimize the LAMP stack to run on a variety of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows and its own OpenSolaris OS, means an expanded inroad for MySQL into the $15 billion database market. CIOs who have shied away from MySQL in the past may be inclined to take a second look. For those keeping score, a company like Sun standing behind MySQL allays many of the concerns some IT Managers may have had with deploying MySQL.
For its part, Sun was lacking a database management system in its offering of hardware, operating systems, software and services. The omission was likely to have become a greater hindrance as time went on, but through a mutual understanding and support of open-source ideals, Sun has found perhaps the perfect partner in MySQL. Rounding out its stable with a solid database management system enables Sun to take further strides toward the creation of a Web application platform that includes Java and NetBeans. This puts Sun in a good position for the coming software-as-a-service (SaaS) trend, which will rely heavily on database technology. Rich Green, executive vice president of software for Sun, in fact, referred to MySQL as the basis of the new network economy. Sun is clearly solidifying a position to be able to power and profit from the Internet economy.
