451 CAOS Theory *
A blog for the enterprise open source community

A few further thoughts on Sun/MySQL

Matthew Aslett, January 17, 2008 @ 12:31 pm ET

Following on from my instant reaction to the news that Sun was acquiring MySQL for $1bn, the deal deserves some closer attention. Subscribers to The 451 Group’s TechDealMaker service can read the QuickTake and the full Deal Analysis, while a couple of points are worthy of further analysis:

  • Despite the best efforts of MySQL and other open source software vendors, support is still routinely cited in surveys as the biggest barrier to enterprise adoption of open source software. While MySQL had the expertise, it has been perceived to lack a global support operation that would give enterprise adopters peace of mind.
  • I questioned yesterday why customers would trust Sun to provide support for the MySQL products if they don’t trust the people that wrote the code. Of course global scale and trust are the main issues here and it is probably fair to say that for many traditional large enterprises MySQL backed by Sun is more attractive than MySQL on its own. That equation only makes sense if MySQL retains its core developers and management, however (although the early indications are that it will).
  • If just having a large IT supplier behind an open source database is the only thing stopping MySQL taking on Oracle and IBM consistently at the high end of the market, which Sun asserts is the case, then Sun should have been able to do the same with PostgreSQL, especially as the high-end of the market is PostgreSQL’s domain.
  • While we expect Sun to continue to support PostgreSQL, it’s clear which is higher in the pecking order. If Sun succeeds in its attempts to make MySQL a more appropriate database for mission-critical enterprise applications then common sense suggests resources will favor MySQL.
  • There have been some suggestions that Sun’s acquisition of MySQL is the prelude to a cloud computing play. That certainly makes some sense as one route to market, although as Savio Rodrigues notes, Sun would have to make a couple of other acquisitions to make that possible (more on that at a later date).

That said, we see this as a great move for Sun that fills the ‘SunDB’ gap that Scott McNealy highlighted several years ago. The deal should help Sun build out its open source software business and is a great endorsement for MySQL and the business it has established. We don’t expect much to change as far as MySQL’s business model is concerned, especially as the core executives and developers appear to still be in charge, although in the long term it will be interesting to see how Sun pitches MySQL against Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 and PostgreSQL.

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Categories: Business models, Linux, M&A, Software

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3 Comments»

Collapse Comment by Niklas Andersson, TechWorld Open Source, January 17, 2008 5:42 pm

Great post! I did a remark on our website today. The conclusion is more or less that with the aquisition of MySQL Sun is now the proud copyright-holder of an entire web-stack (all though open - but that’s not the same thing). Simon Phipps, Sun Chief Evangelist says “web-operating system” MySQL has a strict contributorslicense as well as Sun (JCA)

Sun becomes a “one-stop-shop” and they are the sole copyright-holder… I’m not sure if this is a good thing..

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Collapse Pingback by People Over Process » links for 2008-01-18, January 18, 2008 2:19 am

[...] A few further thoughts on Sun/MySQL “There have been some suggestions that Sun’s acquisition of MySQL is the prelude to a cloud computing play. That certainly makes some sense as one route to market.” (tags: mysql sun databases cloud sunw m&a ego) [...]

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Collapse Pingback by 451 CAOS Theory » Sun acquiring MySQL for $1bn, June 9, 2008 7:40 am

[...] 3 - For further information on the Sun/MySQL deal see A few further thoughts on Sun/MySQL and Putting a value on MySQL. Permalink | Technorati Links | Bookmark on del.icio.us | digg it [...]

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