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Grace Chng
Editor, Digital Life
The Sun is setting
April 22, 2009 Wednesday, 11:45 AM
Grace Chng is saddened by Oracle's purchase of Sun Microsystems.
I WAS sad to discover that a long-time technology-rich company, Sun Microsystems had been bought over by business software firm Oracle for US$7.4 billion (S$11.2 billion). From the mid-1990s, I’d been covering this company, making many trips to its events in San Francisco and elsewhere to find out more about its technology and to meet its charismatic co-founder, Scott McNealy. What I remember most of Sun is its prescience about the future of IT. Long before the Internet became a buzzword, Sun’s slogan had been "the network is the computer". It’s been proven correct for today every organisation is linked via the Internet. There’re 1.6 billion Internet users worldwide – about one in four people globally - according to the Internet World Stats. Founded in 1982, Sun also proposed that software should be considered a utility, delivered on tap as and when users needed it. This came in the 1990s, years before the IT world came up with a similar concept called cloud computing. Way before the sub-US$500 netbook wave took the world by storm last year, Sun had suggested in 1997 that Net PCs, small computers priced below US$1000, was the best for surfing on the Internet. Well, PCs are still kicking, but its sales have dropped while netbooks are flying off the shelves. . Sun is a company that is steeped in technology. I was present in San Francisco in 1995 when the company unveiled Java, a special programming language that let developers write applications that can be used across computing devices regardless of brand. Java is used in 800 million PCs and 2.1 billion mobile phones. Sun receives royalties from PC makers and cell-phone vendors for using Java in their equipment. Java is the main reason Oracle is buying Sun. Last night during a conference call to announce the acquisition, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison called Java the single most important software asset it had acquired. This coming from a CEO who had spent in excess of US$40 billion to buy more than 50 software companies since 2005. Analysts expect Java to be vital to Oracle’s plans to ensure that its many software products would work smoothly together. Tags: java, oracle, sun, technology 
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Guys, this is about Services Convergence.
You know how most devices now support multiple applications (voice, video, data, text, image, etc)?
We'll, as an operator or service provider, one needs to make sure that those applications and the service used to deliver them, can be supported from the access network, to the backhaul, and up to the core network.
The same is true with manegement, database and OSS/BSS. There needs to be convergence on that space too, and Oracle prior to their acquisition of Java sits on the core network side. Acquiring Java makes perfect sense since it will facilitate the desired convergence from devices then to the network and back (use of Java RMI, for example).
The same evolution is currently happening in many areas of the telecommunications industry.
Oracle (or IBM) buying Java is the most logical and intelligent thing to do.
Sad to know that Sun has been bought over by Oracle...i feel that Sun is something Im proud of since many years ago. Though be it can be prosper or not, its was indeed upset to hear this news.
Grace,
You are right, Sun has always been prescient about computer technology. But that is also always its problem. The promise and delivery often do not match.
Java is a good example. In theory, it was an excellent concept. Unfortunately early adopters would have been badly burnt as it was slow as molasses and it lacked a rich library especially GUI.
Having attended a few Sun Tech Days, while I applaud their enthusiasm, I was always appalled by the way the Sun speakers glossed over the real life problems of their technology.
But I do not wish this on Sun any way. Consolidation of technology vendors is usually bad for the consumer. Monopoly, less choice etc.
I guess that at the end, making money is just as important if not more important than being a technology prophet. And Sun really was bad at making money.
Dear Grace,
JAVA cost me my IT job. I told my boss it was too slow for the task we wanted to do but he would not listen, he was taken in by the hype of JAVA. Later the project was okay but the boss told me it was too slow. I told him we should have written it in native Win32 code.
Later JAVA burned me in another company, I needed the JVM to support some 16 bit sound and it was not available on the mobile platform. So much for 'write once, run anywhere'. Lies.
SUN deserves to go down. I hate the company.
(CARTOON) Will Oracle Get Burned? (CARTOON)
pcdisorder.com
David
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