Is A New Sun Dawning ?

Jonathan Schwartz highlights about the revenue synergies of Sun’s acquisition of MySQL. Over 100 million copies of MySQL's open-source database software code have been downloaded for free since the product was first released more than a decade back. A number of business houses rely on MySQL's software. Clearly the acquisition has no cost synergies, given that most of the MySQL team works from their respective home(s). The question in the enterprise software industry is articulated well by MR about the acquisition here

So why would a veteran disruptor and ready-to-IPO MySQL sell to Sun? Perhaps MySQL heard some concrete, savvy thinking about how the deal would propel the combined entity to the top of the open source vendor ladder – something MySQL couldn’t do alone. Perhaps there was a bit of fear that the slowing U.S. economy would make its IPO less than stellar. Perhaps MySQL needed the financial security of a Sun to help it build its business away from the eyes of investor scrutiny"

Jonathan points out, Wherever MySQL is deployed, whether the user is paying for software support or not, a server will be purchased, along with a storage device, networking infrastructure - and over time, support services on high value open platforms. Last I checked, we have products in almost all those categories. He thinks that the single biggest impediment to MySQL's growth wasn't the feature set of their technology - which is perfectly married to planetary scale in the on-line/web world. The biggest impediment was that some traditional enterprises wanted a Fortune 500 vendor ("someone in a Gartner magic quadrant") to provide enterprise support. This reinforces Kim Polese view on opensource support models. Sun believes that it can augment MySQL's great service team with an extraordinary set of service professionals across the planet - and provide global mission critical support to business. Sun says support to Oracle & Postgres remains unchanged. In the past IBM had succeeded with such strategies but the go-to market strategy and field power of the two companies are not comparable. We now have to see this strategy win for Sun.

Labels: Business Model, Emerging Trends, Mergers And Acquisitions, Sun