EU hearing on Oracle-Sun set for Dec. 10

Come early December, Oracle will meet with European Commission regulators to urge their approval of its merger with Sun Microsystems. "Two people with knowledge of the matter" tell Reuters that "Oracle has asked for a hearing which has been fixed for December 10."

Should make for an interesting meeting given Oracle's refusal to take the EC's concerns about the future of Sun's MySQL database seriously. Certainly, it's difficult to imagine Oracle caving to the Commission's demands when it has criticized the group's findings as a "profound misunderstanding" of the database market and open source.

And if not that, then what? Would Oracle abandon the deal instead? That too seems unlikely because it would mean delaying CEO Larry Ellison's plan to transform Oracle into the next IBM. As Ellison said in October, "T. J. Watson's IBM was the greatest company in the history of enterprise in America because its combination of hardware and software was running most of the enterprises on the planet. We think with the combination of Sun technology and Oracle technology we can succeed and beat IBM. That's our goal."

Given the EC's concerns about the Sun acquisition and Oracle's refusal to address them, what other option is there?

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[phatak_madhu]

They should fasten the deal since SUN is in the crisis in terms of business..........Oracle should sell Mysql to other company since other wise it will wipe out competition from market

[RompStar_420]

SUN should have sold the MYSQL and then went to sell it's company. Ohhh wait, Sun might not be interested anymore. They do want to squash this, company should be investigated and people need to go to prison, right next to bubba.

[johnb76]

Oracle has already said that it will increase investment in MySql and spend more than Sun. It seems like they could easily get this EU to agree to the merger by laying out their current plans of expenditures and improvements for the next 10 years and agree to commit to them. So many people seem to think they are really going to support MySql but I?m starting to wonder if they have any plans or commitments to present to the EU.

[dargon19888]

I would suspect that if the EU had their act together they would scrutinize the MySQL deal, but also would block the deal since it would mean Oracle would then be selling hardware,software and services, however the software stack would go from the OS, Infrastructure, through to the application. Something IBM, HP and others do no do.<br /><br />It would be anti-competitive since Oracle would be selling Oracle/Peoplesoft Financials on Oracle RDBMS on Sun hardware with the services to boot. One stop shopping. IBM is one of Oracle's largest resellers. Can you say the same of Oracle regarding IBM equipment?<br /><br />When you start getting mega sized companies, you have to dance around the 'M' word. With Oracle being the word's largest software seller, the EU has to scrutinize the deal.<br /><br />BTW, if the deal dies, want to bet there's another suitor within the month?<br />Cisco shouldn't be discounted as a potential partner.

[AdDeRidder]

Adam D seconds the recommendation for the Oracle-SUN article on www.nqlogic.com<br /><br />This blog has more information and better insight than *anything else* I've read in the media about the deal <br /> - "How important is mySQL in the database market?" <br /> - "What is Oracle's history with supporting open source DB acquisitions?" <br /> - "Isn't Java a more relevant question than mySQL?" <br /> - "Are the EC actions truly about competitiveness?" <br /><br /> As an employee of one of the companies in question, I read everything I can about the deal. This is one of the few with the in-depth thought as well as hard numbers to make sense of the meaning of the deal to Oracle, SUN, the EC and mostly to OpenSource. <br /><br />Thanks, NQ - great article.