Ellison: Oracle won't spin off MySQL

MySQL is in safe hands with Oracle, at least according to CEO Larry Ellison.

At an industry gathering in Silicon Valley Monday, the Oracle chief spoke about the legal clouds hovering over the Sun-Oracle deal. Although Sun is losing $100 million a month due to the delay in consummating the merger, he insisted that Oracle will not spin off MySQL just to win approval from the EU.

Interviewed at a Churchill Club event by former Sun and Motorola chief Ed Zander, Ellison maintained that despite EU concerns, Oracle's database does not compete with MySQL.

"MySQL and Oracle do not compete at all," said Ellison. "If you look at where we compete it's with DB2, Microsoft's SQL Server, Sybase, and a long list of others. We never compete against mySQL, it addresses very different markets."

Ellison pointed out that the U.S. Justice Department has already okayed the merger as pro-competition and that once the EU does its job, it will come to the same conclusion. He expressed the need to complete the deal quickly to keep Sun going and to save as many jobs as possible. "The longer this takes, the more money Sun is going to lose," said the CEO.

Ellison also addressed concerns that Oracle might jettison Sun's hardware business.

"We are keeping everything," said Ellison. "We're keeping tape. We're keeping storage. We're keeping x86 technology and SPARC technology--and we're going to increase the investment in it. Sun has fantastic technology. We think it's got great microprocessor technology--it needs a little more investment, but we think it can be extremely competitive."

"I would like us to be the successor to IBM. Not Gerstner's IBM. Not Palmisano's IBM. But when IBM was the dominant software company in the world and translated that to being the dominant systems company."

--Oracle CEO Larry Ellison

The Oracle chief laid out his plans for the future of a combined Sun-Oracle. He sees the new entity as not a hardware or software vendor, but as a systems company. As a leading example to follow, he cited the old IBM.

"I would like us to be the successor to IBM," he said. "Not Gerstner's IBM. Not Palmisano's IBM. But when IBM was the dominant software company in the world and translated that to being the dominant systems company."

Now Ellison believes he can successfully compete with IBM. "We think with the combination of Sun technology and Oracle technology we can succeed and beat IBM," he said, "That's our goal."

Ellison also countered the claim that HP and IBM have taken advantage of the regulatory confusion to steal customers from Sun.

"IBM said it's got 250 customers from Sun," Ellison said. "What does that mean? I don't think there's a single example of any customer who replaced all their Sun machines with IBM. Solaris is way better than AIX, and Sun machines are faster than IBM's and they cost less."

How much longer will Ellison extend his 32-year career at the helm of the company he co-founded? "I'll go for five more years and see how it's going," he said.

The $7.4 billion Sun-Oracle merger has been in a holding pattern since the EU opened an in-depth investigation earlier this month. The EU has given itself a deadline of mid-January to render a final decision, potentially putting the deal months behind its original closing date of mid August.

[gfsdfge]

Does he look like a man you can trust?

[abcd9009]

As an investor, Hell Yea!

Oracle has mastered the art of mergers and acquisitions. No one does it better than Oracle.

[Mr. Dee]

Just like KFC huh abcd9009? Nobody does it better.

[benburch]

Sun doesn't own MySQL anyway. It's open source. They MAINTAIN it, certainly, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle and claim ownership.

[richard993]

Sorry to disappoint, but the latest public government filings indicate that Sun Microsystems DOES own MySQL. Just because it's open source, it doesn't mean that the organisation releases all it rights to the code and to the trademark. Although the exact details of the transaction are confidential, it is estimated that Sun payed around $1 billion dollars for the acquisition (you might get more information in Sun's financial statements on their investor site). The problem with open source is that the contributors often get absolutely nothing and they don't completely understand the model. The model is designed to share your code and contribute to the community, but it does not mean that you become a partial owner of the entity and it does not entitle you to shares in the organisation, which means that when it is sold, you are not entitled to a single penny. This is the problem with many of the open source models out there... something to think about I guess.

[Random_Walk]

""MySQL and Oracle do not compete at all," said Ellison."

*cough***********cough***********cough*

Oracle makes $40k per proc per annum (on average) for enterprise licensing and support. If you start replacing that big honkin' multi-proc Oracle DB server with a cluster of MySQL servers and split your apps to utilize them, you'd STILL save some serious bank.

Don't believe me? Ask Google what they run their search engine on...
(hint: Not Oracle).

[servermaker]

hint: not MySQL

[Random_Walk]

http://xooglers.blogspot.com/2005/12/lets-get-real-database.html
http://www.bytebot.net/blog/archives/2007/04/26/mysql-at-google
http://mysqldatabaseadministration.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-and-mysql.html

[mbenedict]

Wrong.

Google is a large company. They use MySQL for some apps. They use Oracle for other apps. Heck they probably use SQL Server, DB2 and Informix for many apps.

But their "search engine database" (loosely defined) is NOT MySQL. MySQL doesn't scale to Google-size. No off-the-shelf RDBMS does. So Google made their own proprietary, non-relational database system on top of GFS called BigTable:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigTable
http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable-osdi06.pdf

[MadamePJBailey]

IBM insiders are rapidly selling their stock shares.

For data sources visit -- ibmTheWidowMaker com

[chili_picante]

As an ex-Oracle employee who still holds plenty of Oracle stock, I must agree that it has been a great investment. However, the EU should not allow the Sun acquisition without having Oracle divest itself of MySQL. I believe that Oracle would do everything legal (and maybe more) to sabotage MySQL, which in the long term could be a major Oracle competitor. And, Larry really, really wants to sell database machines, so he'll buy Sun with or without MySQL.

[BMG4ME]

Interesting, he wants IBM to be like the old IBM, but if today's IBM were like the old IBM then there wouldn't be an IBM anymore, IBM learned that 15 years ago. Today's IBM is a much better IBM so as someone with a vested interest in a successful IBM, I am happy if he wants to try to compete with the new IBM by being more like the old IBM - these are my personal opinions.

[JPage99]

The only serious competitor to Oracle's database is MySQL and now they control it?? Excuse me? Can anyone spell anti-competitive?? Can anyone honestly believe they will not find a way to hold it back?

[dledwards]

"Wait, what?s he doing in the MySQL section?!? Oh, right. That. Maybe that makes you a little uncomfortable? Well, get used to it. [...]"

<a href="http://www.pythian.com/news/4118/log-buffer-163-a-carnival-of-the-vanities-for-dbas">Log Buffer #163</a>

[rshimizu12]

Larry is kidding himself if thinks he can beat IBM in the hardware of software game. IBM has vast amounts of resources and knowledge. IBM can draw up it's Global services for best practices.