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Sun & Oracle: McNealy and Ellison Strive to "Make History"

"We're On the Same Side Here and On the Same Team" – McNealy
By Jeremy Geelan
Article Rating:
January 12, 2006 02:00 PM EST
Reads:
 29,400

"We don't have a ton of news," said Scott McNealy Tuesday, as peace broke out in Javaland, "but the news [we do have] is very important and very strategic."

He was referring to the fact that Sun and Oracle are henceforth to compete on middleware solutions but will collaborate in every other way possible - a company-to-company collaboration that McNealy, typically, characterized as being important in the struggle he has always called ".NET versus Mankind."


Watch McNealy and Ellison on SYS-CON.TV

"We're going to collaborate, interoperate, integrate...and really go after what tends not to be so open," McNealy continued, as he and Larry Ellison made a clear statement to both employee bases that Microsoft and IBM are the competitors, not one another. (Later in the meeting Ellison calculated that Sun-Oracle technologies are 95% non-competive, complementary; and only 5% competitive.)

"I cannot emphasize how important Java is to Oracle," said Larry Ellison, as - among other announcements - the two CEOs shared with those assembled at this "Town Hall Meeting" in Oracle's Redwood Shores headquarters that Oracle was extending its Java license with Sun for a further ten-year period.

"Your stuff goes like the wind," McNealy cooed. "And we're really excited about your new lines of hardware," Ellison reciprocated.

Sun's McNealy took the lead through most of the proceedings and was rewarded with many laughs; but Larry Ellison somehow seemed more relaxed and his body language was altogether more comfortable than McNealy's. While Larry sipped water, McNealy tried hard, and then harder.

"We're basically going to give the Oracle database for free in an attempt to make Sun the no. 1 platform for Oracle," he announced.

"We both want to use these aggressive moves to work together and deliver high performance at a low price," Ellison added, "thereby taking as much share as possible from the competition."

Sun and Oracle employees were invited, as was SYS-CON.TV, which brings this event to you wherever you are on the World Wide Web in its entirety.


Published January 12, 2006 – Reads 29,400
Copyright © 2006 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Jeremy Geelan

Jeremy Geelan is President & COO of Cloud Expo, Inc. and Conference Chair of the worldwide Cloud Expo series. He appears regularly at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of Cloud Expo's "Power Panels" on SYS-CON.TV.

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Most Recent Comments
PygmySurfer 01/12/06 05:37:42 PM EST

Early versions of Solaris x86 were mere afterthoughts to Sun, and they weren't optimized for the x86 platform at all. Remember, Solaris x86 was DEAD for a short time after the release of Solaris 9 (only a very vocal community convinced Sun it was worth their time to release it).

Sun seriously re-engineered Solaris 10 to actually make it perform well on x86 (specifically AMD64) hardware. When half of your product line is comprised of Opteron servers, you make sure your flagship OS runs well on them!
Thought34 01/12/06 03:34:44 PM EST

Did you know that Sun and Apple almost merged 3 different times? Maybe Jobs should have nipped down to Redwaood Shores on Tuesday, and beat Ellison to the punch.