Jan 21 2008
Sun acquires MySQL
On January 16, 2008, Jonathan Schwartz, Chief Executive Officer and President Sun Microsystems, Inc., made a big announcement: “we’re putting a billion dollars behind the M in LAMP”. The most popular open source database is used by millions of users for small home-made projects, blogs or small websites and by thousands of companies for their enterprise solutions. Is enough to mention companies like Google, Nokia and Yahoo! and everybody will realize how important this acquisition is.
Sun spent more then 30% of their Cash & Cash Equivalents (of $2.7B) and became a serious competitor for Oracle and IBM. MySQL becomes much more popular and many companies will consider using it for enterprise solutions.
Marten Mickos, CEO of Mysql and future member of Sun’s executive team, said: “The combination of MySQL and Sun represents an enormous opportunity for users and organizations of all sizes seeking innovation, growth and choice”. Great words, but a pragmatic analyst should rearrange the words and will see that Martin says: “The combination MySQL-Sun will give us more power and will give you, the end-user, another few strong reasons to trust us and use our software for your production environments”.
I wish Sun all the best and I hope my application will proudly use MySQL many years after this article will be published.
