Thinkovation

As we’ve now had a little more time to mull.. there are a few more considered reactions to the Oracle / BEA and Sun/MySQL news.

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So, BEA and Oracle have come to a price both can agree on - I did blog this a while ago, and after destroying my wordpress install have managed to lose the original post.

So when I say “Well I reckoned that $20.00 a share was going to be the magic number, but hey I was pretty close given it went for $19.38!” It’s ok to say “You lying little scamp, you’re just saying that…”

But I did. Honest!

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Two major announcements to comment on today (Sun and MySQL, and Oracle and BEA)- but they both merit separate posts.

Sun has acquired MySQL AB the Swedish software company behind the eponymous (well without the “AB”) open source database. for what the press release describes as “approximately$1 billion”.

This move is of real interest to me since I’m currently writing a “MySQL and VB.NET” how to guide (see my development blog for the first installment).

I think that on balance this is good news. Of course there are caveats - Sun has a mixed record when it comes to acquisitions - but provided that they keep faith with the user base (and I think that they will) and can keep a few of the key MySQL engineers (and I think that they can) MySQL will continue to prosper.

There are couple of other “wrinkles” two key database vendors own bits of technology that are pretty “core” to MySQL; Oracle owns InnoDB (one of the core database engines that MySQL uses), and IBM owns Solid (another storage engine). But both Oracle and IBM should be smart enough to know “not to go there” when it comes to horsing with something as popular with the community as MySQL.

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/* PLEASE NOTE - This Post has been recovered from a previous back-up of the Thinkovation Blog */

News just out that Oracle has made a bid for BEA, offering $17 dollars a share - which represented a premium of 25% over the company’s closing price yesterday. The bid values BEA at close to $7billion.

BEA’s reaction has been (predictably) to say the offer is too low - And I think they”re right, but the board has come under pressure to sell up from a few shareholders, notably the investor-activist Carl Icahn who has build up a stake of 13.2 percent.

Personally I think the offer is too low - I think $20 would make a nice round number…

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