Customers and investors have questioned Sun’s survival even before Oracle had agreed to buy the company, and continued as Sun’s worldwide server revenue declined over the last year. But one of the first things that Oracle did as a new owner was to convince Sun customers they are still wanted and have not been forgotten.
During a January 27 briefing that announced the closing of the deal, Oracle executives promised to keep core Sun technologies like UltraSparc chips, Java technology, MySQL database, and the Solaris operating system. They also announced that Sun’s server lines would be cut back while moving towards a build-to-order model which will bring the hardware operation back to profitability. Sun’s price list has already been reduced by 50% and Sun’s nascent Open Cloud initiative is one thing that could well be removed.