The acquisition of Sun by Oracle clearly will create a powerful combination. While many have thought, or feared, Oracle might silently do away with MySQL, others see this as a weapon that can be used to hit Microsoft where it hurts—taking on Microsoft in the low-end database market.
There seems to be a general consensus amongst database analysts that high-end enterprise class databases do not even enter into the picture when we talk about MySQL. MySQL just doesn’t compete in the market with databases such as Oracle, DB2, Sybase, etc. It would be ludicrous to think that Oracle would get rid of MySQL and try and push Oracle into small development environments, Oracle is just too big, complicated, and requires high level administrative and operational skills. The real threat here is for Oracle to beef up MySQL a bit more, but not too much, to chip away at the low-end market currently being enjoyed by Microsoft SQL Server.
More than likely this is exactly what Microsoft sees and is why they Microsoft announced they were forming an alliance with HP to jointly spend $250 million to better integrate their hardware and software systems. One would have to wonder it all this comes too late and will have any affect on Oracle’s powerful lineup of systems and software.
