Jason Abrahamson

It’s no secret Sun has been selling overpriced hardware since, well, forever, and It’s no secret that Sun has been loosing market share accordingly. Java was the one part of Sun that was incredibly desirable. Sure you have MySQL, OpenOffice, and a few other things, but they were all gravy to the almighty Java. Not to mention, how long do you really think MySQL and OpenOffice will stick around for? What is the point? Larry Ellison isn’t in the top ten richest people in the world for giving things away.

Oracle is incredibly expensive — which would be OK if you got an incredibly great product (which is a different blog all together) — but Larry is taking his same pricing model for software and applying it to hardware. For some reason or another Oracle expects people to pay a premium for Sun Hardware, Sun Products, and Sun Support — why? Just because it comes in a pretty red box now rather than a purple one?

My feeling is Oracle is trying to actually dismantle the Sun as we know it. I think they see the value in Java and will likely keep that exactly as is, but I have a feeling Oracle is trying to actually reduce the market share even further of Sun hardware and try to phase out products like MySQL.

These conclusions are purely speculative, however, It would explain their current actions. Driving up the costs of using MySQL Enterprise and Sun Hardware would reduce the market share even more and eventually make both irrelevant. This would allow Oracle to bring a database product with less features to the same market space — and bundle hardware with their database products — ideal solution for enterprise customers

I’m not entirely sure yet what Oracle is trying to gain from these changes to support and cost increases but one thing is fore sure — customer retention isn’t one of them.