Oracle Buys Bea: Customers, your chance to run to the Sunlight!

As you already know dear Larry has bought another company, Bea Systems. What people is asking is not why Oracle is buying Bea, but what will happen to the technology that now overlaps in both companies. Surprisingly to me they are not talking about hardware, so I don't really understand the concerns of customers and blogger in general in this matter. Of course this time I'm not going to say that it is like two garbage trucks colliding, as Ashok sustains that Bea has really interesting middleware software (I don't know what he means, but you know, interns are this way, giving opinions for free all the time...). Indeed, what Ashok and other people tell me is that the only garbage truck here is Fusion, what some people says is a pathetic attempt of Oracle to leverage their presence in the database market with a mock-up of a middleware software (a nightmare, in the mouth of the few developers that suffer it). Sorry Larry, this is not my opinion -I don't know what they are talking about- but I have to reflect it in the shake of impartiality... So, what those folks think is that it is an Oracle's clever move: not only they get a wider customer base coming from Bea, but they can also drop all the Fusion middleware to get a serious software as the one from Bea.

Well, I talked to (fake) Larry last night -he phoned me to congratulate us for the tremendous financial results of this quarter-, and asked him about this reasoning. Of course he agreed in the first half of the statement: they wanted Bea for the customers installed base, but he didn't understood the second half: "I can't see why a customer would be interested in replacing our Fusion middleware with that from Bea, I'd rather see customer doing the opposite. What we really were after were Bea customers, nothing else, you know", and the we arranged a meeting to test the new yatch Larry bought (that's why he abandoned his fake blog, cause he ran out of time).
So, as many people suspects, this is the real end of Bea. The message is clear to Bea customers: it is the time to switch to Sun, we'll never give you up (and if we did, our software is opensource anyway).
And if you don't switch to our middleware, well, think that our hardware is the best for Oracle apps.

John C. Dv-What do you drink for breakfast?

I'm furious. I've just read an article of that Dvorak guy -I enclose his picture here if you, as Ashok, have never heard of that guy before- criticizing our buying of MySQL.
Pal, you may not like it, but you are absolutely wrong on what you are saying. The funniest thing is that supposed complot we set up with Larry and the
Oracle guys.
One of your pathetic arguments is about our looong acquisitions history -and you even use our own list-. Well, maybe not all of our mergers were successful, but lately we are improving: Afara an Kealia paid a lot back by designing a lot of our new hardware stuff; Waveset and Neogent put us as leaders in Identity Management software and helped us revamp all our software portfolio together with SeeBeyond -hmm, Forté is not on the list...-; Storagetek also is paying a lot in synergies and new customers and revenues -ahhh, I love iron-...), so, here you have it, we know how to merge a company and do it well.
How you dare criticizing us so lightly? Tell me, have you ever created a company that changed everything in the computer industry? Have you ever been CEO of a company for more than 20 years? Have you ever invented Java, available in zillions of devices on the Earth and other planets of the Solar System? Do you know what is to publish a preliminary results of about $250M? Do you know what is to have $5Billion in cash in the bank account? -Gosh... I have to stop right now, I'm having a hard on reviewing all my facts...-

Sorry...

The most fanny thing of the article by John is the affirmation that we are acting as a puppet serving Oracle interests. Well, maybe you have a clue here: Oracle is no longer our beloved friend, as they are not selling our iron in the same way they did before. They are now betting for cheaper and frigtard opensource operating systems and they are telling customers not to buy so much iron, but cheaper one, so, Why shouldn't we offer a database to compete with them? There you have it.

Sun Profitable in Q2 FY07

Folks, I just want to thank all the people working so hard at Sun to make this things happen. I also want to thank all of our customers to make this big success for us. Again, we can say that we are a profitable company and we are going to post benefits for the second quarter of the fiscal year. Thank you all, I say it from my heart: my new yatch is nearer every day the stock goes up and the company bonus is more feasible. Larry, you'll die of envy when you see it!

Sun Shopping Again: MySQL

Well, as you can see I've been quite busy lately closing the deal with the management of our latest acquisition: MySQL. As you can imagine, Jonathan has also been pretty busy helping me closing the deal (well, the media will say that it was all his job, but we know who is the boss here). By the way, he'll be busy a few days more, as he is right now writing all the zeros of the check we have to pay. I'd rather some king of electronic transfer, but they insisted as it is the way they do it in Belgium.
- Ashok tells me that they are Swedish, not Bulgarians. Who cares... those Europeans do many strange things, I only like them because all the trouble they are causing the Borg-

By the way, I took the picture from Jonathan's blog. Thanks pal.

Well, I only can say that I'm very proud and happy with this deal. I'm afraid that the poll about what software company should we buy has to be reformed taking into account recent news -sorry, the board didn't allow me to add MySQL as I cannot disclose some confidential information-, so before modifying the poll I'll accept suggestions on what companies should we buy (although my personal bet is RedHat: I still tell Jonathan and all the folks at the board that we should buy it, include all the RH software in Solaris, and then kill that stinking OS for frigtards forever).
Well, I have to leave, it's time to get my medication...

Farewell Netscape

As you already know, AOL has decided to give up support for Netscape Navigator. I hate to recognize that, but I feel sad about it. You know, Sun became the hottest company in the .com days thanks to Netscape, as they could be considered the starters of the Internet fever (and bubble...). What memories I have from those exciting days, where you could open up a box of Cheerios and bang, an Enterprise E10K could be awarded to the lucky child about to have breakfast. And in a great part, thanks to the popularity Internet acquired those days, when everybody thought that the world would move all the business to Internet immediately (even Al Gore thought that!), we are what we are now.

I guess that is the reason why we reached that deal with AOL to build the iPlanet brand. You know, AOL didn't really want a software company, they only were interested in the millions of users of Netscape.com, so they never thought they were wasting the $4.2 billion they spent there although we all knew that they didn't want that legion of geeks and programmers. And that days our middleware was just crap, we needed desperate replacement to our Directory Server, Application Server (oh dear, I just remember NetDynamics, and a shiver runs through my back and my neck; that's when our Sales people got accustomed to sell BEA instead of our products, an issue we are still fixing...), Mail Server, etc., so it was a natural deal: they'd split the company, giving us the software factory and keeping the final users for them, to feed them up with contents, their real business.


But then, you know, there was such a stubborn VP from AOL-Netscape, and that other much more stubborn VP from our side (I don't recall very well the story as I never was very interested in software, what is important in Sun is the tons of iron we sell), so in 2002 we definitively splitted it up, retaining the code for ourselves to keep up the development of the products. Of course, we killed most of them (EcExpert, BuyerExpert, Certificate Server...); some had to be killed later (MetaDirectory), while others are trying to survive despite our efforts to make them absolutely horrible products (Communications and Mail suite).
I wasn't surprised at all when AOL decided to kill the middleware of Netscape, about six months after we broke our iPlanet deal. As I said, that was not their business.

The funny thing is that the Netscape Navigator was never intended to make big money for Netscape. That mission was to be accomplished by the middleware products, and they did a lot of money (App. Server got about 95% of the market, and you'd be surprised to know how many companies still use NAS 4 -we know that because they sometimes call us for support!!-). The Navigator was just a tool to make people easy to navigate through Internet, until they found that money can be also made from the browser, and big bucks too. But this is a long story. Far are those days where Moz ruled over Microsoft. It is rumored that Microsoft was feared of the ability to execute programs in the browser, independently of the operating system, and that this was the reason why they decided to play hard with their Explorer to kill Netscape's browser (Google, be aware of that, you are offering an office suite that can be used from any browser, does it sound familiar to you? ;-) ).

So, as the initial picture says, Netscape Navigator has finally reached the stability (although there is no beyond): Rest In Peace.

Merry Christmas to All!!!

I don't know if it is because we are running out of enemies (Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Oracle... they are all partners now), because I'm not officially the boss anymore and have less worries, because I'm getting warmer with the age, or it's just Christmas, but I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year, plenty of SunRays, with a bright shining Solaris illuminating your lives.
Well, it may sound a little bit like propaganda, you know, you can't change so much even in this dates... ;-) but my feelings are true from the bottom of my heart.

Best wishes to all!!!

P.D.: By the way, sorry for Jonathan, he is not writing so much lately because he is quite busy with all the financial information of the close of the year and so on. This is the advantage of not being the boss, officially, I can play golf while he does the dirty job. Anyhow, he also wishes you all the best!

Solidarity with Jobs (the Fake)

Hi again. To be the CEO in the shadows of a big company is a tough job, and if it is Sun it is a tougher job. That's is why Jonathan and me (the real and the fakes, that indeed are the reals pretending to be the fakes, you know what I mean...) are not writing very much lately is because of a couple of important factors: Christmas dinners with employees, partners and customers and closing of the second quarter of our fiscal year (well, the first activity is much more time consuming, over all when you have to spend the whole night drinking and dancing with your fellows).

Well, all that said, I just wanted to drop a few lines to show our solidarity with our (sometimes) friend Jobso, the fake one, of course. There is no need to recall the first Amendment to remember that in America everyone has the right to say what he thinks, and that we want to extend that right to all the World, because this is the first basis to freedom, the freedom of speech.

I'm sure that Jobso (the real), will rethink its attitude and realize that this blog has given Apple even much more awareness and propaganda that what they can afford to pay. Jobso, please, just a little bit of a sense of humor, for McIntosh sake!!!

And they say that Sun is a bully (well, I'll talk about that in a future article).

Jobso (the fake), I expect everything will go as we all expect, and that Apple will reconsider its position. If everything fails, you can count on us (Jonathan and me), and if it was necessary I'll let you post in my own blog (fake Ed Zander is free as far as I know, or whatever personality you would like to incarnate).

Meanwhile, I wish you all a Merry Christmas!