Why if I Were Larry Ellison I'd. . . .(Ramblings about the Oracle/Sun Merger)

Oracle bought Sun. Here are my predictions/suggestions.

HARDWARE
What I Think Should Happen: I think Oracle should spin off and sell the server division, maybe to HP. Oracle's never been a hardware company (similar to Sun really never have been a software company, more on that later) and they probably will just muck it up. On the storage side however, Oracle has a great play. Between Sun's StorageTek acquisitions and Thumper (it's storage array) Oracle has an awesome opportunity to combine it's industry standard DB marketing power with a hardware storage play. They can/will do much better than Sun did at pushing this product line. They should keep it.

What You Should Do: If you like Sun hardware, continue to buy it. It's valuable, has it's place in the Enterprise and someone will eventually support/move it forward, even if it's not ORCL.

SOFTWARE

What I Think Should Happen: Larry Ellison said there were two software products that were instrumental in Oracle's decision to acquire Sun: Solaris and Java. I believe it. Here's how I think the overall software play should break out:

Solaris - It's a great OS, continue investing heavily. Oracle not being as OSS friendly may kill Open Solaris (or let it flounder). This would be a bad move politically though, so I would hope the project will continue.

Java -This will move forward (duh). The community essentially owns Java at this point anyway. If Oracle continues to do a good job facilitating it's evolution, which arguably Sun did well, they will gain points and appear a bit "softer". Having said that, .NET's evolution is IMO eclipsing Java's due to the focus of a single vendor, MSFT, at the helm (unlike Java having to appease multiple stakeholders). Oracle's business saviness may be what Java needs to focus the JCP to accelerate it's maturation. Right now it's definitely floundering in some areas (see EJB).

Database - Oracle wants MySQL dead, but there's no way they'll kill it and they'll probably figure out a better way to commercialize it. I think the project will fork, since a lot of the MySQL community probably doesn't trust ORCL. This will ultimately be a good thing, because I think we'll get another great OS DB alternative in addition to MySQL and PostGres.

Enterprise Software - There's a lot of it so here's a rundown.

• Sun's Portal R.I.P. it sucked anyway and doesn't hold a candle to Weblogic's.
• Sun JCAPS R.I.P. it's convuluted and Oracle's ESB/BPM plays are stronger.
• Sun Glassfish R.I.P. if Oracle was smart they'd release a community edition of Weblogic in it's place
• Sun Netbeans. Please kill it already. And kill JDeveloper while you're at it. Standardize on Eclipse as THE Java EE IDE platform and invest like crazy into it so the Java development environment can start holding a candle to .NETs (Visual Studio). Ask any developer who's played on both sides of the fence which is slicker (and for those of you crying for competition, Visual Studio IS the competition).
  
• Security Software: Sun Identity Manager will most likely merge with Oracle Identity Manager. Both have there strengths. Same goes with their Role Manager products. Sun Access Manager - R.I.P. Oracle Access Manager has a couple years on it.
• Sun LDAP - lives on. It's more hardened than Oracles (which really is a directory fascade on top of their RDBMS anyway).
  
• Sun iPlanet - who is still using this? OK, I know who is, why?
  
• What else am I forgetting?
  

What You Should Do: Before buying anything/making any drastic changes, wait 3 months. Oracle typically takes awhile to solidify a go forward strategy after acquisition. You don't want to end up porting/"upgrading" a year after you buy something. For existing Sun assets, move into containment mode until strategic direction is clear. Expect IBM and MSFT to start banging on your door.

OK, that should stir up enough controversy. Now tell me why I'm crazy in the comments below (or silently agree with me :-). And if you want to chat more on this, you can always contact me.

Trimming the Fat but not the Fun - the Solstice Weight Loss Challenge

Guest Writer - Grace Pai, Solstice Consulting Director of Recruiting

Solstice is undergoing a change. In the next few months, you’ll notice trimmer waistlines, healthier habits, and potentially crabbier attitudes. Most of this will be the by-product of a company-wide Weight Loss Challenge. We’re willing to undergo exercise, deprivation, and teetolism to see who can trim the most fat. Why? For a healthy lifestyle and bragging rights? All good benefits but the real reason people are participating is the cash prize. There’s an entry fee with matching company contribution and winner takes most.

The result of this small company investment has boosted morale by doubling participation and increasing camaraderie to the point of trash talk. What began as a joke has become a real contest with substantial cash incentive. There is even the expectation that this will become an annual tradition.

As the primary instigator – you can thank me later – preparation for the Fat Bet has caused me to reflect on the positive overflow that has been created from what is essentially a group diet. With an increasingly spread out workforce, it is natural for employees to get sucked into the daily grind and start to feel disconnected from each other and their company.

Perhaps for some employers, that’s fine as long as they keep performing at a high level. They don’t care if they have happier, more invested employees. I can hear hardliners saying they should quit their whining and thank their lucky stars they are still employed in this economy. While I am not a believer in coddling employees, there is nothing wrong in trying to better the workplace be it real or virtual. After all, happier employees are also more productive and creative.

So why are we doing this? For Solstice, it’s because technology doesn’t magically deliver solutions, people do. Employees are our true commodities and if you want to attract and maintain talent, companies need to make the effort to keep their employees invested and happy. Trimming our waist lines is helping us trim our clients' bottom line. What is your organization doing to keep the workforce happy in a time of tight budgets?

4 Ways the Conservative Enterprise Can Use the Cloud Today

Cloud Computing is a scary word in some conservative enterprises, but it doesn't have to be. Here are some proven ideas on how the conservative enterprise can dip their toe in the water today, get comfortable with the cloud and save some real cash.

First, a quick 30 second primer on cloud computing for those who aren't familiar (skip what's in italics if you're already in the know). Commoditized hardware solutions now are offered in the form of Cloud Computing Infrastructure Services. Many vendors like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and IBM are starting to build massively scalable data centers (think power plants), and are offering up their computing resources in a utility pricing or “pay by the drink” model. This means that instead of companies having to pay for an entire server and all of the business continuity, disaster recovery and administration equipment/fees that come with it, they can choose to pay by the GB of storage used per month or pay by the CPU power they consume. In other words, you can pay for infrastructure services the same way you pay for water or electricity, with all of the BC, DR, licensing and support costs baked in. This is an incredibly compelling pricing structure that takes advantage of the concept of economies of scale, and it has begun to get huge traction.

The birth of these services is relatively recent, and there still are a lot of questions around security, SLAs (99.9% uptime is the current standard) and privacy, all of which are being handled in slightly different ways by the different vendors. There’s going to be standardization (and perhaps ultimately, regulation) in these areas as the technologies mature, but regardless, there are ways to take advantage of these services in the short term, without introducing risk into your organization.

OPPORTUNITY 1) CLOUD TEST ENVIRONMENTS

Test environments are often costly. Conservative enterprises often try to mimic production configurations in their test environments. They also have multiple test environments to isolate different phases of the testing lifecycle (i.e. system, integration, uat, performance, etc.). The cloud is a great place to host test environments while handing off the administration duties to the application teams. An infrastructure organization can provide a pre-configured image/virtual machine of an application's test environment to the development staff for deployment to the cloud. The app teams then have the flexibility of spinning up as many test environments as they need, and they only pay for the up-time of the server. So if you only need the test environment available for 4 hours on a Friday, you're only paying for those 4 hours! It also allows for an easier way to tie back infrastructure costs to individual applications, to allow for more granular budgeting for infrastructure services.

OPPORTUNITY 2) GEOGRAPHICALLY DISTRIBUTED STORAGE/DR

Many conservative enterprises pay an arm and a leg for offsite storage for disaster recovery purposes. This offsite data isn't often used as a part of day-to-day processing, it exists for DR purposes. The cloud is a great alternative for offsite storage, with commoditized pricing of .10/GB/month. Several utilities allow you to store data encrypted on the cloud as well.

The cloud also provides a great alternative for sharing files geographically. Many of the large cloud infrastructure providers allow you to park your files on different continents. So if your European offices complain of slow access to data, you can have a mirrored drive or database on the cloud that they can access locally, while your "source of truth" is safe within your own data centers in the States.

OPPORTUNITY 3) TIER 2/3 OR DEPARTMENTAL APPLICATIONS

The third opportunity is leveraging the utility pricing of cloud hosting for tier 2 or 3 departmental applications. If you have non-mission critical apps with non-mission critical data, those are great candidates to migrate to the cloud. Since most major platforms are supported on the cloud today (Windows 2003, OpenSolaris, Multiple Linux Distros) many custom and packaged apps can be hosted on the cloud. This is another way for enterprises to dip their toe in the water while keeping their mission critical applications safe at home.

OPPORTUNITY 4) COMMODITIZED ENTERPRISE SaaS

Many packaged enterprise applications are moving to hosted SaaS subscription-based pricing models. Microsoft Sharepoint and Microsoft Exchange are two examples of commoditized applications (i.e. non-business differentiators) that companies can outsource. The licensing models are competitive, but arguably a Total Cost of Ownership analysis should be done, since the size of the organization can often dictate the degree of savings.

These are a few examples of how conservative enterprises can start leveraging the cloud for real cost savings today. What are your thoughts? Are these really low-risk alternatives? Are there other ways companies can use the cloud to save cash without "handing over the keys"? Does it make sense for enterprises to start dipping their toes in the water at this point? Let me know in the comments below.

-J