By K R Nambiar
The channel in India largely believes that Oracle’s acquisition of Sun will be good for the industry as well as channel business.
“Overall the deal looks good for both companies. Oracle and Sun have had great synergy and a strong marketing alliance. Sun has some good technologies, but it hasn’t quite succeeded in taking them to the market. Oracle has the muscle to help Sun do exactly that,” says K V Jagannath, MD of the Hyderabad-based Choice Solutions.
Adds Durganadh Venkata, Director, Locuz Enterprize Solutions, “Prime facie it seems like a good merger for the industry and also for the partners of both companies as they will now have a larger
portfolio to offer. But this will largely depend on the merger legalities and how the subsequent integration happens.”
Disagreeing, Francis Laser, CEO of Absolute Infotech, a software solutions provider says, “While Java, Solaris and to large extent Sun’s hardware portfolio seem to be safe, the future of some of the open source products that compete with Oracle or are not exactly in line with its plans could be a matter of worry for many open source ISVs and solutions providers. Sun’s open source database system MySQL is head-on with Oracle, and it may even kill the project that is actually doing well.”
Rivi Varghese, CEO of CustomerXPs, an ISV based in Bengaluru, has a different opinion. “I don’t think Oracle will kill any of Sun’s open source projects. Even if it tries, at least the open source ones will survive because there is a large MySQL and Java community. What will be more interesting to watch is what Oracle does with Sun’s hardware business without disturbing their existing go-to-market alliances with IBM or HP.”
So how will the merger affect the HP or IBM channel? “Sun had over the last year or so become quite aggressive in the local market and more visible in mid-market deals. But the take-over may affect its momentum as there will be confusion in the minds of customers and channels till the finer details of the integration emerge,” notes Anirudh Shrotriya, CEO of Shro Systems, an HP partner.
The acquisition may take a few months to get all the necessary regulatory approvals, and the integration process will happen only after that. Till that time, Sun will have to ensure that it doesn’t let its market momentum slip. |