Category Archives: M&A

Will Oracle kill off SPARC?

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Oracle’s been busy re-shaping their world, and the world of their acquired business units.

Phillip Jaenke (@RootWyrm on Twitter) has a lot of opinions, this time around he’s pieced together some compelling evidence that argues that Oracle doesn’t intend on continuing development (or development that matters, anyhow) on the SPARC platform.

http://rootwyrm.us.to/2010/10/sparc-the-future-that-wasnt-and-isnt/

What bothers me as much as anything is how much uncertainty there is in dealing with ~anything~ that touches the Oracle acquisition-verse.  Whether it’s the future of OpenSolaris (since clarified), or the future of SPARC, end users (and partners such as Fujitsu) seem to be in the dark about everything on the roadmap.

Uncertainty should be driving IT decision makers to validate and consider alternate solutions to some of products coming from Oracle, given the uncertainty of the roadmap for anything other than their flagship database product. If you are an Oracle shop, you probably can’t just ditch Oracle without a lot of pain, but it’s best to be prepared. Given that HP, IBM and others will go out of their way to help you migrate to their hardware and software platforms, it’s worth an investigation, anyhow.

Full disclosure: My employer has announced OEM relationships with HP and IBM. I’m speaking as an individual in this case, as is always the case with my commentary on this site.

OpenSolaris is dead… what now?

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OpenSolaris is dead. Well, it’s not dead, but as good-as-dead.  As announced, er, leaked in mid-August, Oracle will no longer be using the OpenSolaris community as a way to build and strengthen the core Solaris bits with help from the outside community. Rather it is taking OpenSolaris internal, and only releasing Solaris 11 binaries (as Solaris 11 Express for free use by developers).

This is one of the fallouts of M&A activity in any industry. Sometimes good products get the axe. Sometimes it’s because there’s product-line overlap and a need for consolidation. And other times it’s because the new corporation doesn’t see the benefits of a “loss leader”.  OpenSolaris was the “loss leader” for Sun, in that it attracted new users to the Solaris fold (I am one of them.)  OpenSolaris also helped Sun via a free development community, from which they could cherry-pick tried and tested code and bring it into the mainstream Solaris code base.

As a recent convert to OpenSolaris, I’m saddened that the leading-edge development of ZFS will no longer be externally available via this “reference” build. The best way to get the latest features and bug-fixes was to stay in tune with OpenSolaris.

Or at least I thought so.  Just prior to the “demise” of OpenSolaris, some important members and contributors to the OpenSolaris community split off the Illumos Project as a way to protect the Open Source components of OpenSolaris, and to continue to foster growth and innovation in what had become a stale and ignored (by Sun/Oracle) OpenSolaris project. And just in time!

The Illumos Project promises to keep alive the development of ZFS and other great features of OpenSolaris, which are very important to other projects such as Nextena Core OS and commercial derivatives such as NexentaStor, as well as the myriad of other OpenSource projects that use ZFS for volume and file management.

What will I do with my OpenSolaris, ZFS-based file server for my home use? I’m going to convert it to NexentaStor Community Edition.  I’ll be able to import my current ZFS pools directly into the new installation, the conversion will be a minimal effort. [Edited later: Since I want to install other applications, including netatalk for AFP support, I think I will actually install the Nexenta Core Platform 3.0, not NexentaStor which is an excellent appliance but locked down and not great for general purpose application use]

ZFS is a great filesystem. It’s got modest support by a couple of non-Solaris-based operating systems, but the best support is supplied by Solaris-kernel-based operating systems. Since Oracle has taken the most direct path to great ZFS support away, enthusiasts such as myself will have to turn to projects like Nexenta for our access to this great filesystem.

I’d love to hear other opinions… please leave a comment!

Dell’s Acquisition of 3PAR – or – Why I started a Blog

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[Updated 8/23/2010: HP has now put in a bid on 3PAR. 3PAR's blogger, Marc Farley, has put together a good summary of why 3PAR is compelling to the larger vendors:  There's something about 3PAR]

I’ve started, and abandoned, a couple of blogs in the past. It wasn’t until today’s announcement that Dell was to acquire 3PAR, that I figured I may as well cut to the chase, install some software, and dive into it again.

I worked for 3PAR for 2-1/2 years, up until about this time last year. I really enjoyed working at 3PAR, and loved the technology they brought to market.  I left for my current employer, Fusion-io, not out of any issues I had at 3PAR, but purely based on the pull of new technology. But I digress.

3PAR brings a lot of great technology to Dell, not only in terms of the individual parts and pieces (thin provisioning, wide striping, ease of provisioning through internal virtualization, integration with VMware products, and more) but also as a great fit from a system perspective into the Dell storage portfolio.

Furthermore, as an outsider to the Dell/EMC relationship, one could easily see that Dell’s past acquisition of EqualLogic was in a space that EMC didn’t strongly compete in, and Dell continued to sell EMC CLARiiON. So while the Dell/EMC relationship was stretched in the past, it wasn’t strained to a breaking point.

But in hushed conversations with customers, I’ve heard stories about EMC sales folks taking Dell/CLARiiON customers direct or flipping them to Symmetrix. While this is hearsay, it sounds plausible, and even unavoidable to a certain extent. EMC is the only credible sales force that can sell the Symmetrix family of high end storage, no reseller is going to be wildly successful with that product set. Dell, therefore, couldn’t compete at the high end against HP (their real competition with respect to servers and the rest of the enterprise) . The 3PAR product adds a great new high-end to their portfolio, at the risk of straining the EMC relationship.

I know that Dell must be ready to accept that new challenge. I’m looking forward to see what EMC’s reaction will be over the coming days and months. Competition is good for the industry and good for the customer base, and the competition in the high end of the storage market just got a bit more interesting.

What’s your opinion? Please leave a comment below!