Finalmente, Oracle toma Sun

Seguramente la compra de Sun tendrá impacto profundo en el negocio informático, y lo veremos progresivamente. Dos comentarios hoy destacan el carácter de oferta vertical que ahora podría presentar Oracle. Ashlee Vance, en The New York Times ("Cash in Hand, Technology Giants Go Shopping"), y Tom Steinert-Threlkeld, en ZDNet ("A complete industry in a box"). Vance dice:

Most consumers do not want to get a PC by purchasing microprocessors, hard drives and operating system software from different suppliers and assembling them all into a working computer. They prefer to buy a complete, customized machine from one supplier.

Corporate customers increasingly want the same thing: a one-stop shop for hardware, software and services. And the largest technology companies are deploying their huge cash hoards to make acquisitions to bolster their ability to be that single provider.

That trend drove Oracle, a leader in business software, to announce Monday that it was spending $7.4 billion to buy an ailing Sun Microsystems and get into the computer hardware business. Oracle beat out rival I.B.M., which considered buying Sun to enhance its own software offerings but ended serious acquisition talks about two weeks ago.

“Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system — applications to disk — where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves,” Oracle’s chief executive, Lawrence J. Ellison, said Monday.

Vance no piensa en lo que le pase a MySql, ni el cambio de manos de Java, sino en la consolidación de agentes con control completo del negocio. Quizá sea su punto de vista el más acertado en todo lo que comienza a debatirse tras la compra. ¿Habrá cometido IBM un error histórico?