Notes from the Consultant’s Jungle

Early news wires this morning report the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle at a $9.50 USD/share price.  While many of us were watching the dance between IBM and Sun over the past few months, this deal with Oracle leaves me scratching my head.

Oracle’s Larry Ellison says, “The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems.”  Really?  He goes on to say, “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.”  Again, …really?

Most enterprises I’ve worked with will trip over the notion that to use a certain enterprise software that they have to use a certain hardware platform.  In my experience, enterprise IT departments carve up the stack and don’t necessarily see the one-vendor stack as an advantage.  I’m not sure I get it.

In another statement made by Oracle’s president, he says, “We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5B to Oracle’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year.”  I’m not quite sure what “non-GAAP” profit is other than there isn’t a good GAAP-related justification to the move.  Maybe we just have to wait to see how this thing plays out.

Anyway, your comments and perspective would be greatly appreciated.