EC gives Oracle go ahead to buy Sun
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European Commission says "competition and innovation will be preserved" as software giant buys systems maker
The European Commission has given its unconditional approval to the proposed acquisition of systems vendor Sun Microsystems by database, middleware and applications vendor Oracle, nine months after the $7 billion deal was originally proposed.
It had been concerned that Oracle's ownership of the company behind open source database system MySQL, which Sun itself acquired in 2008, could limit competition in the database software market.
"I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned. Oracle's acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products," said Neelie Kroes, the European antitrust commissioner.
MySQL founder Monty Widenius said earlier this week that, assumming the EC granted the deal its approval, it would fall to China and Russia's competition courts to block the deal. Seemingly, Oracle does not expect this to take place, as it has scheduled a press conference outlining its Sun strategy for next week.
As examined in Information Age's recent feature 'Software is not enough', the acquisition will have a number of ramifications for the IT industry. It represents the crossing of a traditional divide between application and hardware vendors, and is likely to set a blueprint for the commercialisation of open source software in future.
