I got a pretty big surprise this morning when I read about Oracle’s acquisition of Sun.  All I have to say is wow…double wow really.  I know Sun has Solaris and Glassfish and a bunch of other fun stuff, but really Sun=Java and Java is one of (if not the) most prevelant programming languages used through out the world.

Java

There was of course some excitement for Solaris, but really it’s pretty clear that Java was the buy:

Java is one of the computer industry’s best-known brands and most widely deployed technologies, and it is the most important software Oracle has ever acquired. Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle’s fastest growing business, is built on top of Sun’s Java language and software. Oracle can now ensure continued innovation and investment in Java technology for the benefit of customers and the Java community.

Oracle really isn’t just a database company any more.  They really haven’t been that for some time, but now they are a software company that also sells a database.  The fact is that they now own the language and ultimately the platform of which many of the best selling enterprise applications are built on.  That fact would actually be a little more interesting to think about if they had not already purchased  all of the best selling enterprise applications already.

Who’s Next

I really know nothing about who or what Oracle wants to acquire(in fact I don’t think I could know less), but how much sense does Red Hat make?  Red Hat is just about the gold standard in Linux distros(I don’t want to hear it Ubuntu fans, I’m talking servers), plus they get the last real application server out there that doesn’t have “sphere” in the name and they, like Sun, are major, major proponents of open source technologies.

It’s really crazy…Java.com will be an Oracle site….wow…double wow.