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Analysis: Oracle’s Sun Acquisition May Have Little Retail Impact Initially

Written by Evan Schuman and Fred J. Aun
April 23rd, 2009
Given that Oracle is arguably the world's largest retail technology vendor, any major change at Oracle is likely to have a retail impact. But Oracle's $5.6 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems this week is likely to have virtually no nearterm impact on retailers. Longterm, though, the picture looks a lot less clear and it has the potential for truly shaking up retail IT operations.

Most of the products that are likely to be at play in the merger talks—including Java, MySQL, Sun servers and workstations and Oracle's Retail suite—will either be unchanged (Oracle Retail seems to have no redundancy and is likely to be not impacted at all) or the changes will be irrelevant (MySQL operates so far below the database size and needs of most major chains that it is likely to be irrelevant). Although Java has attracted a lot of attention and debate, it's unlikely that Oracle would handle it much differently than did Sun. But if one looks a bit further down the road, things could get a lot more interesting for the typical retail chain CIO.

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Posted in CRM, E-Commerce, IT Strategy/Industry, Payment Systems, Premium Content, Software
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3 Comments | Read Analysis: Oracle’s Sun Acquisition May Have Little Retail Impact Initially

  1. Gene Cornell Says:
    April 23rd, 2009 at 8:16 am

    Excellent analysis. Goes along with my own view. Oracle already has customer satisfaction issues, so taking on more lines along with the turmoil of merging, resigning and laying off isn’t going to help.

  2. Rob Martell Says:
    April 23rd, 2009 at 8:49 pm

    I am not involved in retail myself. But I have worked with Oracle products in the past.
    So Open Office, Java updates, MySQL?
    Just waiting for my openOracle magazine!

    Great article, thanks!

    Grins,
    Rob

  3. TRedd Says:
    May 5th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    Great write up and on the money. All of this noise really says that Oracle makes a great database and they should just focus on that. REALLY!

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