Indian IT Industry

vina · Post by **vina** » 12 Apr 2009 17:27

True . For a company named as such, I doubt there are too many chicks around and of course very few in the "hot" category.

Vipul · Post by **Vipul** » 12 Apr 2009 17:57

Tech Recruiting Clashes With Immigration Rules.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 12 Apr 2009 19:35

Nortel should either go under in a few months, or more likely will be chopped up and its divisions sold to various bidders. Enterprise, Wireless are already on the block.

Police were called in at one of their locations during layoffs in UQdom supposedly. For sure, the Nortel as old will cease to exist.

sum · Post by **sum** » 12 Apr 2009 21:22

Werent there rumours that NSN is buying one of Nortel's divisions?

Btw, Gurulog: Does anyone have the lowdown on NSN, esp its India wing? Few of my friends who hae offers from there wanted a "expert opinion" and where better than BR for that?

Wanted similar opinion on Alcatel Lucent (esp India wing).

CalvinH · Post by **CalvinH** » 13 Apr 2009 00:05

negi wrote:The most admirable company has done it and see we already have the dirty linen being washed in public.

Infy fires 2,100 for poor performance

comments section:

Nandita Gurjar,Bangalore,says:This is all a HIGH DRAMA.... They are doing just a CORRECTIVE STEP for heir BLUNDER that they committed in the PAST--- which was a MASSIVE HIRING - that they did in an UNPLANNED MANNER!!! More over they are not getting any projects these days!!.....Nandita Gurjar (HRD, Infosys)

I recall Shiv sir giving an analogy of a small kid who wets/soils the floor and then points to it innocently as if it was not his/her mistake .

Negi ji, anyone can post in the comments section using anyones name. NG is currently the Head of HRD in Infosys.

negi · Post by **negi** » 13 Apr 2009 00:33

^ Well that is a serious crime if true. Anyways I believe the comments section of TOI is full of frustrated souls crawling out from the woodwork .In times when likes of Google,MSFT and IBM have laid off staff I am sure it isn't easy for likes of INFY maintain the headcount (specially given the huge bench strength of the Indian IT cos).

rachel · Post by **rachel** » 13 Apr 2009 04:26

Guys wrt NORTEL going under, what do u think of the possibility of TEJAS buying a piece?

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 14 Apr 2009 00:57

sum wrote:Werent there rumours that NSN is buying one of Nortel's divisions?

Btw, Gurulog: Does anyone have the lowdown on NSN, esp its India wing? Few of my friends who hae offers from there wanted a "expert opinion" and where better than BR for that?

Wanted similar opinion on Alcatel Lucent (esp India wing).

There are a lot of rumours about, one of which is NSN buys the wireless business of Nortel which is GSM/CDMA/UMTS. Makes sense since NSN penetration of CDMA is not that great. Enterprise is up for grabs with Avaya and Siemens being interested. The employees must surely be hoping some of this happens: currently they are being laid off at 3-5 hour notice, without severance and without compensation for earned leave. Mgmt is reportedly playing extreme hard ball games and risking fines from the govt rather than pay legally owed dues. Couple of 15+ year veterans have been let go, that I know of and many more exist, that are now too old to get a job, mgmt has walked out of their commitments to the 401K/pensions obligations and they are in deep ****

Reportedly AlcLu is next in line for Chapter 11 after Nortel. I would think that it would have happened for sure had Nortel emerged OUT of chapter 11, but since that is not happening (at least not in a way that Nortel remains the entity of old) so chances are less. Still, expect layoffs galore in all telco manufacturers. No one is buying currently, the only bids out there are being snapped by the likes of Huawei at their price points... Telcos are playing a good game, they are buying cheap stuff, which they know they will rip out later at little cost to them... NSN seems to be better placed, but reportedly they are very Finland-centric. Even to take a leak, local guys have to ask Finland unlike Nortel and AlcaLu.

rachel wrote:Guys wrt NORTEL going under, what do u think of the possibility of TEJAS buying a piece?

Nortel's MEN division is the exact same biz as Tejas, they are nice complements of each other. Problem is MEN was reportedly selling for $2B (at least thats what Nortel was expecting), but the only offer the got was $450M from Huawei. The USGov nixed the deal when they realized to their horror that PLA would get to control a lot of USMIL router backbone, and some national backbone as well. Does Tejas have $450 Mil? I have no idea... Plus these days, cash is king and with Nortel in Chapter 11, its creditors have more say and are unlikely to entertain stock swap type of proposals.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 14 Apr 2009 13:36

can confirm that lot of nortel 10-20 yr vets have been let go in recent past. its been a bloodbath. some very outstanding people were asked to leave.

SRoy · Post by **SRoy** » 14 Apr 2009 22:11

^^
NSN is definetily looking for the Nortel's wireless business, but Siemens proper is not going for the enterprise communications arm.

Stands confirmed.

NSN will also take over some major business, particularly NGN rollout projects, with big Telco's once Nortel sinks.

Again confirmed.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 15 Apr 2009 00:52

Fleeing Silicon Valley
By Daya Baran at April 13, 2009 13 Comments

Thousands of people are fleeing Silicon Valley; and, it not just migrant workers but also skilled workers. They all say the same thing - that opportunities exist in more places today and the opportunity costs are much lower. The economics of Silicon Valley are not working as they used to.

In fact, it’s hard to get a moving truck in Silicon Valley and it costs about $3800 to rent a U-Haul truck from San Jose to the Mid West, but only $1500 to move the other way. This is because far more people are moving out of the Bay Area than are moving in. The exodus has been going on since 2005 but has accelerated due to the down turn, residential rents are falling and top tier office rent is down 25% in a year. Many in Silicon Valley aren’t even aware of the exodus, they are working even harder just to keep up, in a ecosystem where the opportunities are shrinking and resources are getting expensive.

Recently, a friend on mine quit his $200,000 VP job at a public company in Silicon Valley to move to North Carolina to work for 25% less. He said in North Carolina, things cost much less and you can buy the best house in the best neighborhood for $500,000. Something that is not attainable in Silicon Valley.

With the proliferation of the Web, location is no longer a necessary element for success as it once was. Capital and skilled workforces are also available in many place such as North Carolina, India, Singapore, South America, Eastern Europe, parts of Sub-Saharan African, and the Middle East. The reality is the rest of the world has caught up, the gap has narrowed and the Silicon Valley is not the only place with those unique advantages any more.

Companies have recognized this for a long time which is why they have been outsourcing. But now, entrepreneurs are recognizing it too, and starting their businesses in places other than Silicon Valley. The founders of Scrabulous, a popular Facebook app, was developed by two kids barely 18 from India - and they minted a boat load of money without being in the U.S., because the skill sets and know-how were available to them from India.

CNBC’s, Becky Quick, pointed out to David Gregory on Meet The Press (paraphrasing here) that the “recovery will not be the same…the standard of living will not be what people have come to expect…there will have to be adjustments…”.

becky quickSo, will Silicon Valley and the U.S. be left with low paying jobs? Every year on April 1, the lottery for 65,000 H-1B visas opens, and every year, within days it gets flooded with so many applications that the government stops accepting them. This year, they have only received enough petitions to fill half of the 65,000 available visas. This may be due to the recession but employers are also finding employees in other places. The employees are opting to stay in their home countries, for reasons such as family, also their home countries have modernized significantly in the last 10 years and can offer them similar benefits to western countries without having to move.
http://www.webguild.org/2009/04/fleeing ... valley.php

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 15 Apr 2009 03:28

Acharya wrote:
Fleeing Silicon Valley

People are too busy looking at the howitzers booming that they are missing the stealthy ninja infiltrating into Silicon Valley. Product groups may be moving out but research is moving in. Silicon Valley never really hosted the traditionally big research labs (except perhaps Almaden) and now one sees every co. which has/wants to have a research arm is opening one in the Bay Area. After all the USP of Silicon Valley was never large scale production or providing working conditions where one just writes tons of code rather, it was and has always been, providing a climate for innovation - this is something which India's Silicon Valley has to somehow capture. Glorifying ourselves as the back office of the world is like taking pride in the fact that I clean the drains in Beverly Hills!

vina · Post by **vina** » 15 Apr 2009 09:55

Yawn.. For all you IT/Vity types running to Silly Con Valley. Now find out where the "real" smart people work. Just ask Bill.

The New York Times

April 15, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Big Profits, Big Questions
By WILLIAM D. COHAN

AT its nadir last November, Goldman Sachs’s share price closed at $52, nearly 80 percent below its high of around $250. By then, many of its chief competitors — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and UBS — were dead or shadows of their former selves. Even Morgan Stanley, long considered Goldman’s archrival, had nearly died. But somehow, less than five months later, on the heels of a surprisingly profitable first quarter of fiscal 2009, Goldman Sachs is once again riding high, with its stock closing Tuesday at $115 a share.

The question many Wall Streeters are asking is just how Goldman once again snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Many point to Goldman’s expert manipulation of the levers of power in Washington. Since Robert Rubin, its former chairman, joined the Clinton administration in 1993, first as the director of the National Economic Council and then as Treasury secretary, the firm has come to be known, as a headline in this newspaper last October put it, as “Government Sachs.”

How can one ignore, the conspiracy-minded say, the crucial role that Henry Paulson, who followed Mr. Rubin to the top at both Goldman and Treasury, played in the decisions to shutter Bear Stearns, to force Lehman Brothers to file for bankruptcy and to insist that Bank of America buy Merrill Lynch at an inflated price? David Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, acknowledged in a conference call yesterday the important role the changed competitive landscape had on Goldman’s unexpected first-quarter profit of $1.8 billion: “Many of our traditional competitors have retreated from the marketplace, either due to financial distress, mergers or shift in strategic priorities.”

But he was largely mum on American International Group, which, Goldman’s critics insist, is the canvas upon which the bank and its alumni have painted their great masterpiece of self-interest. A few days after Mr. Paulson refused to save Lehman Brothers last September — at a cost of a mere $45 billion or so — he came to A.I.G.’s rescue, to the tune of $170 billion and rising. Then he decided to install Edward Liddy — a former Goldman Sachs board member — as A.I.G.’s chief executive. Goldman has since received some $13 billion in cash, collateral and other payouts from A.I.G. — that is, from taxpayers.

Why kill Lehman and save A.I.G.? The theory, we now know, was that the government felt it needed to save the firms, including Goldman Sachs, that had insured many of their risky ventures through the insurer. Indeed, had Mr. Paulson decided not to save A.I.G., its counterparties would have suffered serious losses. Lehman’s creditors will be lucky to get back pennies on the dollar.

In a conference call he held last month, Mr. Viniar made the shocking claim that Goldman “had no material exposure to A.I.G.” because the firm had “collateral and market hedges in order to protect ourselves.” If so, then why did Goldman need the government’s help in the first place? During yesterday’s conference call, Guy Moszkowski, an analyst from Merrill Lynch, asked Mr. Viniar what role the $13 billion Goldman has collected from A.I.G. had on its first-quarter showing. But Mr. Viniar would have none of it: Profits “related to A.I.G. in the first quarter rounded to zero.” Hmm, how then did Goldman make so much money if that multibillion-dollar gift from you and me had nothing to do with it?

Part of the answer lies in a little sleight of hand. One consequence of Goldman’s becoming a bank holding company last year was that it had to switch its fiscal year to the calendar year. Previously, Goldman’s fiscal year had ended on Nov. 30. Now it ends Dec. 31.

As a result, December 2008 was not included in Goldman’s rosy first-quarter 2009 numbers. In that month, Goldman lost a little more than $1 billion, after a $1 billion writedown related to “non-investment-grade credit origination activities” and a further $625 million related to commercial real estate loans and securities. All told, in the last seven months, Goldman has lost $1.5 billion. But that number didn’t come up on Monday. How convenient.

Which leaves us with the real reason Goldman has cleaned up this year: the huge misfortunes of its major competitors. Those other firms have disappeared or have become severely wounded, and as a result have more or less been sitting on their collective hands since the collapse of Lehman last September.

As part of its busy day on Monday, Goldman also announced it was raising $5 billion of equity capital and that it intended to pay back the $10 billion from the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program that Mr. Paulson forced on the bank last October. Being free of the TARP yoke will give Goldman yet another competitive advantage: the ability to pay its own top talent and new recruits whatever it wants without government scrutiny.

This is significant, since it is unlikely any of Goldman’s remaining competitors will be able to make a similar move anytime soon. There is a reason Bill Gates once said Microsoft’s biggest competitor was Goldman Sachs. “It’s all about I.Q.,” Mr. Gates said. “You win with I.Q. Our only competition for I.Q. is the top investment banks.” And then there was one.

William D. Cohan, a contributing editor at Fortune, is the author of “House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street.”

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 15 Apr 2009 11:43

corporate r&d is 1% of the jobs created by prod development. and there's layoff there as well - bell labs, siemens medical div....

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 15 Apr 2009 13:08

In terms of numbers yes, the jobs are moving out however the numbers are only one aspect of the whole thing. Lots of reporters are now giving a doomsday impression as if the Silicon Valley is dying however that is not the case.....it certainly wont be "booming" in terms of numbers (that has been coming for a long time now given the outrageous cost of living here) but it is still "booming" in terms of innovation. Probably part of the reason is a concentration of TFTA univs. which have strong industrial links.

Believe it or not, Bell Labs is apparently on the way "up" again

I thought Siemens Medical (atleast the Imaging) was somewhere in Eastern US?

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 15 Apr 2009 14:11

vina wrote:
David Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer,

Hmm.... one wonders. Verve Cliquot (I dont even know the correct spelling), royal treatment by banks, gilted invites to wine clubs....

One really wonders... Freudian slips can be so revealing at times....

vina · Post by **vina** » 15 Apr 2009 14:52

Tanaji wrote:One really wonders... Freudian slips can be so revealing at times....

Yes of course. Unix with it's chmod 666 is the work of the devil of course . Why else would it have the number of the beast?

Tanaji wrote:Verve

Veuve saar. Phrench for Widow onree.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 15 Apr 2009 16:07

siemens medical graphics is very much in ca. san carlos area.

vina · Post by **vina** » 15 Apr 2009 16:41

San Carlos , Belmont.. Nice towns if I remember the Bay Area well. There used to be a nice pizza place, just right after the CalTrain tracks when you enter San Carlos , it is called North Beach Pizza or something if I remember. Is it still there?. Used to go there quite often. I preferred that to California Pizza Kitchen (which is really California Pizza and very California kitschy) in the San Mateo mall. Of all the towns in the Bay area, Palo Alto is probably the best and after that I would rank Burlingame as the 2nd. Leaving out Los Altos Hills, Cupertiono Hills-Saratoga /Atherton etc where you have to be stratospherically rich from having struck it rich in the valley.

Yawn , if not for Manhattan, the best place to head out to to live out your days in peace and quiet would be Marin County , Seattle , Oregon, Vancouver Island and of course the peninsula in the Bay area, the strip of land between SF and San Jose, between the bay and the pacific ocean. Ideally, a house in the hills very close to I 280 and the parks and everything, and with a great view of the bay from the French windows of your house. Between that and Upper West side , right next to riverside park, it is a tough choice. But however, in the bay area, you get a view of the Bay and nice wooded slopes of mountains and parks, while in UWS, you get to see Noo Joisey shoreline

. Surely a view of Hoboken is not as elevating (it could be lot worse than that though )

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 15 Apr 2009 21:07

^^^ To recharge my fast depleting batteries I spent a whole week in the above mentioned places. Included side trips to Santa Cruz, Monterey Bay and you have a good package. Half moon bay and places north of it is what vina is perhaps referring to west of I-280 with its more scraggly peaks with views of the Pacific compared to the rolling tellie tubby like cartoonish looking hills of the valley. Yosemite can also be done over a 2-day trip to rejuvenate oneself, which we did. Overall a good place to live, if you can pay upwards of $800k for a home.

For poorer abduls like me it will be once in a few years therapy to get away from the eastern high nosed culture.

As Bose saar mentioned, the valley seem to have not stopped from its con schemes at all. It is all vibrant and people including injuns still chasing for startup gold. That is the part which was the most depressing. No time onlee for anything else for most folks.

John Snow · Post by **John Snow** » 15 Apr 2009 21:59

ArmenT wrote:
vina wrote: . Again Shri Shri Rahul Mehta Maharaj Ji is right. AWMTA. Welcome back to 1960 and the world of COBOL and Fortran!. These languages had the feature where you could define a data structure as "In Memory" and load it and query against them for super super - hyper fast performance!. You should have used COBOL or Fortran for those and probably used a common run time (which is available on nearly every platform today ) to link with that module!. Like I said, the more things seem to change, the more they remain the same. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Saar, could you give me some pointers as to how to do this in FORTRAN. It's not like I can convince anyone in the office to change to FORTRAN, but I figure I'll learn about it in my spare time just because .

For all those talking about MySQL being a cheap alternative, it is cheap until you start talking about Enterprise MySQL. In that case, the MySQL guys actually charge more than Oracle does per year and their terms are way more stringent. For one, even if you stop using their MySQL enterprise product, they still reserve the right to come over and surprise-audit you at any time at your expense for the next two years, to ensure you aren't using their product. Talking from first hand experience here.

Every DB engine has its pluses and minuses. Seems more Indian DB guys are Oracle biased though, vs. stuff like MS SQL Server, Sybase or DB2. Any good reason why?

Boss log

Cobol is file processing friendly , Fortran more for number crunchig. PL/I is capable of both.

The IBM mainframe has file management system suitable for all of the above.
Basically ISAM, VSAM.

ISAM is simple Index sequenced access method.
VSAM Virtual storage Access Method. (KSDS, RRDS ESDS basically Key Sequence, Relative Record Sequence, Entry sequenced, interestingly DB2 aqnd IMS heirarchial data base are all internally KSDS data Sets)

The reason COBOL PL/I and Fortran are super fast is because the programmer has to know how the hardware is storing data and as such his program contains the hard coded pointers (thru compiler) almost like a Vector class in Java.

Actualy COBOL has a Vector class like using the verb Table (array) and can be loaded into executable at run time or can be binded into the Binary code during compile time.

Really speaking all file handling is done in Btrees at the hardware level, be it VSAM, RDBMS like Oracle, Sybase, Informix, CA Jasmine ( originally ) MSQL.

I think I will stop at this as Nukkadwadis might issue fatwa against me

C Simultaneously handle two files. One file used to read
C the data and another file to write the modified data.
DIMENSION IDATA(100)
C Open the file to write data
OPEN (7, FILE = 'DATA03.TXT', ACCESS = 'APPEND',STATUS = 'NEW')
C Open file for read data
OPEN (8, FILE = 'DATA01.TXT')
WRITE(7,*) 'Here is the data'
ISUM=0
DO 10 I=1,100
READ(8,*) IDATA(I)
ISUM=ISUM+IDATA(I)
WRITE(7,*) IDATA(I)
10 CONTINUE
C Close read file
CLOSE(8)
WRITE(7,*) '-------------------------------'
WRITE(7,15) ISUM
C Float will convert Integer into Real
WRITE(7,20) FLOAT(ISUM)/100
15 FORMAT(' Summation = ',I4)
20 FORMAT(' Average = ',F7.2)
CLOSE(7)
STOP
END

From Googling

vina · Post by **vina** » 20 Apr 2009 18:20

Oracle acquires SUN. I think with that MySQL is now a dead duck and will get killed. Also Yechh Pee's Unix Bijness is in trouble, coz no "home database" onree saar!. IBM has DB2, Oracle/Sun has it's own. On Windows, Mickey Soft has an offering. So that leaves Sybase as the only guy left. Expect mating dances to begin now between Yechh Pee and Sybase or Yechh Pee goes and acquires PostGres or some such no customer database!

Paul · Post by **Paul** » 21 Apr 2009 02:18

This sets the stage for the next stage in the world of software and services. Should the Oracle-Sun merger work out in the next 2-3 years, expect IBM, HP, MSFT or Cisco to make a move on SAP….If I were a SAP consultant, I would looking at options to move out of the SAP space.

IBM already has a flourishing services business, and HP is on the way with the EDS acquisition…What we are seeing is cos slowing trying to develop a one stop hardware, software (ERP, DB, middleware) and services (integration, consulting, BPO) solution.

Rishirishi · Post by **Rishirishi** » 21 Apr 2009 03:59

Paul wrote:This sets the stage for the next stage in the world of software and services. Should the Oracle-Sun merger work out in the next 2-3 years, expect IBM, HP, MSFT or Cisco to make a move on SAP….If I were a SAP consultant, I would looking at options to move out of the SAP space.

IBM already has a flourishing services business, and HP is on the way with the EDS acquisition…What we are seeing is cos slowing trying to develop a one stop hardware, software (ERP, DB, middleware) and services (integration, consulting, BPO) solution.

I am a SAP consultant, and can tell you this much. It is going to be a hell of a job to integrate everything for orale. There are endless issues to be sorted out.

SAP is based on German efficiency and is rock solid. It is extreemly flexible. I think SAP has at least 15 years headstart. However SAP frontend is very weak and the GUI is bad bad.

negi · Post by **negi** » 21 Apr 2009 05:38

^ If they cant compete with SAP they would BUY it .

.Siebel ,Hyperian,IFLEX all were gobbled up by Oracle Inc. . As it is in any case with likes of Oracle,IBM and now HP venturing into this services business the small fish are gonna have tough time (watch out for the hiring patterns of these cos in India ).

hnair · Post by **hnair** » 21 Apr 2009 05:46

vina wrote: Also, dont worry, Sybase might be an "Amriki or more specifically Chini- Amreeki" product, but overwhelming bulk of abduls who designed and wrote that product were from Yindia, specifically shopped over from a company based in Dilli/Noida (the owner has a beard and a bridge playing wife) , knew some of those abduls first hand. There were entire groups of those guys in Emoryville in the Bay Area in those days and to this day when deprived/ starved "Peninsula/City" types used to suggest Viks in Berkeley as a "go to for brunch place" , I used to get screamed at , cos those guys practically ate there every day in those days. Why the Dilli beard guy's company ?. Because, it seems that those guys had developed a database called Integra for some govt/in collaboration with Govt agency, which got canned / couldn't market/sell. So entire herd of abduls moved over to Bay Area per my grape vine.

Just saw this one. Sybase kernel/engine was already stable by mid 90s (in fact used to compete quite well with Oracle/Informix benchmarks at that time) and sold to Gates while the said abduls in your grapevine were still going to their customer sites, the guvrmnd agencies (bombay-high wallahs etc) to fix issues.

There is a lot of good stuff that happened (in a previous post, I mentioned two names from that jurassic era of Indian IT, that if they had survived would have done India a whole lot of good). The bearded gentleman (he epitomize Mushy's wet-dream of EnMo more than any....IMO) you mentioned is a respectable character. They did laudable stuff for an Indian startup, but before they could reach critical mass in India, stuff happened. And the team got all fragmented.

But.... heard of some of the lesser abduls speak like they personally invented wheel, Amul butter etc. Not doing justice to their elders, I always felt. Particularly towards the bearded gent and their CTO chap(another outstanding chap)

Which brings one to the topic of IT independence. Delta airlines has revoked call centers from India and Citi has agreed to not hire H1s for two years. Someone in GoI has to wake up and start facilitating academia-spun tech startups. Some Indian programs and their cancellation never made sense. Though OT, an eg: SLV and ASLV launchers should have been hived off from ISRO and budgeted as academic programs and a host of people trained around aspects like complex integrations and incremental innovations. If Elon Musk can get away with 4 failed launches and still get money for more, why not give our kids a chance? If nothing, it will hedge our bets against the likes of Elon. Same way, the Integra base should have been acquired by an Indian university/UGC and let the youngsters work on.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 21 Apr 2009 09:48

anyone know what happened to Shonkh?

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 21 Apr 2009 10:06

vina wrote:Oracle acquires SUN. I think with that MySQL is now a dead duck and will get killed. Also Yechh Pee's Unix Bijness is in trouble, coz no "home database" onree saar!. IBM has DB2, Oracle/Sun has it's own. On Windows, Mickey Soft has an offering. So that leaves Sybase as the only guy left. Expect mating dances to begin now between Yechh Pee and Sybase or Yechh Pee goes and acquires PostGres or some such no customer database!

Depends. First, MySQL does have a pretty decent sized business for their enterprise product. Believe it or not, their enterprise solution costs more than Oracle does

. Oracle will need to honor the existing MySQL contracts for the near future.

Second, Monty Widenus quit Sun a while back to form his own company (Drizzle) to continue work on MySQL code because he was getting tired of Sun's politics. Brian Aker is also working on Drizzle. So even if Oracle kills off MySQL, there's a good chance of an alternative

suvod · Post by **suvod** » 21 Apr 2009 12:01

IMHO, good deal for both Oracle and Sun. More so for Sun than Oracle perhaps. Solaris is saved as a platform. And Oracle has been trying to be full spectrum player for quite some time. Now they have it - from OS to applications.

sampat · Post by **sampat** » 21 Apr 2009 12:19

negi wrote:^ If they cant compete with SAP they would BUY it . .Siebel ,Hyperian,IFLEX all were gobbled up by Oracle Inc. . As it is in any case with likes of Oracle,IBM and now HP venturing into this services business the small fish are gonna have tough time (watch out for the hiring patterns of these cos in India ).

Sap is not going anywhere. They are the leaders in ERP segment. Oracle will never be allowed to buy out SAP. It will be blocked by courts on the grounds of preventing monopoly. SAP is robust but i wouldn't call it flexible but this is true for all big ERP solutions. Between SAP and oracle they have covered almost all verticals so very little room for new guy to breakinto this space. Only SaaS CRM soultions from guys like salesforce.com, zoho and netsolutions have managed to grab market from biggies as they do not cater to SMB sector as well as new guys.
Before SAP I think SAP or Oracle will gobble Salesforce.com.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 21 Apr 2009 21:32

vina wrote:Oracle acquires SUN. I think with that MySQL is now a dead duck and will get killed. Also Yechh Pee's Unix Bijness is in trouble, coz no "home database" onree saar!. IBM has DB2, Oracle/Sun has it's own. On Windows, Mickey Soft has an offering. So that leaves Sybase as the only guy left. Expect mating dances to begin now between Yechh Pee and Sybase or Yechh Pee goes and acquires PostGres or some such no customer database!

Oracle Corp. struck a surprise deal to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. for $7.38 billion, elbowing aside International Business Machines Corp. in the latest sign that a few well-heeled giants are exploiting the recession to snap up weaker players.

One of the strategy was to find out what was the plans of IBM in this area and their future market strategy. This IBM negotiation may have given them many clues which Oracle wanted to find out about the big Blue.

Jayram · Post by **Jayram** » 21 Apr 2009 21:45

What happens to HP strategy now? IBM/HP are faced with 2 rivals of increasing strength in thier traditional areas. HP more than IBM imho needs to respond ..
Perhaps HP will buy a network player like Juniper (to counter Cisco) but HP is still digesting EDS so there is that.
HP may even need to add a DB to its products (Sybase?) ...
HP did have a decent database product many decades ago but that got canned in favor of Oracle/SAP..
The other dynamic is that HP internally uses a lot of these products ie Oracle/Tidal etc Would the top mgmt now want to move out of that if so to Mickey soft ?
A lot of headaches for sure...
And the person fortunate enough to own stock in HP next target purchase or has balls to gamble and buy that stock now is looking to at a lot of potential windfall no? Surely the WS daytraders must have picked this up too ? Need to monitor the prices to see if there is any upoward movement...

--Jayram

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 21 Apr 2009 22:09

Why will HP get into DB space? Don't we see HP-Oracle combined adv in WSJ and is it not reflective of current thinking?

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 21 Apr 2009 22:20

Satya_anveshi wrote:Why will HP get into DB space? Don't we see HP-Oracle combined adv in WSJ and is it not reflective of current thinking?

They may have a joint strategy against the Big Blue.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 21 Apr 2009 22:23

why does HP or anybody else need to constantly buy and grow bigger?

why not remain smaller, focussed and profitable like netapps, jnpr etc.

this mania for being everything to everyone is just stoked my M&A players hoping to pocket their 2% of the
deal value....usual suspects like goldman & their ilk

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 21 Apr 2009 22:26

Singha wrote:why does HP or anybody else need to constantly buy and grow bigger?

That is the grand strategy.

Jayram · Post by **Jayram** » 21 Apr 2009 23:00

Satya_anveshi wrote:Why will HP get into DB space? Don't we see HP-Oracle combined adv in WSJ and is it not reflective of current thinking?

Dont know about that Ad however Oracle/Sun combo is going to be a competetor to HP alone in Data Centers for sure..
Thats what this is all about.. Oracle/Sun/Java combined platform against HP + Oracle + Java .. The formers product rollouts are going to be just that much earlier and faster and more optimized and if there is no equivalent to Oracle (which depending on the particular deal/Client prefs there may not be) then expect a full court press by Oracle to win that deal no?
JM2 Cents

Sriman · Post by **Sriman** » 21 Apr 2009 23:01

Wonder what'll happen to the JVM that weblogic peddles..

And amidst all this HP and IBM talk, i see this as a consolidation against Dot Net/SQL Server tight coupling by mickey soft. Wonder if we'll see any move from Oracle in the RAD space for Java.

negi · Post by **negi** » 21 Apr 2009 23:09

It is simple only; by buying SUN ,Oracle not only gets a foothold into OS and Datacenter space but also ensures that by having a underlying HW and OS under its own belt it will be able to offer a complete end to end solution which can potentially mean existing capabilities/features would be delivered at a higher performance and the new ones would be even more optimised as they would be developed around the Server platform itself.

Lastly above would also serve as an insurance against HP's potential moves to acquire or move into a dedicated DB segment .As long as Oracle maintains the edge in DB segment it has little to worry about.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 22 Apr 2009 00:13

Jayram wrote:
Satya_anveshi wrote:Why will HP get into DB space? Don't we see HP-Oracle combined adv in WSJ and is it not reflective of current thinking?
Dont know about that Ad however Oracle/Sun combo is going to be a competetor to HP alone in Data Centers for sure..
Thats what this is all about.. Oracle/Sun/Java combined platform against HP + Oracle + Java .. The formers product rollouts are going to be just that much earlier and faster and more optimized and if there is no equivalent to Oracle (which depending on the particular deal/Client prefs there may not be) then expect a full court press by Oracle to win that deal no?
JM2 Cents

Well.. the ad is/was actually it's about this: http://www.oracle.com/database/exadata.html
yes, data centre market / cloud computing to be specific is the target. IMO, Oracle buying Sun was preferable to HP over Cisco buying Sun. I gotta admit that I was wrong in stating earlier that if not for IBM, Cisco will definitely gobble up Sun ( I still wonder why it didnot).

I futher wonder what good it will do for Oracle to buy Sun. IBM and HP can now stupendously screw Oracle and that differential cannot be made up by Sun(IMO - don't have facts). It is good time to buy SAP stock:)