JAVA's an icon in the enterprise IT world - Sun Microsystems went as far as to make "JAVA" its NASDAQ ticker symbol. Not to mention the nearly $7.5 billion Oracle wants to shell out in part to gain control over Sun's famed software platform via an acquisition.
If Oracle's planned purchase of Sun is successfully completed, it will gain a connection to myriad software platforms built on JAVA by a number of other tech firms. That would put Oracle on the 50-yard line of systems integration, data management projects, the advancement of remote employee and consumer access, and a number of other major tech initiatives impacting thousands of banks in the United States and abroad. "JAVA is the most important aspect that Sun brings to the equation for Oracle," says Guillermo Kopp, an executive director at TowerGroup. "A lot of the mobile platforms run on JAVA, for instance. JAVA has many stakeholders, and if it's managed correctly there's a fantastic opportunity for further research and product development."
Oracle's ability to successfully acquire and integrate Sun Microsystems and its JAVA platform will make the firm one of the more compelling and controversial stories in IT over the next year. The two developments are far from assured: The merger hasn't gone through, and the perception of Oracle as being unfriendly to open-source architectures has sparked chatter in the tech world about possible friction between the two firms, particularly given Oracle's traditional cultural bent toward an aggressive sales environment.
"The challenge for Oracle is that is hasn't been known for favoring open architectures; it sells applications," Kopp says. "But it has been branching out into middleware, and that's where assets like Sun may play out well."
Oracle's executives wouldn't comment on the pending Sun Microsystems acquisition, though CEO Larry Ellison has issued prepared remarks that go beyond Kopp's assessment, calling JAVA the "most important" piece of software Oracle has ever acquired.
But the firm's silence on Sun Microsystems and JAVA aside, the strategy of broadening its technology reach and client footprint through acquisition has been a major strategy at Oracle for years.
"We want to build a comprehensive range of solutions coming from a single source, whether it be retail banking, asset management, consumer lending, back office, core processing, and other functions," says Shanx Ravisankar, group vp of Oracle's Financial Services global unit.
Oracle's roster of acquisitions is a who's who in financial technology - Mumbai-based iFlex, Siebel and PeopleSoft are just a few examples of financial IT purchases from the past few years - and its goal has been to build a clearinghouse for financial technology, regardless of whether the institution's goal is to create operational efficiencies, respond to changing market conditions, or forge an enterprise-wide view of risks and exposures.
The breadth has allowed Oracle to position itself as a "one-stop" for institutions that are looking to control costs and simplify vendor management, and who may also be concerned about the viability of doing business with narrow, niche-oriented tech firms in a struggling economy.
"Our customers find Oracle's model as a way to lower unit cost by consolidating relationships, and lower the uncertainty by dealing with a smaller group of vendors," Ravisankar says.
