I've been contemplating Oracle's proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems. As an erstwhile programmer, I'm concerned about Oracle's ability to be faithful to Sun's many relatively "open" software infrastructure undertakings: the Java programming language, OpenOffice, and, most importantly, MySQL, which has been a direct competitor of Oracle's core database products.
I don't trust Oracle to stay committed to any of these product lines. The best case scenario would involve them spinning them off, somehow, but if I'm guessing correctly, it was for these "periferal" lines-of-business that Oracle decided to take on Sun in the first place — the hardware line that most analysts view as the central part of Sun's business is both shrinking, and uninteresting to Larry Ellison's empire-building schemes.
As a shareholder (I own a tiny number of shares in each company), I'm more sanguine. It means I don't have to fear a bankruptcy by Sun (which seemed possible, especially after the failed IBM bid), and I can therefore recover at least some of my invested value in that company. And Oracle has a good record of profitably absorbing other businesses.
Oracle will struggle more with Sun than many of its previous acquisitions, due not least to that hardware business, but I expect there's a very good chance they will figure out how to make money from the whole deal, eventually. Oracle is stunningly good at manipulating their long-term revenue streams and cross-selling products.
After all, it was my experience as an IT worker of a major Oracle customer that convinced me they were a good stock to own – those people sell some of the most well-marketed vaporware in the world of ERP applications. And I don't really mean vaporware negatively – all major ERP systems are basically vaporware at the moment of sale: those kinds of million-dollar sales are little more than a handshake that says, "we will build what you need."