Ellison: Sun losing millions, keeping MySQL

Jake Widman
Wednesday, 23 September 2009 05:38

IT Industry - Strategy

Speaking at a forum in Silicon Valley, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said that the delay while European Union regulators consider whether to approve Oracle's acquisition of Sun is costing the latter company US$100 million a month. He also insisted that the Oracle would maintain MySQL and outlined an ambitious future for the combined companies.

Oracle's $7 billion bid to acquire Sun Microsystems was announced in April and approved by the U.S. Justice Department in August.

But earlier this month, European Commision Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes outlined concerns over possible anticompetitive effects "when the world's leading proprietary database company proposes to take over the world's leading open source database company." Kroes said the Commission would make an in-depth investigation of the acquisition, a process that could take until January.

Interviewed by former Sun executive Ed Zander at an event at the Churchill Club, a Silicon Valley business forum, Ellison said the delay is costing Sun about $100 million a month.

"The longer this takes, the more money Sun is going to lose," said Ellison, according to Reuters.

Nevertheless, Ellison said, Oracle has no plans to move MySQL out of the company. "We're not going to spin it off," he said, expressing confidence that the European Commission would come to the same conclusion as the U.S. Justice Department.

Ellison went on to discuss a future in which Oracle is the dominant company in enterprise computing.

Ellison outlines his vision on Page 2.