Tag: sun

Oracle Buys Sun for $7.4 Billion

April 20th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Industry No comments - Tags: , , , , , , ,

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Following Sun Microsystems’ decline of around $7 billion from IBM, the company has accepted an acquisition offer of $7.4 billion from Oracle.

The deal was announced today between Sun and Oracle that Sun will be purchased at a premium price of $9.50 per share in cash, valuing Sun Microsystems at a grand total of $7.4 billion. It was speculated that IBM also offered Sun $9.50 per share a few weeks ago.

Safra Catz, the president of Oracle said the following in a statement regarding the takeover:

We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle’s earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined.

The Sun-Oracle deal was unanimously agreed on by the Sun board, which means that Sun Microsystems is a lot more comfortable with the terms and agreements offered by Oracle. You may recall that the licensing agreements presented by IBM in their acquisition offer resulted in the deal falling apart at the last minute.

Oracle is planning to monetize Sun as much as possible in a bid to turn around the $209 million quarterly loss and 11% year over year drop in profits Sun has been suffering from. The acquisition boosted Sun’s shares by 35% to $9.07 per share.

With the Sun acquisition, Oracle has also managed to get its hands on both MySQL and Java in one move – something I’m sure their very pleased about. In 2007 Oracle reportedly offered Sun $850 million for MySQL, which Sun ultimately turned down. What’s worrying users is Oracle’s intent to make money from MySQL, which has been freely available (and has gained incredible popularity) as a web database, which powers the website you’re reading right now.

IT Pay Drops Slightly In Q1 2009

April 17th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Industry No comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

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Photo by Cayusa

A recently released study reveals that there has been a 0.5% decrease in the amount of money IT experts are being paid for services in the first quarter of 2009.

The study was conducted by Foote Partners, a research firm that actively monitors IT skills payment.

The main casualties are C++, AIX, dBase and AIX, which saw a 25% drop in pay when compared to Q1 2008. This isn’t as bad as PowerBuilder however, who’s coders’ pay declined by 50% when compared to a year before in the uncertified skills category.

Not all is looking down however – 46 skills actually rose in value in Q1 2009. Linux skills grew a whopping 28.6% in the uncertified skills category. As did Apache Web server skills and Java skills, whom also saw significant gains to 25% and 20% respectively.

The certified skills pay tell a similar story, with both major gains and losses. Pay for HP/Certified Systems Engineers grew by a solid 14.3%, with Sun Certified Java programmers and HP/Accredited Integration Specialists got a comfortable bump of 13.5% and 12.5% respectively.

On the other end of the spectrum, Prosoft Master CIW Administration payment fell by 25% – which is rather significant.

The full report is available here.

Sun Rejects IBM Offer, Shares Nosedive

April 6th, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Industry No comments - Tags: , , , , , ,

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In a surprise move, Sun Microsystems turns down IBM’s offer for acquisition. IBM responded by withdrawing its offer indefinitely. This is an unexpected occurrence, as a few days ago New York Times sources reported that a Sun-IBM deal was sure to be agreed on.

After the announcement of the IBM withdrawal, Sun’s shares dropped by a whopping 23% today to $6.68 per share. It should come as a relief however to Sun stockholders that despite a 23% drop in value, Sun shares are still way above  the $4.97 per share price-point that it was trading at prior to the IBM acquisition talks.It is reported that IBM’s offer was around the $9.40 mark per share (not the $9.50 per share price expected last week), resulting in Sun Microsystems being valued at $7 billion.

Sun stated, thus far, that the deal was turned down due to the offer being undervalued, as well as licensing agreements that were far to flexible – potentially allowing IBM to walk away from any deal at any time they pleased. The Wall Street Journal has an article stating that in addition to the above disputes about the deal, the Sun board is split on a decision.

Either way, it appears as if Sun will remain independent for a time being, as the company wasn’t exactly being contested by other companies looking to increase their hold on the server market.

IBM Will Buy Sun for $7 Billion

April 3rd, 2009 · Michael Struwig · Featured, Industry No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

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IBM is almost sure to buy rival Sun Microsystems for $7 billion or at $9.50 per share.

This deal has been going on for an extremely long time, from IBM combing through Sun’s contracts and licensing deals to IBM decreasing its bid from $10 a share to $9.50. It finally seems to be drawing to a close, and if the deal is sealed (which The New York Times’ sources claim is almost sure to go through) IBM will have market dominance in UNIX-based servers.

Sun has been struggling for a large amount of time financially, but many people will be said to see the creators of Java, MySQL, and the Solaris operating system go. Many also question whether Solaris will survive the takeover. More worryingly however is that with Sun under IBM control, only Fujitsu and HP are left in a UNIX market that is dominated by IBM.