In a November 16 blogpost, despite the cursory view of some analysts who say withdrawing from the European Union (EU) enterprise-software market is not feasible for Oracle (ORCL), I wrote that Oracle's withdrawal was not only feasible but something Oracle’s board is really obligated to consider. Microsoft (MSFT) in fact mentions the option specifically in its SEC filings in discussing its always contentious dealings with the Eurocrats. The catalyst for the blog posts is the EU Competition Commission’s statement of objections against the Oracle acquisition of Sun (JAVA), objections reportedly based on Sun ownership of the MySQL relational database product. (I say ‘reportedly’ because the EU, with all its fondness for openness, does not openly release its statements of objections.)
It’s interesting the way the debate spins out from that point. Over on Information Week, Bob Evans has already written Larry Ellison’s withdrawal letter to its EU customers, calling European information technology (IT) professionals to the barricades against Neelie the Sixteenth (or Neelie Antoinette, whichever you prefer). At InfoWorld, Bill Snyder talks to a lot of open source gurus and finds that no one except the MariaDB MySQL fork guys stands to gain.
When Bill called me about my November 16 post, he asked,
“But why would Oracle want to give up a four-to-six-billion-dollar annual revenue stream for the trivial revenue stream MySQL generates?”
It’s a good question but my answer to Bill is
“It doesn’t matter to me why Oracle wants MySQL”
The issue is that the EU shouldn’t be able to tilt the playing field in favor of the EU homeboys trying to start the company that Snyder references. The EU has similarly tried to tilt the browser market playing field in favor of some Norwegian whiners with their free-market-loser product called Opera.
This distortion of market dynamics by politicians is bad for EU IT consumers and it is bad for enterprise software suppliers in general. And its probably even bad for the EU. Oracle’s opening position at the meeting on November 25, if it hasn’t told the EU this already, should be:
"Approve the Sun deal or the new Snoracle does not do business in the EU."
Close down that factory in Scotland and the warehouse in the Netherlands. Send your citizens over the border into the Ukraine to get new software or to the UAE for training. (I assume they are already getting their software maintenance calls answered from India.) Take out maybe 20,000 EU jobs. At such a high percentage of the total workforce as compared to percentage of the revenue stream the EU will contribute to Snoracle, it would be well worth it even with onerous severance payments.
And Oracle shareholders will also save the multi-billion-dollar payments that the EU weaseled out of Steve Ballmer.
And then as Bob Evans points out, listen to the EU citizens scream at its Competition Commission.
-- Dennis Byron
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