With Oracle (ORCL) going to the mattresses with the European Union (EU) over its proposed Sun (JAVA) acquisition, many analysts are suggesting Oracle walk away from Sun. I am suggesting Oracle walk away from the EU. Larry Ellison should ask himself whether it is even worthwhile for Snoracle to do business in such a backwater.
The EU is the place that 50 years after Plan Calcul is still trying to launch a nativist information technology (IT) company to compete with IBM. Larry, ask Neelie about Tulip. Remember Cii and that crazy Siemens, ICL, Nixdorf, Bull, Olivetti thing in the mid 70s. No prolonged effort to get approval of the Sun acquisition is going to change that basic dynamic. No three-year effort to get to the Court of First Instance of Last Resort in Strasbourg is going to be worth spending all that time walking around in Stalinist architecture during days of little sunshine (the EU does not work in the summer and it rains all the time there in the spring).
So why go through the hassle of dealing with EU regulators when it appears the return on investment is so low? That’s especially true if Oracle is serious about keeping and growing Sun’s systems/storage business. Software—the market that Oracle knows well—is portable. But message to Redwood Shores:
"With Sun, comes widgets."
So Larry this should be the opening position at the meeting on November 25, if you haven’t told the EU already:
"Approve the Sun deal or the new Snoracle does not do business in the EU."
(Update on my post of November 10 about not being able to analyze the EU’s statement of objections, I received the following from the EU’s crack PR folks: “We regret to inform you that Statements of Objections are not documents of public domain. They are sent to the parties concerned in the transaction.” So I’ll have to wait until later this week when SAP leaks it to the Wall St. Journal.)
-- Dennis Byron
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