Sun buys MySQL

Good news for Marten Mickos and the people who run MySQL (Sun paid $800 Million in cash and $200 Million in Options) but it will be interesting to see what happens to the Open Source part of it once Sun has had a while to incorporate it into the Sun Corporate Culture. From ZD Net:

Sun acquires MySQL; Adds to its software stack
Sun Microsystems is taking the plunge into the database market with the purchase of open source database developer MySQL for $1 billion ($800 million in cash in exchange for all MySQL stock and assumption of approximately $200 million in options).

With the move, announced Wednesday, Sun takes a big leap into the $15 billion database market and pits it against the likes of Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. MySQL (all resources) also gives Sun entry to some customers that may be interested in buying more equipment and software. MySQL counts Facebook, Google, Nokia and Baidu as customers.

During a conference call this morning Sun and MySQL executives sang kumbaya. On the call, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz called the MySQL deal the �most important acquisition in history of company� and added that the database firm will have �a central role� as Sun rolls out its central role as rolls out its open source strategy. Sun is in the process rolling up a complete open source stack, becoming the largest open source organization of world.

Here�s what makes MySQL interesting to Sun. About 20 percent of MySQL deployments run on Solaris, according to Sun estimates outlined on a conference call. Seventy five percent of MySQL deployments are not on Sun hardware. That gives Sun an opportunity to bundle hardware software and services. Although Schwartz noted that the software and hardware business operate separately MySQL could give Sun some leverage as customers look to consolidate vendors.

Like i said, it will be interesting to see what happens. I use MySQL -- the blog runs on it and I use it for a couple other applications both on this server and on systems at home. My next-to-last group at MSFT was the SQL Server group and I got to know MSFT's version fairly intimately. I like the MySQL implementation a lot. MySQL is not as complete as the MSFT SQL Server but it's got all the critical bells and whistles and it runs really reliably. And with a sale price of One Billion, I bet there is much rejoicing in Sweden tonight...