Sun Completes $1B Buyout of MySQL

Sun Microsystems officials said they are ready to start working with MySQL customers and developers after finalizing its $1 billion acquisition of the open-source database software company.

Sun CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz, along with Rich Green, executive vice president of software, and Mårten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL AB and now the senior vice president of Sun's new software database group, discussed what brought the two companies together in a Feb. 26 press conference.

"MySQL is the world's most popular open-source database, and the company has been incredibly successful in building an impressive customer base that includes market leaders such as Facebook, Google, Nokia Siemens, YouTube, and one of the largest user and developer communities on the Internet, spanning Linux, Windows, Solaris, and every hardware platform in the market," Schwartz said.

Sun's executives maintain that the acquisition is good for both companies: Sun is a $14 billion, 17,000-person company with extensive research and development experience in such software technologies as Open Solaris, Java, NetBeans and GlassFish. With 11 million users, MySQL holds almost 50 percent of the open source segment of the $15 billion database market.

Green also announced, "the immediate availability of MySQL's complete portfolio and global support and service offerings. Today Sun is offering 7 by 24 year-round global class enterprise database subscriptions and services for the entire MySQL product line."

Green also said Sun would offer "broad multiplatform support, including Solaris, Linux and Windows," is available under what the company has dubbed the "MySQL Unlimited" program. The program enables costumers to deploy and manage unlimited numbers of MySQL servers at a flat annual fee, he said. Customers can sign up for MySQL enterprise trial subscriptions at no cost, at mysql.com/trials and learn more about the support offerings at mysql.com/unlimited.

Sun has spent the past five years becoming a highly-visible player in the open-source software market. In 2004, the company created the Open Solaris project to build a community collaborative operating system.

Sun also released ZFS file system and the DTrace application troubleshooting tool as open-source projects. Both the file system and the tool have been working their way into other operating system. two weeks ago Sun acquired Innotek for its VirtualBox open-source desktop virtualization platform.

"What we've done with MySQL is really completed our capacity to deliver a holistic, high-quality, secure but completely open source operating platform for the network," Schwartz said. "To the extent we can deliver that complete platform, we think there's a massive opportunity not simply in the software market, but the computing market, the storage market, as well as the network market."

To reach out to their Sun and MySQL partners, customers, and the database application development community, Sun executives have planned a goodwill tour in over 20 major cities, including New York, London, St. Petersburg, Russia and Hyderabad, India, starting with a virtual town hall on March 4, 2008.

The tour will end with the commencement of the MySQL Conference and Expo in Santa Barbara, Calif., from April 14-17.