Oracle as a hardware vendor

It will be interesting to see how long the 'Sun' badge stays on the equipment. Right now I think the Sun name will stay on for 2 or 3 years or until Oracle exits the hardware game. I'm betting that they will start cutting hardware sooner, rather than later. Oracle loves fat maintenance contracts, so I could be wrong about them leaving the hardware game at all. There's a lot of recurring revenue to be had on the support contracts. But the Red Sun won't be able to compete in as many hardware arenas as it did in the past. I suspect underperforming lines will be culled quickly. I don't know what lines those may be. If, for example the blade servers, aren't selling like hot cakes (relatively speaking of course), then I think it'll be taken out behind the shed, old yeller style. Eventually I suspect all the server hardware will go this way, but that's just a speculative guess on my part. I know Oracle would love to have an App to Disk solution on hardware that no one else sells. Unfortunately it's no guaranty of success. If owning the whole solution where all it took to be successful, we'd all be running IBM and Apple.

Product areas I see getting killed off first are the blade systems. I could be mistaken but I don't think the blade idea has much steam. The barrier to entry for most companies is too high. Plus there's the 'eggs in one basket' problem that make a lot of systems architects and engineers shy away from blades. I wouldn't be surprised if they kill off the intel and AMD based systems as well. Let HP and Dell have that. Although they could try and keep it going to have that bundled solution. Systems preloaded with unbreakable linux or Solaris and preloaded with Oracle goodies as a value add. The first spin off will likely be StorageTek, which will likely kill the brand. IT history is full of brands that diminished under a new owner and then died after subsequent resale (Who uses wordperfect anymore?). The reason STK makes a a good spin-off candidate is there are other tape/storage vendors who would love to get their ends on their install base. The same can not be said for the x86 business or SPARC.

My current feeling is we'll see product streamlining first and then reductions/spin-offs. Mostly scalpel type cuts, but few major changes in the first 18 months. A lot will depend on the state of the IT industry. If IT purchasing is ramping up, Oracle will likely keep things going for 3 years or so. But if IT spending is in the tank or they botch the merging of the two support/sales organizations they'll go at the Sun hardware lines with a battle ax.