Ellison smacks lips over chips, NetApp

Oracle boss Larry Ellison said he'd love to have the 60 per cent of NetApp's business that plugs NetApp boxes into Oracle software, hinting that a NetApp purchase could be on his mind. The Oracle boss has also hinted that a chip maker could be on his buy list, as he looks to build-out his stack-in-a-box vision. He was …

[blah 5]

So, Larry wants to be Thomas Watson, Jr?

Somebody should tell him to quit looking in his rear view mirror. While I do see some serious consolidation in the marketplace going on, I really doubt that we'll go back to the bad old days of the '50s through the '80s where we bought everything from a single vendor. That way leads to madness and despair. ;)

[registered]

Why not?!

UCS anyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

UCS just a blade - big deal

UCS is hardly an integrated stack of servers, storage and networking from one player. It's a blade server that relies on someone else's storage. HP only player in town with everything in house.

[Tom 38]

A chip maker?

What, in addition to the $7.4bn he spent acquiring the last chip maker? SPARC not good enough? Given that they have acquired a chip designer, wouldn't they just then license ARM if they wanted ARM, rather than buy another licensee?

[Matt Bryant]

RE: A chip maker?

Surely not Fujitsu! Consider the options - he can't afford Intel or IBM, the only real enterprise UNIX CPU designers left. Not sure Larry has the money to swallow AMD, and then AMD would have to design a new leap forward in CPU tech to escape the Intel machine. ARM simply isn't ready for mainstream commercial servers let alone competition with enterprise CPUs like Power, Itanium or even SPARC64. So that leaves the SPARC64 arm of Fujitsu - maybe he'll buy that chunk of the Fujitsu business, he can't afford to buy the whole corporation. Not sure why he needs to - he couldn't guarantee the chip designers involved would want to work for him, and the SPARC designs are supposedly open anyway. However, it is a massive slap in the face of the few Sun CPU engineers left at Oracle, he just told them they're not up to the job! All in all, it just sounds like more Larry showmanship in an attempt to hoodwink old Sun customers into thinking there is a future in Oracle server hardware.

[Tom Samplonius]

Re: A chip maker?

"What, in addition to the $7.4bn he spent acquiring the last chip maker? SPARC not good enough?"

That question doesn't need to be asked. Of course, SPARC isn't good enough. Even Sun knew that. And of the 7.4B, little of it was chips. The value in Sun was the customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A chip maker

Er, Sun never *manufactured* any of it's own CPUs. So, no Larry didn't fork out $7.4 for a chip maker.

[amanfromMars 1]

Registered Interest in a Novel and Novell Field with No Holds Barred

"Oracle is seriously convinced that having separate server, storage and networking silos is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Co-president and Oracle newbie Mark Hurd said: “[We need to] think about the consolidation of servers, storage, and network capability … I don’t think the market will be here over the next five years in traditional silos of servers, storage, and networking.”

The company is not interested in individual storage arrays but in storage infrastructure systems, and it wants to leverage its Sun ZFS technology. The Oracle and NetApp lawsuits against each other around ZFS were mutually dismissed a few days ago."

Seems as if someone has been giving Larry, Fast Flash Instruction on Creative Cloud Crowd Coursing Command and Control for, well ...... what else is there worth more doing with IT than MetaDataBase Realisation for Virtual Reality ProgramMING.*

And that is an Absolute Field of both Alien Control and Foreign Command Interest to more than just Larry, Uncle Sam and Miliary Forces ... who have lusciously juicy open cheque books ...... http://cryptome.org/dodi/nsa-utah-award.pdf

$1,198,950,000.00 builds quite a pad ..... but then you have to ensure it is filled with Future Intelligence and not Present Garbage, for only the Phormer will deliver Mega Successful Programs and Innovative MetaData Projects.

* My apologies for that garbled prose. But you know exactly what I mean, I'm sure, ... right?.!:-)

[Trevor_Pott]

Chip maker

Not CPU. GPU. Or other custom chip manufacturer. They have a CPU. What they don't have is something that basically serves as an "Oracle Database Accelerator." Remember, the goal is to make their "complete stack" more appealing than anyone else's. Imagine Oracle owning nVidia. Instead of GPU HPC clusters: GPU Oracle Databasen.

For that matter “silicon is very important to us” can mean RAM or flash as well. Custom flash with special DIMMS on SPARC chips with a DB accelerator on Oracle storage giving you something-in-a-box.

I’d call it a mainframe, but hey…we used to call “cloud computing” “utility computing” back in the day too..

[Angrr]

He wishes

I doubt even he has the money to out buy them. Sun was very smart, all their good engineers have now left.

[Billl]

Duh

Larry's talking about competing with NetApp, not buying them -- duh. I think it's pretty clear that when Larry said he wanted the 60% of NetAPP's business, he was talking about it going to ZFS storage. If they bought NetApp they would have to get rid of NetApp's tech or Sun's. My guess is Sun's, but I doubt that's what he'll do.

As far as buying a chip company, I bet the guy that said it will be Fujitsu's business is right. Interesting.