I want to say something unconventional here. I admire Oracle for sticking to hardware for so long. It's been over six years since the acquisition completed and quarter by quarter, people have been predicting that it's the quarter that Oracle will drop all hardware.
So far it didn't happen. I think this is the first quarter where cloud revenue exceeded hardware revenue, and yet no, hardware isn't getting dropped. If nothing else, Oracle is on its way to become Oracle's biggest hardware customer.
FWIW, Sun would be headed for bankruptcy if it wasn't for Oracle. Sun could never made the decisions that Oracle made, and heaven forbid if IBM took over Sun. It would have outright destroyed everything years ago and laid everyone off. As it is, Oracle increased investment into Solaris and SPARC and gave it direction and focus for the last six years. And apparently Oracle intend to continue, since they denied all these rumors as soon a quiet period ended.
Oh, last but not least -- Oracle more than made back all the money it spent on Sun and hardware is still profitable. Who would willingly decide to just drop a 4 billion dollar business?!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
