Sun shines on LAMP

This morning we announced that Sun Microsystems has signed a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL. Having spent the last four plus years working on making MySQL into a strong independent company, this is a bit of a change of strategy, but from my perspective it’s all for the good.

It’s no secret that MySQL was planning to go public in the very near future. In fact, many folks have been preparing for us to operate as a publicly held company. And in some respects, what’s changing here is that we will bypass our own IPO to be part of an already successful and much larger public company.

What’s exciting about this is that we have the potential to further accelerate the adoption of MySQL. Sun is already a multi-billion dollar company and has an amazing breadth of product line including plenty of open source products, like OpenSolaris, NetBeans, GlassFish, OpenOffice and more. Being part of Sun will give MySQL more resources for everything from development, support, services, sales and marketing. That means we can better serve our community and customers worldwide.

In the meetings I’ve had with Sun execs I’ve been impressed with how similar the culture is to MySQL. It’s a technology-driven company that has recently staked its growth on open source. And with this acquisition, Sun not only cements its position as the number one open source company, its also a game-changing move in the tech sector. I think this is a vote of confidence not only in MySQL but in open source in general.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz and Software EVP Rich Green get full credit for turning Sun into a multi-platform company with a core focus on open source. These have been big changes at Sun in recent years. It’s good to see Sun is in great shape once again. Sun understands the power of community and how that enables them to have a larger footprint in the industry. And many of Sun’s partners are also MySQL partners including AMD, Dell, IBM, Intel, Red Hat, Microsoft and Oracle. So MySQL will continue to support all the existing platforms, languages and partners. We’re not going to forget about our users and partners who helped create such a large community. We are committed to a broad range of platforms and languages, whether it’s Windows, Linux, Mac OS/X, I5/OS, PHP, Ruby, C#, VB.Net and many others.

While some folks might see this move as a competitive move against Oracle, I don’t think that’s the case. MySQL has never attempted to compete head-on against the big DBMS companies. Instead, we’ve focused on our appeal to Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Telco and Softare-as-a-Service or on-demand companies. In many cases, MySQL co-exists with traditional database offerings. For example, the Independent Oracle Users GroupIOUG reported that a third of their members have MySQL in production along with Oracle. And I don’t expect that situation to change.

In the past few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with many folks over at Sun ranging from top execs to distinguished engineers and marketing managers. All of them talk the talk and walk the walk. They understand open source. They understand innovation. They understand communities. And they understand what MySQL brings to the table. They are a straightforward bunch; no game playing. And their commitment to open source is as deep as any I’ve seen. For Sun it’s not a religious issue, but it is part of an overall strategy to change the world. What could be better?

Oh, yeah. Best of all, I still have the same boss, Marten Mickos. Marten will continue to run MySQL inside of Sun. The founders and management team are on board. I’m personally excited about being a part of Sun and helping to take MySQL and open source to the next level.

Let me know what questions you have and I will post some follow up items later in the week.