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Oracle Businesses Software Sun Microsystems Virtualization

Oracle To Stop Developing Sun Virtualization Technologies 145

Posted by samzenpus from the end-of-the-line dept.
hypnosec writes "Oracle will soon be announcing its decision to stop development of Sun virtualization technologies including Sun Ray Software and Hardware, Oracle Virtual Desktop Client, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) product lines. In an update to its support policies [Oracle support login required] for virtualization software and hardware, the database company has revealed that this decision is a result of its efforts to 'tightly align Oracle's future desktop virtualization portfolio investments with Oracle Corporation's overall core business strategy.'"
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Oracle To Stop Developing Sun Virtualization Technologies More

Oracle To Stop Developing Sun Virtualization Technologies

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  • Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:28PM (#44289901)

    Oracle had a business strategy beyond "turn everything we touch into shit"?

    • Re:Wait... (Score:5, Funny)

      by sjames ( 1099 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:44PM (#44290047) Homepage Journal

      Something about synergistically embiggening Larry's masculinity compensation plumage for great justice.

    • "Oracle had a business strategy beyond "turn everything we touch into shit"?"

      What? NO! This is part of their "turn everything to shit" campaign. Wait... I see. You mean OP is implying there is something beyond our known reality. Let's call it... the Twilight Zone.

    • Oracle had a business strategy beyond "turn everything we touch into shit"?

      They do: "Turn everything we touch into shit and charge a friggin' ransom for it"

    • There is the more relevant buy out and shut down our competitors business strategy.

  • That's a shame (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cold fjord ( 826450 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:29PM (#44289917)

    The Sun Rays are pretty handing technology. I was surprised at how well they work.

  • Fuck you Oracle (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:30PM (#44289919)

    You will not expand your market, you will shrivel, only your bribes to executives will keep you afloat. You destroyed a company that contributed more to the furtherance of computing and society as a whole than you will ever be able to achieve with your selfish business strategies and practices.

    • 1 Person Liked this. Be the first of your friends!

      (ps Karma Bonus forfeited ;-) )

      • 1) Please, stop that.

        2) Until someone can make a replacement for RAC that doesn't suck, isn't Microsoft**, won't cost a fortune, and doesn't require a degree in Cryptology to run? They'll (unfortunately) be around for a long, long time.

          *sigh*... I wish Postgres was better...

        ** SQL Server is cute and all, but tends to buckle under very heavy loads, and the clustering tech leaves way too much to be desired.

  • Soon they kill Solaris (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:30PM (#44289923)

    This coming on the heals of XenServer going open source.
    As soon as they realize the futile effort of supporting Sun hardware (Niagara, Sparc) and Solaris which are not selling well, they will also cease supporting them as well.
    Frankly, I think IBM would have been a better company to have owned Sun and its assets.

  • Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued (Score:5, Informative)

    by dcavens ( 178673 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:30PM (#44289929)

    As I had to RTFA to figure this out, thought I'd pass on that VirtualBox is still going to be actively developed.

      • Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued (Score:5, Informative)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:48PM (#44290091)

        For now.

        Virtualbox is GPLed free software. Oracle owns the domain and trademark, so they could force everyone to change the name, and they could use FUD to scare people off. But they cannot kill it. It would be like their efforts to kill MySQL and OpenOffice. Those projects were set back some, and renamed, but they live on.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          A lot of the open source vbox stuff doesn't work well for me - USB and sharing under linux.

          Hence I am using the oracle version, which is unfortunate.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by LoRdTAW ( 99712 )

            OSE is always behind the commercial version. I stopped using OSE for precisely the same reason you did.

            If oracle ever decides to drop virtualbox then I hope they release the commercial code so it can be merged into OSE.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

              OSE is always behind the commercial version. I stopped using OSE for precisely the same reason you did.

              If oracle ever decides to drop virtualbox then I hope they release the commercial code so it can be merged into OSE.

              OSE and Commercial are one and the same these days - actually. (I think it changed in Vbox4). So the version you get with Linux is the same Oracle distributes, unless they decided to compile it themselves. But as long as they didn't change the interfaces, it's still good.

              What Oracle had in th

        • For now.

          Virtualbox is GPLed free software. Oracle owns the domain and trademark, so they could force everyone to change the name, and they could use FUD to scare people off. But they cannot kill it. It would be like their efforts to kill MySQL and OpenOffice. Those projects were set back some, and renamed, but they live on.

          I sure as hell hope so I have over a dozen VirtualBox VMs that I use for development and I am in no mood to migrate.

          • A dozen, seriously? I know folks who have migrated hundreds of VirtualBox VMs to KVM. It's not that difficult.

            I use VirtualBox on my MacBook to run Debian on a handful of VMs, but anything persistent, for both dev and production, is on hosts running KVM.

            • laziness has no minimum requirement.
            • I concur. KVM will run VM's created in vbox, as well as vmware with pretty much no nasty side-effects.

            • you got any hints how to do this? i tried migrating a debian wheezy image across (sid host) today and never managed to get bridged networking working, also it was slow as mollasses.

              i assume you don't have to make stupid scripts up to add a tap interface for each vm like its still 1990 do you? i converted my eth0 to br0 and all i could do was ping the host from the guest and vice versa, no LAN/WAN access. that was using the virtio driver and the vhost_net module.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The submitter undoubtedly knew that VirtualBox would be continued, but he also knew that the story wouldn't be accepted if it mentioned that fact, because it's all we're going to talk about in this thread.

    • As I had to RTFA to figure this out, thought I'd pass on that VirtualBox is still going to be actively developed.

      Virtualbox development, however, is now going to "tightly align ... with Oracle Corporation's overall core business strategy."

      Something tells me we may have a fork, and possibly a shift in Qemu development energy in the future.

    • VirtualBox should be forked NOW (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I very much doubt that anyone on the planet still lives in that happy place where Oracle continues open source development of VirtualBox indefinitely with no strings attached.

      After the Java debacle against Google's Dalvik, it's abundantly clear that Oracle harbors no love for open source at all, and just sees it as a way of getting a lot of people dependent on its code ready for the harvesting.

      Because of this, I recommend forking VirtualBox sooner rather than later. The fork doesn't have to be anything mor

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kwerle ( 39371 )

      Thanks for summarizing the summary - that's the only bit I care about.

  • Successor is...? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Where do I click to download a copy of "overall core business strategy"? I don't speak PR.

  • VirtualBox: Don't panic! (Score:5, Informative)

    by DigitAl56K ( 805623 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:31PM (#44289941)

    If, like me, the summary freaked you out, you'll be happy to hear that VirtualBox is not getting the axe.

  • Oracle support login required (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScottCooperDotNet ( 929575 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:45PM (#44290057)

    Yet another reason to avoid helping Larry buy another yacht.

  • What does Oracle even do anymore? All they've been doing lately is killing off products/projects. Same with HP.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Killing Sun Products/Projects, fucking customers over and sueing Google.

    • Re:What does Oracle even do anymore? (Score:5, Informative)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @07:14PM (#44290247)
      I doubt they would be killing them off if they were profitable. I do a lot of work in the virtualization and VDI space (not all of it by choice, mind you) and I have never run into anyone even asking about Oracle in those regards. AFAIK the only thing that could be considered really successful is Virtual Box and it's sticking around, thank [omnipotent bearded deity #4].

      • I doubt they would be killing them off if they were profitable. I do a lot of work in the virtualization and VDI space (not all of it by choice, mind you) and I have never run into anyone even asking about Oracle in those regards. AFAIK the only thing that could be considered really successful is Virtual Box and it's sticking around, thank [omnipotent bearded deity #4].

        The problem here is that profitable is NOT always the same as important, useful, or any number of other virtues essential to technological progress.

        Sun provided a lot of important products - Java being one of their most prominent examples. But profitable, it wasn't.

        A lot of things that make you profitable actually make you less useful. Stuff like arbitrary tricks to ensure vendor lock-in, expensive products that winnow out potential contributors because they cannot afford the buy-in, developing a protective

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 )
          A product can be profitable without being a direct revenue source if it drives profits in other areas of the business. Sun made money from java because it helped drive their business by promoting their platform and driving sales of their commercial products/services/licensing revolving around that platform.

          On the flip side a product can be important, useful, etc and still be a money hole for a company. If that's the case, more than likely the company will eventually ditch it.

          I'd argue that in this c

    • What does Oracle even do anymore? All they've been doing lately is killing off products/projects. Same with HP.

      Yes, and IBM [slashdot.org] and Apple [slashdot.org] and Google [slashdot.org]... US tax, SEC and patent law as well as Fed/Obama helicopter drops assures that Goliath companies grow by absorbing smaller companies, not by innovation. And the overhead of a Goliath company assures that anything that doesn't add half a billion or more to the balance sheet will be killed. The good news is that this leaves huge holes in the market which can be filled by smaller companies. Sun Ray has been around for more than a decade and if you've seen it in action, you m

    • Re:What does Oracle even do anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rob_Bryerton ( 606093 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @08:35PM (#44290937) Homepage
      Oracle has a huge, HUGE product portfolio. ERP, middle-ware, you name it.

      My opinion is that they bought Sun to gain ownership and control of Java, period. Full stop. Tons of their software relies heavily on it.

      I also think they will eventually discard or sell off every last bit of the former Sun properties/technologies (other than Java) not only because very little of it is relevant or profitable anymore, but also to discard the employees who develop and support these items.

      Oracle: Where Technology Goes to Die.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )

      They sell a well know database used for relational and data warehousing
      They own a 1/2 dozen other important databases: MySQL, Berkley, Times Ten...
      The Java ecosystem
      JD Edwards ERP
      Peoplesoft (#1 HR)
      Oracle Financials
      Oracle CRM
      Oracle Fusion Middleware
      Oracle Business Analytics
      etc...

      They are huge and they do a ton.

  • Diverse company... (Score:3)

    by CCarrot ( 1562079 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:58PM (#44290159)

    "Oracle To Stop Developing Sun Virtualization Technologies"

    Huh. I didn't even know they were in the tanning bed business...better grab one while they're 'hot'! :p

  • Fork you Oracle! (Score:5, Funny)

    by DrJimbo ( 594231 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:59PM (#44290167)
    FTFW

  • The anti Oracle bias is quite clear on this thread but just consider...Sun was a horribly run company. Jonathan Schwartz had this bizarre notion that if they gave everything away for free they could somehow make money off it. We all saw how that turned out. Sure, Sparc stations were pretty cool...back in the 90's. But then they got leapfrogged by commodity servers and never caught up. Sun failed to innovate so it got swallowed up by the bigger fish.

    Look - I'm the first to admit that Ellison is a first class

    • Sure, Sparc stations were pretty cool...back in the 90's. But then they got leapfrogged by commodity servers and never caught up.

      Did you mean "commodity desktops" there? Sun's still selling SPARC servers, but the SPARCstation line's dead at the hands of PC's running {Windows,Linux,whatever}.

    • Yes, and Scott McNealy was not much better than Ellison. Attempts to monopolise the use of Unix just alienated the rest of the industry, meaning that Sun had few friends when the going got tough. I predicted their demise many years ago, and said at the time that they should have merged with someone like Dell while they had the chance - but of course that would only have happened over Scott McNealy's dead body.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jbolden ( 176878 )

        When did Sun attempt to monopolize Unix? During most of the Sun years: SGI, SCO, Dec, Compaq, AIX (IBM)... were all players. And then of course the Linux and the BSDs came along and were major players.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amiga3D ( 567632 )

      I disagree with you. Larry Ellison is a third class prick.

    • Re:Another take on this... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @08:11PM (#44290673)
      My theory is that thousands of dot bombs were buying Sun stuff in the boom and the success at that point didn't even depend on management turning up, so they got lazy and could not adapt to conditions after the crash. After that they couldn't even sell excellent stuff to people that really wanted it, not unless the customers had a hidden black-ops budget and orders to kill any approaching accountants on sight (the same problem IBM has with power stuff now). Increasing scarcity meant that a lot of commercial software no longer had the newer versions ported to Sparc and there wasn't really a way to justify buying Sun x86 gear. So Sun ended up trying to push a lot of good stuff at three times the price of stuff that was half as good, which meant people would just go out and buy two of the things that were half as good instead.

    • Re:Another take on this... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by oxdas ( 2447598 ) on Monday July 15, 2013 @08:12PM (#44290677)

      I don't think most people would hate Oracle if all they did was "keep what works and get rid of what doesn't." After all, Google dumps far more unprofitable products each year and they have a much better reputation on these boards. Oracle has earned its reputation by repeatedly attacking the very foundations of the tech industry in the (short-sighted) pursuit of higher profit margins from more vendor lock-in. This is the root of the anti-Oracle bias, not scrapping a few products.

      • Yeah that's a fair point and I'm not disputing it. I just think that in this case Sun would have gone down either way, given their bad management. Would IBM be a better partner? Sure...but IBM isn't exactly a model corporate citizen either. Just ask any of the thousands of US based employees that have been laid off in the face of record profits.

        I know that I'm in the minority here - and I don't have a horse in the race either way - I'm just trying to stir up some spirited debate on it.

        Cheers.

  • When they say

    tightly align Oracle's future desktop virtualization portfolio investments with Oracle Corporation's overall core business strategy

    It means

    The thing makes money, but not enough for our greedy shareholders, therefore let us drop it.

  • Sad, truly sad. I used to work for Sun, there were wonderful, bright, and talented people working there. Not to mention some really great products, like the SunRay, as well as lots of good stuff in the pipeline. Oracle could've revitalized Sun. Instead, they completely screwed up. Besides ruining a perfectly good product line, they gutted one of the best support organizations in the industry and alienated long- time customers. I'm proud that I had a chance to work for Sun, and saddened to see it end up

  • Bullshit bingo (Score:3)

    by L. J. Beauregard ( 111334 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2013 @01:04AM (#44293041)

    "tightly align Oracle's future desktop virtualization portfolio investments with Oracle Corporation's overall core business strategy"

    WTF does that mean?

    • It means they're going to take the resources they put into virtualisation, and whatever technology they developed for it, and put it into whatever else the company is doing. They've managed to state the bleeding obvious in thousand-dollar words, as usual.

    • It means they're screwing their customers, but expect to be *thanked* for doing so.

  • Oracle makes it official (Score:3)

    by hypnosec ( 2231454 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2013 @03:22AM (#44293617) Journal
    For those who don't have an Oracle support login here is the official announcement through a blog post [oracle.com].
  • I just got hired and I only had the chance to work with marketing ThinLinc for 16 days before Oracle threw in the towel, obviously because they are scared of me... Now the Oracle customers themselves are taking my job and are flooding the Oracle mailing lists discussing alternatives to Sun Ray, for example ThinLinc, and we're already getting tons of request from Oracle customers who want to migrate to ThinLinc.

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