14 DAY TRIAL // Oracle made a $7.4 billion bid to buy Sun Microsystems in spring but the deal hasn't exactly gone smoothly since. It managed to get Sun's shareholders’ approval and pass the US' DOJ inquiry but it is still undergoing an antitrust investigation in the EU, which is expected to drag on until next year and Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison is less than pleased with the delay saying it's costing Sun $100 million every month.
Ellison is concerned that the longer it drags on the more Sun's competitors in the hardware business continue to eat away at the company's share. "The longer this takes, the more money Sun is going to lose, and that's not good for anybody," Ellison told the crowd at the San Jose Fairmont Hotel, in an event organized by the nonprofit Churchill Club. "We want to get this done," he said, speaking of the acquisition, and added that the company intended "to save as many jobs as we can."
However, he was confident that the deal would eventually get the EU's approval, just like it did in the US, making the wait even more frustrating. “The US took their time and deliberations and cleared it. They said it was overwhelmingly a pro-competitive deal. The Europeans have to do their job, but I think once they do their job, they’ll come to the same conclusion,” he said.
The problem is that uncertainty over the faith of Sun's hardware business is driving customers away to IMB or HP, creating huge problems for an already troubled company. The fear was that Oracle, which never competed in the hardware business, would have no interest in doing so and would sell off the unit or start rebadging servers from other manufacturers. Recently though, Oracle has started saying that it will stick with the hardware business and that it plans to completely integrate it into its business model by offering complete software and hardware solutions to compete with IBM in this market as well.