That leads me not to conclude they are failing at what I originally thought they were doing, but succeeding at something else and I am curious as to what that is.
Of course, it all boils down to whether they need to innovate in the first place. By now, Java is well established enough in the enterprise sector, just as BEA and Oracle DB are.
While small organizations can't afford a research division, Oracle certainly can. You'd think a company in the business of storing data might want to keep the guy who created ZFS, especially given how lively the database world is right now with NoSQL implementations, etc.
Still, will be interesting to see what happens with the seeds flung off from this tempest.
I was about to say Oracle has a serious human resources problem, but I noticed that, maybe, the problem is in calling humans "resources".
The operative problem here seems to be that Oracle doesn't value senior technical resources as much as some other companies might, or as much as those resources are used to being valued (and really, few people react well to a cut in autonomy, pay or respect.) They aren't willing to invest what is required, probably in the non-monetary sense as much as the monetary sense, to keep the top talent that came with the Sun acquisition. Personally, I agree that this sounds like a mistake, but this sort of attitude is not new for Oracle, and eh, they've done okay so far, so what do I know?
As many others have wondered in this set of comments and others, just what is Oracle's cunning plan to make their purchase of Sun worth the investment???
Personally I find the people that use this outdated term stop doing so when continually referred to as 'Outlook resources'.
Reminds me of my brother’s old company ( http://www.freud.com/ ). Their website says:
We employ humans, not resources. Job opportunities, contact the HR manager.
Good luck Jeff Bonwick.
http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/en_US/entry/zfs_dedup
P.S. also, the 2008 pics with Linus. I suppose there is no further story to go with those ...
Will be interesting to see what his startup is working on when they come out of stealth mode.
(1) Don't bother investing too much in R&D or figuring out the next big technology, just buy companies that are alread profitable (to name a few: Sun, BEA, Hyperion, Sieble, Innobase, PeopleSoft...).
(2) Immediately execute massive layoffs to increase profits even more. And suck every dollar possible out of the business for a couple years.
(3) After a while, the profits will start decreasing, but slowly enough (due to market inertia) that they have time to rinse and repeat. Go back to step 1.
Sometimes, Oracle will get lucky and be able to keep running a business good enough that the profits will somewhat be stable enough for years.
don't know about the rest in your list, can you specify what do you mean saying "profitable" in application to Sun?
Why it so surprising that ones who grounded the carrier didn't get to steer the rescuing ship?
