Analysis: A Look at Oracle-Sun's Impact on 'Horizontal' Integration 
Oracle Corp. officially closed its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems on Wednesday. IDN offers a look at how the “vertical integration” of Oracle-Sun will impact horizontal integration, as well as a review of Oracle’s horizontal integration plans for Java, app servers, SOA and cloud.
Oracle Corp. officially closed its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems on Wednesday at a live physical/online event featuring Oracle top executives laying out a vision for transforming Oracle into a 21st century version of “IBM of the 1960s.”
For the most part, the Oracle/Sun event, focused on how Oracle will “vertically integrate” Sun hardware and Solaris with Oracle software (middleware, databases and applications). Oracle CEO Larry Ellison cited his company’s Oracle-Sun vertical integration strategy as a boon to the new company, and to customers. “The notion of vertical integration we think delivers huge value to customers," Ellison said in the webcast. "Our vision for 2010 is the same as IBM's vision for 1960," he said.
But, there were also comments and plans revealed for “horizontal integration” that are noteworthy for CIOs, architects and integration developers. Integration Developer News offers a round-up of Oracle’s horizontal integration technology plans for key technologies, including Java, Middleware, MySQL and Cloud.
Later, IDN also gets views from top middleware experts on what customers and partners with interests in integration, middleware and SOA should keep their eyes on. First, here’s our IDN “integration” summary.
Oracle’s State of the Union on Middleware, Integration
Java
Calling Java one of the “crown jewels,’ from the Sun acquisition, Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of Oracle product development, said Oracle will “enhance and extend the reach of the 
Java programming [language] to support emerging application paradigms,” Among those paradigms are apps for mobile, Web 2.0 and even vertical applications.
Kurian also said Oracle will “Integrate and simplify the [Java EE] runtime and for existing and emerging deployment architectures [and] invest in and revitalize Java developer community.” Specifics include a soon-to-come Java EE 7 that will better enable Java devs to write once and run anywhere across a variety of server and devices, abstract emerging underlying support capabilities, (especially for mobile devices) to let devs more simply and quickly write applications that support of new features, and a future upgrade to java FX to expand support for RIA (Rich internet Applications).
Oracle will also invest in taking JavaOne, Sun’s hallmark developer event for Java, global – with versions for China and India.
IDEs
Notably, Oracle will keep and invest in NetBeans, Sun’s open source Java IDE. The goal, Kurian said is to support devs using lightweight Java , dynamic languages and scripting. Oracle will also provide reference implementations in NetBeans for Java EE developers. Even with the NetBeans endorsement, Oracle will keep JDeveloper as its “strategic” ALM tool for enterprise devs. Oracle will also continue to support Eclipse.
Middleware / SOA
On the middleware side, Oracle Fusion Middleware will continue to be the core offering, with the focus to provide customers an integrated middleware suite “to build and integrate with SOA, business processes and BI [business intelligence].”
The Oracle SOA Suite will remain Oracle’s strategic offering for SOA and integrated SOA/BPM (business process management). That said, Oracle will “support and enhance” Sun’s JCAPS (Java CAPS) and the Open ESB for existing customers. Sun’s GlassFish Mobility will continue forward, Kurian said.
Some of Sun’s middleware technology will get a lease on life after the merger. Specifically, Oracle will supplement OFM with several Sun middleware technologies to improve business agility, performance and management, Kurian added.
WebLogic will continue to be Oracle’s core appserver offering for enterprise customers. That said, Kurian said there will be technology sharing back-and-forth between WebLogic and Sun’s GlassFish application server.
Specifically, GlassFish application server will be carried forward to provide a reference implementation for Java EE 6. In the future, Oracle will “build on [GlassFish’s] microkernel architecture for modularity” to bring improve that capability for Java EE devs. Further, Oracle likes three other GlassFish technologies:
- A sophisticated “non-blocking I/O layer,” as Kurian called it, because it can result in better performance for many I/O-intensive applications.
- The “Metro” web services technology layer tech layer, Metro, which does better at unifying underlying support of JAX-based web services technologies.
- A lightweight rapid deployment environment.
MySQL
To the surprise of some, Oracle is very happy to keep going with MySQL, especially for customers who use both MySQL and Oracle DBs for online search, web support and transaction applications, according to Oracle’s chief corporate architect Edward Screven.
“We’re going to make MySQL better, we’ve already done with InnoDB the most popular transactional storage engine” for MySQL, Screven said, who will oversee Oracle’s Open Source Software Division. Oracle will also “make MySQL part of the Oracle stack,” he added, building integration between MySQL and Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Enterprise Security Manager.
Cloud
Last but not least, Oracle executives, even Ellison, are now warming to cloud computing – both in technology and terminology. Despite his widely viewed cloud tirade on YouTube (what the hell is cloud computing?”) Ellison now says cloud is what Oracle has been doing all along – so no need to go look at nouveau cloud providers like Amazon, Google, Azure and the like.
As to how Sun’s portfolio impacts the Oracle view of the cloud, the outlook is mixed for the future of Sun technologies in the cloud space.
On the sunny side, Sun’s effort to move its OpenOffice productivity suite will gain traction after the acquisition. On the stormier side, Sun’s public cloud infrastructure offering that was slated to be released last summer as ‘Sun Cloud’ will not be seeing the light of day. "We're not going to be offering the Sun Cloud service," Screven confirmed.
Vertical' vs 'Horizontal' Integration
Perspectives from HP and a .NET Partner
To get some perspective on the outlook for how ‘vertical integration’ might impact “horizontal integration,” IDN also spoke with leading executives from HP and a top Java-.NET interoperability firm JNBridge. Not surprisingly, many vendors and customers are waiting for more details to discover how much visibility and openness there will be to layers of the new Oracle-Sun stack. But some early reactions from knowledgeable integration players reveal some items to watch:
HP: Kelly Emo, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Applications at HP Software and Solutions told IDN: “The acquisition does give food for thought. I think Oracle is clearly is looking for the “solution in a box” that converges and collapses the stack from physical hardware all the way to the application layer and can support both private and public cloud implementations,”
“From an HP perspective, we believe regardless of the middleware stack that customers chose, their biggest challenges are going to be around the people, processes and technologies that will allow them to meet or exceed their business objectives of agility, performance, security, availability and change.” Tapping into cloud computing will be an important part of this activity, she told IDN.
In this context, enterprise managers will be looking to Oracle for more answers on these topics:
- How will Oracle "rationalize all the overlaps and redundant products up the stack" -- from app platforms to ESB to EAI to BPM to Data integration
- How will Oracle promot a "pre-fabricated [Oracle-Sun] stack,; while supporting IT innovation, especially at the component level for SCA, mash-ups, integration, BPM and business intelligence
- How will Oracle continue to be the stewards of Java and keep the spirit of an open industry
Notably, HP also believes in vertical integration and cloud technologies. Earlier in January, HP inked a 3-year co-development pact with Microsoft to accomplish three (3) goals:
- built on a next-generation infrastructure-to-application model;
- advance cloud computing by speeding application implementation; and
- eliminate complexities of IT management and automate existing manual processes to lower the overall costs.
JNBridge: Wayne Citrin, CTO of JNBridge, a leading provider of interop technologies between Java and Microsoft .NET told IDN: “Everything in the [Oracle] stack will be Java based, so for those [enterprises] largely Java, it shouldn’t be any more difficult to integrate. But, for people playing in multiple environments, Java, .NET [and others] interoperability between the pieces might get more difficult,” Citrin told IDN.
“It could get easier or more difficult, he noted, adding “Oracle could decide to make things more visible, after all their Java stack has an API service and the .NET stack has an API service, so the bigger those stacks are, the more [interoperability] opportunities there are.”
