Sun says that it will be eliminating the jobs over the course of the next year in locations worldwide, and that the cuts have already begun. There are reports that there may be even more cuts once the acquisition is complete.

We’ve updated the Layoff Tracker with the news.

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However, as Matt Asay noted earlier, no mention of MySQL in the ad.

(Thanks to @Toon for the tip)

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The incident is vaguely reminiscent of TechCrunch editor Sarah Lacy’s recent baboon attack in Rwanda, although in Siebel’s case the consequences were a bit more severe than a psychological trauma.

The 56-year-old tech mogul told Mercury News in an interview that he and his guide was attacked by a charging elephant in the Serengeti, breaking several ribs, goring him in the left leg and crushing the right.

Fortunately, unlike Larry Ellison a couple of years ago when he set his sight on the man’s company, the elephant soon lost interest in Siebel and simply walked away from the scene.

The billionaire (estimated worth: $US 1.9 billion as of 2008) had to wait three hours before the radioed medical assistance team showed up and gave him treatment, but is now recovering from his injuries in his Woodside home and expects to make a full recovery after reconstructive surgery and physical therapy. Siebel told the Mercury News Wednesday that he doesn’t know what became of the elephant that attacked him. He added that authorities in Tanzania searched for it, but as far as he knows it was never found.

Not able to come up with a good joke using the phrasing ‘elephant in the room’, I’m just going to conclude by saying we’re all glad Siebel is ok, and we hope the same is true for the animal.

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Larry Ellison has always wanted to be the Steve Jobs of the enterprise. With this morning’s announcement that Oracle will buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion, he took a big step towards making Oracle more of a soup-to-nuts provider of enterprise technology. With Sun, he will now be able to build and package together everything from chips and servers to operating systems, Java middleware, databases, and enterprise applications.

Here is the money quote from Ellison on the deal:

Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up

Like Apple, Oracle wants to take away complexity for its customers and bundle the entire IT stack neatly together so that it works without hassles and is optimized for Oracle’s software. With this deal, Ellison has come full circle from his early-1990s mantra of “best-of-breed” systems, which he abandoned long ago. Rather than look like Apple with its dedication to making the perfect product, Oracle just became IBM. It will use Sun’s existing server market share to push Oracle databases and software, and bundle it all with IT services. Sure, it will continue to support Dell and HP and even rival enterprise software, but the sales pitch will be around the bundled product. If that turns out to be a superior product at a lower price, then both Oracle and customers will win out. But to the extent that it takes away choice from IT buyers, it could be an even tougher sell than convincing them to give up their beloved Blackberries for an iPhone.

How different really is Oracle buying Sun than if IBM had bought it, other than the price? Sun’s powerful servers are a way to sell expensive software—always have been, always will be. A big motivation for the deal was to acquire Sun’s Solaris operating system and Java. As hardware margins keep getting squeezed, that software component becomes more and more important. At least with Oracle, Sun will stay in the Silicon Valley family, so to speak.

But what may be the most valuable part of the deal from Oracle’s perspective, although Ellison hardly mentioned it, is MySQL. Oracle now owns the open-source database Sun acquired last year for $1 billion. As MySQL grows in popularity, it keeps disrupting Oracle’s high-end database business from below. Now Oracle can at least try to disrupt itself, or kill MYSQL (which would be a bone-headed move).

What makes more sense is a two-pronged approach: On the high-end, sell highly optimized Sun servers running Solaris, Oracle databases, and Oracle enterprise apps. On the low-end, sell MySQL on Dell and HP servers running Linux.

Another unanswered question is what will happen to Sun’s cloud computing efforts, given Ellison’s disdain for the term. Watch him change his tune on that one as well.

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Oracle Corporation is to buy Sun Microsystems for $9.50 a share in a deal valued at approximately $7.4 billion, just a few weeks after a deal by IBM to buy Sun fell apart. It looks like Oracle will pay a premium of $2.81 a share, or 42%, over Sun Micro’s closing price of $6.69 a share on Friday.

Oracle said the deal is valued at $5.6 billion excluding cash and debt. Oracle is calling Sun’s Java “the most important software” it has ever acquired. The deal, which is expected to close in the Summer and was unanimously approved by Sun’s board of directors, has massive implications for the future openness of Java and MySQL.

As the NY Times points out, Oracle and Sun are two heavyweights that have been partners for more than 20 years, even if Oracle has been distancing itself a bit from Sun’s server line in favor of competitors like HP and Dell lately because of Sun’s business decline. As a result of this deal, Oracle will now become a behemoth in both the software and the hardware market, and the implications this acquisition will have on the its closest rivals and the market in general will be noticable for years to come.

The official release, with emphasis ours:

Oracle to Buy Sun

SANTA CLARA, Calif. April 20, 2009 Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) and Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt.

“We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle’s earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,” said Oracle President Safra Catz.

“The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”

There are substantial long-term strategic customer advantages to Oracle owning two key Sun software assets: Java and Solaris. Java is one of the computer industry’s best-known brands and most widely deployed technologies, and it is the most important software Oracle has ever acquired. Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle’s fastest growing business, is built on top of Sun’s Java language and software. Oracle can now ensure continued innovation and investment in Java technology for the benefit of customers and the Java community.

The Sun Solaris operating system is the leading platform for the Oracle database, Oracle’s largest business, and has been for a long time. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle can optimize the Oracle database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris. Oracle is as committed as ever to Linux and other open platforms and will continue to support and enhance our strong industry partnerships.

“Oracle and Sun have been industry pioneers and close partners for more than 20 years,” said Sun Chairman Scott McNealy. “This combination is a natural evolution of our relationship and will be an industry-defining event.”

“This is a fantastic day for Sun’s customers, developers, partners and employees across the globe, joining forces with the global leader in enterprise software to drive innovation and value across every aspect of the technology marketplace,” said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s CEO, “From the Java platform touching nearly every business system on earth, powering billions of consumers on mobile handsets and consumer electronics, to the convergence of storage, networking and computing driven by the Solaris operating system and Sun’s SPARC and x64 systems. Together with Oracle, we’ll drive the innovation pipeline to create compelling value to our customer base and the marketplace.”

“Sun is a pioneer in enterprise computing, and this combination recognizes the innovation and customer success the company has achieved. Our largest customers have been asking us to step up to a broader role to reduce complexity, risk and cost by delivering a highly optimized stack based on standards,” said Oracle President Charles Phillips. “This transaction will preserve and enhance investments made by our customers, while we continue to work with our partners to provide customers with choice.”

The Board of Directors of Sun Microsystems has unanimously approved the transaction. It is anticipated to close this summer, subject to Sun stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

There will be a conference call today to discuss the transaction at 5:30 a.m. Pacific time. Investors can listen to the conference call by dialing (719) 234-7870, passcode 923645. A replay will be available for 24 hours after the call ends at (719) 884-8882, passcode: 923645. A live audio webcast of the call will be made available at www.oracle.com/investor and a replay will be available for seven days after the call ends.

About Oracle

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world’s largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision — “The Network is the Computer” — Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

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Israeli startup Zend Technologies has fired 25 percent of its R&D team (at least ten people), as well as others across the company, in an attempt to become cash flow positive, says a source close to the company. Zend offers its own distribution of PHP, the popular open-source scripting language for Web applications. It sells software and support services around that (just as Red Hat does with its distribution of Linux). We have an e-mail out to the company asking for a comment.

Update: A spokesperson from the company’s PR firm says: “Yes, I can confirm that Zend made the layoffs, but we cannot comment on the numbers or reasons for the action.”

The job cuts could be an attempt to pretty itself up for a sale. Back in 2006, Oracle wanted to buy it for $100 million to $200 million. It might still be interested. IBM, which already one of Zend’s strategic partners, might also want to take a look.

Another partner is Microsoft, which has already integrated Zend into Windows Server. Thanks to Zend, programmers who don’t want to be bothered with .Net can use PHP instead to create applications that run on Windows Server. If Microsoft ever buys Yahoo, picking up Zend would make even more sense since Yahoo is littered with PHP apps.

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Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.

Traditionally, this type of functionality has been accomplished with a clustered relational database that requires a sizable upfront investment, brings more complexity than is typically needed, and often requires a DBA to maintain and administer. In contrast, Amazon SimpleDB is easy to use and provides the core functionality of a database – real-time lookup and simple querying of structured data – without the operational complexity. Amazon SimpleDB requires no schema, automatically indexes your data and provides a simple API for storage and access. This eliminates the administrative burden of data modeling, index maintenance, and performance tuning. Developers gain access to this functionality within Amazon’s proven computing environment, are able to scale instantly, and pay only for what they use.

This will be especially attractive for Web startups. Amazon has just taken another major infrastructure cost off the table for them. Relational databases are expensive to buy and maintain. Whatever features or performance SimpleDB lacks, it should make up for in price. Amazon wants to democratize the database by making it available to more businesses, and even individuals, thus leveling the playing field between big companies and startups even more.

And since SimpleDB operates at Web scale, larger companies will wake up to the cost saving opportunities of such a service as well. IBM, for one, is already trying to preempt any customer defections with its copycat Blue Cloud initiative. If speed is of the essence, you might still want to keep your database on your own servers. But the Web is where most software will one day live, whether consumer or enterprise. And Amazon’s got nothing to lose by speeding that day along.

Pricing for SimpleDB is as follows:

Machine Utilization – $0.14 per Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hour consumed

Data Transfer

$0.10 per GB – all data transfer in

$0.18 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.16 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.13 per GB – data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Data transfer “in” and “out” refers to transfer into and out of Amazon SimpleDB. Data transferred between Amazon SimpleDB and other Amazon Web Services is free of charge (i.e., $0.00 per GB).

Structured Data Storage – $1.50 per GB-month

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MySpace and Six Apart will announce that they are joining Google’s OpenSocial initiative. Silicon Alley Insider reported the MySpace rumor earlier today. We’ve confirmed that from an independent source, as well as the fact that Six Apart is joining. Per the update below, Google has also confirmed Bebo is joining.

Google will be making an announcement today. MySpace and Six Apart join Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle as announced Google partners. No word on whether MySpace will continue with efforts to complete its own recently announced platform, but the answer is probably yes. They are likely to simply do both (Update: see below).

Suddenly, within just the last couple of days, the entire social networking world has announced that they are ganging up to take on Facebook, and Google is their Quarterback in the big game.

Update (12:30 PST): On a press call with Google now. This was embargoed for 5:30 pm PST but they’ve moved the time up to 12:30 PST (now). Press release will go out later this evening. My notes:

On the call, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said “we’ve been working with MySpace for more than a year in secret on this” (likely corresponding to their advertising deal announced a year ago).

MySpace says their new platform efforts will be entirely focused on OpenSocial.

The press release names Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING as current OpenSocial partners.

We’re seeing a Flixster application on MySpace now through the OpenSocial APIs. Flixster says it took them less than a day to create this. I’ll add screen shots below.

Here’s the big question – Will Facebook now be forced to join OpenSocial? Google says they are talking to “everyone.” This is a major strategic decision for Facebook, and they may have little choice but to join this coalition.

Bebo has also joined OpenSocial.

Flixster/MySpace screen shots:

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Last month I commented on the lack of internal talks at Microsoft, discussing how their Zune device isn’t compatible with Vista — TechCrunch commenters felt this didn’t matter, considering the consumer release of Vista was months away and that “Microsoft probably does not give a sh*t that some twelve year old cannot use Zune on his pirated copy of Vista yet.” Fair enough. But Vista not working with their corporate database product, SQL Server? That’s not smart for a company trying to grab their piece of the $14 billion database pie.

Update: I should have better researched this prior to posting. Business 2.0 broke the story and their article simply references “the current version of SQL Server,” but they were merely referring to “MS SQL Server 2005 Express.” Given that’s the case — this isn’t a gift to Oracle or IBM, and this shouldn’t have any effect on Microsoft’s position in the database market. My apologies for this.

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Steve Poland, a guest contributor. Steve is the founder and web strategy consultant for Vested Ventures, a firm specializing in website consulting, internet marketing, and high-end custom web development.

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