Oracle, Sell MySQL To A Third Party Says MySQL Founder Michael Widenius

MySQL founder is asking Oracle to give the MySQL to third party to avoid trouble with EU regarding it's acquisition of SUN. According the press release on Michael Widenius' blog below;


MYSQL FOUNDER OUTLINES SOLUTION:
INSTEAD OF LETTING SUN SUFFER,
ORACLE SHOULD SELL MYSQL
(ORCL, JAVA)

Michael 'Monty' Widenius says European Commission is "absolutely right to be concerned" about proposed merger between Oracle Corporation [ORCL] and Sun Microsystems [JAVA], nominates award-winning EU strategist to support the proceeding

Tuusula, Finland, 19 October 2009 -- Michael 'Monty' Widenius, the creator of open source database MySQL and founder of the namesake company later acquired by Sun, today suggested Oracle should resolve antitrust concerns over its US$7.4 billion acquisition of Sun by committing to sell MySQL to a suitable third party. The proposed takeover has not yet been consummated because it is being investigated in depth by the European Commission as well as competition authorities in several other jurisdictions.

Widenius, who posted this press release to his blog, believes the EU's antitrust regulator is "absolutely right to be concerned" and called on Oracle "to be constructive and commit to sell MySQL to a suitable third party, enabling an instant solution instead of letting Sun suffer much longer."

The Finnish software developer and entrepreneur wishes Sun "all the best, but MySQL needs a different home than Oracle, a home where there will be no conflicts of interest concerning how, or if, MySQL should be developed further."

MySQL was the only Sun business unit to be mentioned in the EC's early September announcement of its in-depth investigation into the proposed takeover.

Acquirers commonly resolve regulatory concerns (before, during or after an investigation) by committing to divest problematic assets to a third party. By contrast, Oracle and Sun officials have thus far insisted they continue to seek approval of the entire transaction, irrespectively of Sun currently losing, according to Oracle, $100 million a month.

In order to support the regulators' work on the case, Widenius' new company, Monty Program Ab, works closely with Florian Mueller, a MySQL and EU affairs expert. Widenius said: "Florian gave MySQL strategic advice from 2001 on and was a shareholder until the sale to Sun in 2008, and with our support led an award-winning campaign against a proposed EU law on software patents. In August he helped us to demonstrate to the EC the need to investigate this merger and he is now on board again to meet the information needs of regulators, journalists and analysts."

According to Mueller, "every day that passes without Oracle excluding MySQL from the deal is further evidence that Oracle just wants to get rid of its open source challenger and that the EU's investigation is needed to safeguard innovation and customer choice. This is highly critical because the entire knowledge-based economy is built on databases."

Mueller demands more respect for the EC: "It's inappropriately arrogant for some interested parties to suggest that the EC has yet to understand the case. The EC is really doing a great job under huge time pressure."

In what he calls "a solution-oriented information effort that is now necessary after other parties made public statements on the case in recent weeks", Mueller announced that he will be available to journalists and analysts in Brussels (Wednesday, 21 October), London (Thursday, 22 October) and Silicon Valley (Monday, 26 October) to discuss the case.

In August, Mueller authored a position paper that Monty Program provided to the EC along with several other submissions. The latest version of the document was published today on the Internet.

Oracle BEA In A New Deal

In the heels of Sun's announcement that it will acquire open source database company MySQL AB for about $1 billion, database giant Oracle said it had reached an agreement to acquire BEA for $8.5 billion.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Software giant Oracle Corp. reached a deal to buy rival BEA Systems Inc. for $8.5 billion Wednesday, just months after its initial offer was rebuffed.

Oracle agreed to pay $19.375 in cash for each share of BEA, representing a 24 percent premium to where BEA's shares closed Tuesday.

Oracle said the deal is worth $7.2 billion, since BEA has $1.3 billion in cash on hand. The deal is expected to close in mid-October.

"For Oracle, this deal is a very big step towards completing our [goal] of being a strategic software vendor of choice for our customers," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said during a conference call with investors.

tag: oracle, BEA, SUN, MySQL

SUN Shines ON MySQL. (Sun Microsystems, Inc. to acquire MySQL AB)

Sun Growth Strategy Accelerates With New Position in $15 Billion Database Market

SANTA CLARA, CA January 16, 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market. Today's announcement reaffirms Sun's position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.

With millions of global deployments including Facebook, Google, Nokia, Baidu and China Mobile, MySQL will bring synergies to Sun that will change the landscape of the software industry by driving new adoption of MySQL's open source database in more traditional applications and enterprises. The integration with Sun will greatly extend the commercial appeal of MySQL's offerings and improve its value proposition with the addition of Sun's global services organization. MySQL will also gain new distribution through Sun's channels including its OEM relationships with Intel, IBM and Dell.

"Today's acquisition reaffirms Sun's position at the center of the global Web economy. Supporting our overall growth plan, acquiring MySQL amplifies our investments in the technologies demanded by those driving extreme growth and efficiency, from Internet media titans to the world's largest traditional enterprises," said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and president, Sun Microsystems. "MySQL's employees and culture, along with its near ubiquity across the Web, make it an ideal fit with Sun's open approach to network innovation. And most importantly, this announcement boosts our investments into the communities at the heart of innovation on the Internet and of enterprises that rely on technology as a competitive weapon."

MySQL's open source database is widely deployed across all major operating systems, hardware vendors, geographies, industries and application types. The complementary product line-ups will extend MySQL's database reach and are expected to bring new markets for Sun's systems, virtualization, middleware and storage platforms.

"The combination of MySQL and Sun represents an enormous opportunity for users and organizations of all sizes seeking innovation, growth and choice," said Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL. "Sun's culture and business model complements MySQL's own by sharing the same ideals that we have had since our foundation -- software freedom, online innovation and community and partner participation. We are tremendously excited to work with Sun and the millions of members of the MySQL open source ecosystem to continue to deliver the best database for powering the modern Web economy."

MySQL's open source database is the "M" in LAMP - the software platform comprised of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl often viewed as the foundation of the Internet. Sun is committed to enhancing and optimizing the LAMP stack on GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows along with OpenSolaris and MAC OS X. The database from MySQL, OpenSolaris and GlassFish, together with Sun's Java platform and NetBeans communities, will create a powerful Web application platform across a wide range of customers shifting their applications to the Web.

More than 100 million copies of MySQL's high-performance open source database software have been downloaded and distributed and an additional 50,000 copies are downloaded daily. This broad penetration coupled with MySQL's strength in Web 2.0, Software as a Service (SaaS), enterprise, telecom and the OEM embedded market make it an important fit for Sun. With MySQL, Sun will have the ability to deepen its existing customer relationships and create new opportunities with companies seeking the flexibility and ease-of-use of open source systems.

Following completion of the proposed transaction, MySQL will be integrated into Sun's Software, Sales and Service organizations and the company's CEO, Marten Mickos, will be joining Sun's senior executive leadership team. In the interim, a joint team with representatives from both companies will develop integration plans that build upon the technical, product and cultural synergies and the best business and product development practices of both companies. MySQL is headquartered in Cupertino, CA and Uppsala, Sweden and has 400 employees in 25 countries.

As part of the transaction, Sun will pay approximately $800 million in cash in exchange for all MySQL stock and assume approximately $200 million in options. The transaction is expected to close in late Q3 or early Q4 of Sun's fiscal 2008. Completion of the transaction is subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. The deal is expected to be accretive to FY10 operating income on a GAAP basis.

The management teams of both companies will host a media and analyst conference call today at 10:00 am EST, 7:00 am PST. The call can be accessed at http://www.sun.com/investors. For those unable to listen to the live conference call, a telephone replay will be available for one week following the call by dialing (888) 566-0103 or outside of the U.S. by dialing (402) 998-0958. No passcode is required to access the replay.

tag: MySQL AB, SUN, MySQL, GNU, Linux, LAMP, Sun Microsystems,

Backup and recover MySQL with Zmanda Recovery Manager for MySQL

I know a lot of people who uses MySQL for their Grid projects and other projects. I use MySQL extensively on Linux and other platforms. It is not only for experimental projects. I use MySQL in production as well.
For many years, I have tried many a backup solutions but recently came across Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL and now I am a happy camper. I can backup all my servers, both local and remote.
Here is some information about this great application;
The latest release of ZRM for MySQL includes enhancements designed to improve support for remote MySQL servers, fine-tune ZRM for optimal backup, and deliver more flexible reporting. New features include:

* Support for incremental backup for remote MySQL servers to reduce the load on MySQL server and network during backup.
* Ability to backup a database across a firewall
* Support for encryption and compression of backup images
* New pluggable architecture
* A scheduling plug-in that lets DBAs postpone backups based on DBA-defined thresholds
* Pre- and post-backup plug-ins that allow a DBA to perform certain actions on MySQL before or after backup
* New, more flexible formatting for backup reports. For example, backup reports can be automatically received via RSS feed making it easier to consolidate reports for a dashboard or any monitoring application

In addition to the above information Zmanda has done backup and recovery benchmarks. Well those benchmarks shows me that ZRM has half the transfer rates as my own home build iSCSI SAN. 2-way Red Hat Enterprise 4 server with 4 GB of memory was able to copy large files with an average transfer rate of 37 Mb/s. I think that is fast!
You can read more about the ZRM benchmark and get the detailed benchmark white paper by following the links below.
Zmanda also provides the leading open source backup solution, Amanda Network Backup and Recovery solution with service and support.

Links;
Backup and recovery benchmarks with Zmanda Recovery Manager for MySQL
Amanda: Network Backup and Recovery.

Tags: MySQL, Backup, MySQL Backup, Network Backup, ZRM