Autumn Marathon

Sun-Oracle

Sun Microsystems, my former employer, announced yesterday that it would be acquired by the Oracle Corporation.  Like many of other one-time giants of high-tech, Sun and the Sun brand will soon begin to disappear.  The list of once-prominent, now defunct IT companies really is long: Digital Equipment, Apollo, Compaq, Silicon Graphics, Cray, Siebel, BEA, PeopleSoft, NeXT, just to mention a few .  And while many of these companies are remembered for their technology prowess within specialized circles, the truth is that the public memory of them fades very quickly.  Sun is an iconic company in Silicon Valley, both as a trailblazer in the 1980s of the path from venture-backed start-up to profitable public company; and more recently as the nurturer of many brilliant technical innovations.   This is not the place for an assessment of how or why Sun stumbled and fell, but I can testify personally throughout its long decline Sun maintained a very likable engineering-driven, underdog-on-top culture.  And I share the sadness that many have expressed about its passing.  The union with Oracle makes sense for shareholders and for much of the technology portfolio too.  Given what is known about Oracle and the predicted job cuts associated with the merger, it seems extremely unlikely that Sun or its culture will survive in any significant way.  I do not look forward to the blank stares people will give me in 4-5 years when I describe my decade at a company called “Sun.”