As I occasionally dabble in day trading on the US stock exchange, I try to keep myself abreast of the latest financial news. Among others, I’ve been monitoring recent news on IT industry giant Sun Microsystems‘ struggles with the recession. Although this really shouldn’t come as a surprise as practically everyone has already been affected one way or the other by the current worldwide crisis. I still can’t help but be uneasy as I have close friends who work for the said multinational.

It was around early last month when rumors came out that Sun was up for sale. But it wasn’t until news that another IT titan, IBM Corp. was actually in talks to buy the troubled California-based company did the rumors got its dreaded confirmation. But news now have it that the deal eventually ended up with yet another industry giant Oracle Corp. The proposed acquisition reportedly is for a whopping $7.4 billion.

Oracle and Sun have always been complementary. A great number of Oracle’s installed base has been on Sun hardware and Sun’s Solaris operating system. The acquisition would now clearly result in overlap of product and technology, as the software side of Sun is very compatible with Oracle’s product offerings.

(more…)