The news that Oracle is to acquire Sun Microsystems sent my mind back over 10 years to a company I used to work for that had many of the attributes that the new Oracle/Sun business will have.
I am referring to DEC, aka Digital Equipment Corp, aka Digital. Look at what Digital had and what Oracle will now have:
| Technology | DEC | Oracle |
| Relational database | Rdb | Oracle |
| Operating system | VMS | Solaris |
| Middleware | MessageQ | BEA |
| Hardware | VAX | Sun |
There was a belief about Digital that it became too difficult to manage so many different technologies, and that contributed to the company’s demise. So I can’t help wondering how Oracle will manage.
The difference between the two is that Digital developed its products through innovation, Oracle has been getting them by acquisition.
