Has Oracle started its mammoth technology consolidation?

Rodney Gedda

Rodney Gedda is the former deputy editor of CIO and former editor of Techworld.

A few unsubstantiated rumours have surfaced about Oracle killing off further development of products from Vitual Iron, a virtualisation company it acquired last month. The big problem with large-scale mergers and acquisitions is that product lines inevitably become “integrated” (i.e. disappear) and consumers are left with one less choice of product.

As I outlined in a previous blog, Oracle buying Sun has the potential to deflate a lot of open source development at Sun because of competing product lines.

If the Virtual Iron rumour is true then what hope is there for Sun's xVM virtualisation roadmap, let alone its swag of open source products, may of which compete with Oracle.

After all, virtualisation at Oracle, Sun and Virtual Iron is all based on a common code base – Xen.

On the desktop, Sun owns VirtualBox, but Oracle doesn't have a desktop play so is that the end of a free desktop virtualisation app as well?

Oracle's rampant spending spree in recent years has left the company with a lot of “integration” work to do.

The best thing it could do is be more transparent about why it is acquiring so aggressively and what, if any, is its long-term direction?

It's well understood that large, public companies have high growth and profit expectations, but as the Global Financial Crisis has indicated, being bigger does not necessarily mean being better.

The world's largest software companies are not immune to downturns and as open source and SaaS become increasingly popular, the traditional players have to be smarter, not bigger.

Is there any end in sight or does Oracle intent to keep purchasing? Those are the questions.

One could postulate the by killing off Virtual Iron Oracle has reached an end (for now) of its acquisition frenzy and begun looking back and deciding what to do with it all.

For now we can only wait for Oracle to make its next move. One thing is for certain – nothing is sacred.