Oracle goes on a Sun offensive

Enough already. After being bashed by vulture-like competitors for months about its commitment to Sun, Oracle is starting to fight back. As my colleague [Andy Patrizio noted](/bus-news/article.php/3832666/Defections+Batter+Sun+Microsystems.htm) in several recent articles, HP and IBM have rolled out the red carpet for Sun customers to migrate their way, while aggressively questioning whether the Sun hardware line has any future at all.

Oracle’s acquisition of Sun recently won U.S. regulatory approval but now is hung up by the EU’s regulatory arm. The EU is eyeballing a relatively small part of the deal, namely the fate of Sun’s mySQL as an open source alternative to commercial databases like Oracle’s and others.

This stands to hold up the deal’s approval into early next year, presumably leaving Sun to twist in the wind that much longer as the vulture’s circle.

Not so fast, says Ellison. Over the weekend, Oracle made the surprise announcement it plans to introduce “the world’s first OLTP Database machine with Sun FlashFire Technology” on Tuesday. Sun’s FlashFire is Sold State Disk (SSD) technology that presumably will speed up Oracle’s database performance significantly.

The event at Oracle’s headquarters will feature Ellison and Sun’s executive vice president of systems John Fowler. It [will also be Webcast](http://www.oracle.com/features/larry-ellison-webcast.html).