Oracle To Acquire Sun Microsystems For $7.4 Billion

It's sad to see an independent company like Sun Microsystems being acquired but Oracle is probably a better acquirer than IBM and this acquisition has a high probability of success.

First, there is no hardware overlap. The OS and hardware from Sun will create a lot of synergies for Oracle as they will be able to offer completely integrated (hardware and software) solutions to their customers. The goal here is to reduce the costs of integration. I'm still amazed that IT teams have to spend money (directly or through integrators) to install and configure operating systems, middleware and enterprise software packages. I've heard that Oracle is only acquiring Sun for Java. I don't think it's the case. IBM and HP are Oracle's competitors and Oracle needs hardware to fight them in the marketplace.

Second, these are two bay area companies with similar cultures, much easier to integrate. They have been partners for over 20 years. They have developed joint call centers, and engineers and marketers on each side are very familiar with the other company's portfolio. It's probably not a good example to bring back to the table but Sun and Oracle were viewed as two of the four horsemen of the new economy back in 2000.

There is a risk that software vendors who competing against Oracle in the enterprise software area, stop supporting the Sun HW platform. Interesting challenge for the market development teams!

Frost and Sullivan Acknowledges Omnitrol Networks’ Real-Time Network Infrastructure that Drives Operational Excellence for its End Users

As our software is getting traction in the supply chain, it is good to get more recognition from Frost & Sullivan. Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has excelled in customer values through its products and services that offer increased profitability and reduced life cycle costs.

You can read more there. but here's a short excerpt:

“Omnitrol’s cutting-edge solution suite automatically collects information from a large variety of sensors and, through predictive analytics, delivers real-time visibility with accurate forecasting between business partner operations,” says Frost & Sullivan Program Manager Arunkumar J. “Potentially, any control system or middleware may help an end-user integrate back-end and shop-floor, but Omnitrol infrastructure extends business intelligence directly from the operations-floor without the complexity of multiple software layers, thereby minimizing total investment and improving ROI.”

Cisco buys Flip Video maker

I've a lot of respect for Cisco and its employees. Most of their innovation or acquisitions have turned into product leaders. I understand that their human network strategy needs a few major acquisitions in the consumer electronic market but I've considerable doubts about this recent acquisition and the price they paid for it ($590 million). I see a few reasons:

• With a price tag between $100 and $200, you could spend a little more and have a better designed iphone.
• The device can only do one thing: video. I'm quite sure the market is expecting something more versatile than that (mp3 player, geo tagging). This would have been a great product 5 years ago.
• Where is the connectivity (software and network) to your social media youtube or facebook?
• It has no wireless capability (WiFi or GPRS). Yes, they can add it later on, but why acquire something that is so much behind the curve and has zero appeal to developers.

On the other hand, PureVideo has gained a lot of market share with a simple product. This acquisition is very good news for them, not so much for the CSCO shareholders.

Omnitrol Networks enters relationship with BT Global Services to Deliver Real-Time Supply-Chain Visibility Solutions

We built our software with telco scale, performance and reliability in mind, it's only natural to see telco operators joining forces with us to deploy network-based solutions. But what's more exciting is to work with a leading technology integrator such as BT who has so much experience in the supply chain IT services area. You can read more here, but here's a short excerpt:

"We were previously developing customized solutions to address customer needs in the RFID market, which was quite costly and time consuming," Keith Sherry of BT Supply Chain Solutions told RFID Update. "Omnitrol gives us an appliance that can accept multiple sensor input and a platform for processing the data, which is enabling us to create solutions where we wouldn't otherwise be able to show a strong ROI."

Omnitrol Networks bolsters RFID edge application software, releases industry’s smallest middleware appliance solution

We are in GA! The new release of EASE comes with a new development environment (SDK) that allows our partners to quickly develop new SDL-based Edgelets with an intuitive user interface. The new release also comes with an upgraded emulator to complete the picture.


Time to development is an important part of our value proposition but ease of deployment is also very critical; this is why this new software release comes with a new small foot print appliance. The new OMNITROL Nano is both a plug-and-play solution, and practically plug-and-forget. A manufacturing company can have a complete OMNITROL-based track and trace solution up and running in less than 60 minutes, and need only maintain it when they add more sensors.

Read more here.

Google releases a browser

Google is obviously going after Microsoft's position on the desktop with this new announcement. But if you look at the Android announcement last year, this makes even more sense for Google to have a light-weight browser that can run on top of mobile devices using their OS. It's always a concern to see too many initiatives launched without a real long-term strategy behind it. The Chrome announcement doesn't seem to belong in this category, and could become a cornerstone of Google's strategy in the mobility space.

Gartner Hype Cycle

This is a very interesting blog entry about Gartner Hype Cycle. This is a great way to look at future, current and past technologies and understand investment and development cycles. They key to understand and use these graphs is to estimate the time to plateau. Monitoring these graphs for a long time, I can tell you that some of the technologies tend to exceed or miss their target dates. They can even get stuck in that "Trough of Disillusionment" and never get out of it.