This week news of not one, but two, big software acquisitions were announced within minutes of each other. In the first Oracle announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire BEA in a deal valued at something around $8 bn. This is a deal that has been the subject of speculation for some time and we shall need to watch developments to see how Oracle plans to assimilate, develop and take to market the sophisticated solutions on which BEA has been built. A few minutes later saw Sun Microsystems tell the world that it had reached a definitive agreement to acquire open source data base developer MySQL for a total consideration of approximately $1 bn. This second transaction could represent a very interesting development, not only for the open source community as a whole but especially in the evolution of Sun as a vendor.

When it comes to both software and open source Sun has a somewhat schizophrenic history. During the boom times the company built an incredibly successful business selling a wide range of servers running its proprietary UNIX operating system, Solaris. Now whilst it is nearly impossible to identify whether the physical capabilities of the servers using Sun's Sparc processors or the capabilities of the Solaris operating system was the more important factor in sales, it is very clear that Solaris supplied many of the characteristics which organisations were seeking. In many ways Solaris become the poster child UNIX platform of the nineties and early part of this century.

On the open source side, it is fair to say that it is only in the last couple of years that Sun has managed to firmly position itself as a supporter of community developed software. With the agreed acquisition of MySQL it is clear that Sun wants to add to its already extensive, if not well known, portfolio of software solutions by boosting significantly its database capabilities. Equally, Sun has acknowledged that the move should allow it to bolster its importance in the Web 2.0 game. With MySQL the company hopes to put itself in a position to get closer to many of the leading Web 2.0 organisations, including the likes of Google and Facebook, already significant users of MySQL.

In the longer term it will be interesting to see if Sun can develop its services and open source partner ecosystem. Certainly the acquisition will not do its existing server business any harm at all, but should also allow it to strengthen its Open Source credibility and relevance, two very important issues in a rapidly maturing market place. The only proviso I have is that overall organisation that is Sun today still does not appear to have taken software into its heart. Intellectually the company recognises the importance of software and services in delivering total solutions but emotionally some of the company is still driven by the server hardware. Equally it could be argued that Sun has not really maximised the potential benefits that could, and should, have followed from earlier acquisitions, especially that of StorageTek.

After a few rough years Sun is adapting to the requirements of the business world today and the acquisition of MySQL could be a valuable platform for the company to grow its software and services businesses. But more important than this, Sun now has a golden opportunity to really develop a wide and vibrant "community" around its extensive software base, especially the tandem of MySQL and OpenSolaris.