Ellison is the guy who used to complain about customers who wanted to customize software applications and said they should be satisfied with the functionality they got out of the box. That argument won't fly with enterprise storage customers. Storage can be much more complicated than software (or servers) and require much more product tweaking and customer support. Couple that with much lower profit margins, and it makes me wonder whether Oracle will decide sooner rather than later that storage isn't a business it wants to be in. Yes, Ellison has said he wants to supply integrated appliances that include everything a customer needs to run the business. But does he really want to sell tape systems? Push ZFS and Open Storage systems?
A report by InformationWeek's Paul McDougall makes clear that Oracle originally only wanted Sun's software assets, despite Ellison's claims. He was going to leave Sun's declining hardware unit to the vultures.
Byte and Switch blogger George Crump suggests that the best move would be for Oracle to spin the Sun storage group out and see if it can compete without the shackles of Sun wrapped around its feet. An interesting idea, but I'm not sure whether Sun Storage would have enough going for it to survive on its own. Still, that sounds like a better prospect than being part of Oracle.
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