iWeb Communities: Blog

Sun Microsystems, a provider of network computing infrastructure solutions, has just announced the acquisition of MySQL AB, the company behind the popular open source database system MySQL, for about 1 billion dollars (800 million cash, and 200 million in options).

The wedding between these two players in the open source world is a “perfect match” says Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s CEO : “Today’s acquisition reaffirms Sun’s position at the center of the global Web economy. Supporting our overall growth plan, acquiring MySQL amplifies our investments in the technologies demanded by those driving extreme growth and efficiency, from Internet media titans to the world’s largest traditional enterprises”, he explains.

If MySQL is an important part of the “LAMP” (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) power foursome which is behind most open source online application software, it also powers many large applications such as Facebook, Baidu, and Google. There are other systems like PostgreSQL which is gaining in popularity, but the competition comes mostly from SQL Server by Microsoft (a proprietary software), and from Oracle, generally used for more complex systems.

What does all this mean for iWeb and its customers? Not much for now, but we will follow this new giant’s development with great interest.