“Companies used to give away pens, squishy balls and coffee cups
to worm their ways into the hearts of customers. Now, they pass out
database software.“That is, in a sense, Sun Microsystems’ strategy with its $1
billion purchase of MySQL, said Sun CFO Mike Lehman at Sun’s Global
Media Summit here today. Very few customers have or will pay for
MySQL, he admitted. However, they are installing it in large and
growing numbers and that gives Sun an opportunity to visit them and
try to sell them servers and storage systems…”