Four years ago this month, Oracle completed its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems, a once-high-flying vendor of Unix software and hardware and inventor of venerated technologies like Java.
When the acquisition was announced in April 2009, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison had great expectations. “The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,” he said in a statement. But Oracle has had mixed results with former Sun technologies, bolstering some and spinning off others.
Here’s a rundown of how Oracle has fared with several key technologies it acquired via Sun, featuring commentary from Java founder and former Sun official James Gosling and key industry analysts.