Oracle is the “Crazy Ivan” of the IT Industry

In The Hunt for Red October, Sean Connery plays a mad genius submarine commander called “Crazy Ivan”. He stops American subs from sneaking up behind him by turning at random times in random directions. Follow too closely and you may get hit. I’m telling this story because people keeping asking me what I think Oracle will do with Sun. I think there’s no way to know.

If IBM had purchased Sun, things would have been easier to predict. I imagine the conversation in IBM’s boardroom going something like this: “They have a RISC chip; we have a RISC chip. Let’s phase theirs out. They have a UNIX; we have a UNIX. Let’s phase theirs out. They have Java, we have – uh – let’s keep that one!” And so on.

With Oracle, the outcome is not at all clear. Oracle is so different from Sun that they could keep pretty much everything. What parts of Sun are important depend on what kind of company Oracle is trying to become. Do they want to become a full-line systems vendor competing head-to-head with IBM and HP? Do they just want Java and MySQL, which are so closely related to their current product lines and strategies? Perhaps something more secret and clever than anyone else has thought of yet?

There’s just no telling, because Oracle is – and I mean this in the most positive and respectful way – the Crazy Ivan of the IT industry.

Comments

[David Mackintosh]

Heaven help me, I'm going to argue with someone on the internet.

In The Hunt For Red October, Sean Connery's character is Marko Ramius. The "Crazy Ivan" is the Russian sub commander's habit of unexpectedly doing a 360 degree turn in an attempt to detect anyone who might be hiding in his sub's baffles.

The message from the "Crazy Ivan" is that Ramius is an unpredictable genius who is more than just a little paranoid... but I wouldn't even charitably describe Oracle as "genius".

Crazy, yes. Paranoid, yes.

Sorry about the drive-by on your metaphor.

[Dave's reply: Okay, I'm sure you are right, but "Oracle is the Marko Ramius of the IT Industry" just doesn't have the same ring to it.]

[Balaje Sankar]

Though, I am not a big expert, I can still guess what Oracle might do. Though it boasts to keep Suns Hardware Business intact, Oracle might kill Sparc and storage assets or spin them off eventually. It will develop java and solaris. MySQL's fate is still not clear.

[John Koval]

Read your blog. Love it. You may be curious to know the Crazy Ivan is an extreme maneuver in The Playmaker’s Table, the first periodic table of influence strategies.

You're more right than you know.

John Koval
Consultant
The Playmaker's Standard, LLC