Sun-set of Innovation Took 10 minutes. End of Sun Microsystems

It’s the day that will be remembered in history as the Sun-set of one Era of Innovation as Sun Microsystems dissolves into the Information leader Oracle. It will bring a new Sun rise tomorrow as Larry Ellison will continue to invest in Open Source and JAVA.

Sun Microsystem’s shareholders, today, approved its proposed purchase by Oracle. Though it came wiht a shocking surprise underneath. CEO Jonathan Schwartz nor Chairman Scott McNealy, two of the most outspoken and visible executives, didn’t attend the meeting. It was said that Schwartz was ill and there was no information about Scott.

The meeting was run by two non-leading executives, Mike Dillon, Sun’s executive VP and General counsel, and Craig Norris, VP of corporate law.

Schwartz, once a pro blogger, hasn’t posted since May 18th. What went wrong?. Though both

Schwartz and McNealy appeared at Sun’s JavaOne conference last month, they haven’t said much publicly about the deal since a tightly scripted teleconference on April 20 that announced the transaction. (McNealy deferred to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to do most of the talking about the transaction at JavaOne).

Sun did not conduct a conference along with its financial results for the quarter ending in March because they could foresee bigger than expected loss for the Quarter that ended in June.

SDTimes blog posted an Emotional view of what happened over the meeting::

The whole event took less than 10 minutes. And when it was over, most folks quietly funneled out of the room, looking vaguely dejected.

This was the last real day of Sun’s existence. The acquisition itself has already happened: It is backdated to April 19 and June 5. The vote today changed history, slightly, effectively giving Oracle power over Sun since this past spring.

… Make no mistake about it: This was the end. Such an ending it was, as Schwartz andd McNealy couldn’t bring themselves to show their faces. They know what is going to happen to this company, and I expect they both feel guilty and responsible for the result. How could you not feel responsible after presiding over almost 10 years of declining revenues and profits? …

But the shrinkage that is yet to come is far greater. Analysts are expecting a 33% cut in

headcount at Sun, and I think that’s conservative. Oracle expects to make more money on this deal than it did on its deals with BEA and PeopleSoft combined.

And that is why Schwartz isn’t here, I believe. Because he genuinely loved Sun and its employees. And because he can’t stand to look them in the eye knowing that most of them are about to lose their jobs.

The last line said almost everything. The hard earned company’s success was declining over the last few years which led Sun to take this step, which is ofcourse a good decision. If this woudn’t have been the case, we might have not waited long to see the Sun burning down to a cold black ball rather than a graceful Sunset that we saw today.

So it seems that Sun’s final days will continue to play out very quietly. Still, in view of how loudly Schartz and McNealy used to trumpet their views–and harsh comments to this and other blogs about their actions and severance packages–some public comments by the two men might have been welcomed by employees and shareholders.

Oracle, the industry’s leading innovator, has continued their buy out strategy for the good of the brand and the Industry. Larry Ellison is a smart and mature Entrepreneur, definitely I can trust in his visions which would take the most powerful Developer platform (JAVA), the Best open source Database(MYSQL), Most Innovative/flexible Server platform (Solaris + Sun SPARC) to the next level.