Oracle has big plans for the future and showed that through a move that surprised everybody: the purchase of Sun Microsystems. The company said on Monday it would purchase Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion. 

 

If this deal is finalized, and it will most likely will, it will reshape the tech industry. With Oracle starting to produce databases and other related software, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Cisco will be given a run for their money. 

 

By combining the back-end database software currently offered by Oracle with the front-end applications that could be built on Sun's Java language and software, Oracle will soon be able to offer a complete package for businesses. Microsoft, watch out! Oracle is already the leader of the enterprise-database software market, a market in which Microsoft is also a competitor. 

 

Sun Microsystems and Microsoft weren’t in the best relations as it was. The two companies were bitter rivals in the 1990s, but the rivalry was settled after Microsoft paid a $1.95 billion antitrust settlement in 2004.

 

"It makes Oracle a better competitor," said Sid Parakh, an analyst at McAdams Wright Rage, according to The Seattle Times. "It gives the company more cloud-computing capability as well as virtualization capability and also gives them OpenOffice that Oracle can market to its customers.

 

The move also got in IBM’s way. The Big Blue was also in talks to buy Sun Microsystems. 

 

Neither Microsoft, nor IBM commented on Oracle’s move.