What IBM couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do, Oracle just did (or wanted more): buying the billions of dollars worth Sun Microsystems during the current crisis: for…7.4 billion dollars!

Although both companies have a lot of overhead in software and hardware, especially Java and Solaris will be very important for Oracle: the Fusion Middleware is heavily leaning on Java and Solaris is the most important platform for the Oracle database.

Some interesting developments will be on the hardware front: Oracle started working with Dell and HP on the hardware/server market. Sun has a big stake in this market already.

And what will Oracle do (or won’t do) with MySQL, the incredible popular OpenSource database, which powers this and millions of other websites?

More and more companies use selfservice funcionality. PeopleSoft deliveres some out-of-the-box selfservice functionality, but what if you want to develope some yourself?

Here are some pointers to get you on the right track: