According to this article from internetnews.com, the Department of Justice will not fast track approve the Oracle-Sun merger due to concerns over Java. However, Oracle’s legal counsel ensures compliance with all of the DoJ concerns.

My wife passed away suddenly, unexpectedly at the age of 34 on Tuesday the 16th of June. I’ll not be updating SunHELP for a couple of weeks at least, while I deal with the situation.

According to this article in the New York Times, Sun may have stopped development of the “Rock” CPU ahead of its acquisition by Oracle. However, some of the comments indicate otherwise.

Sun has announced that a special stockholder meeting will be held on July 16, 2009.

This meeting is for a vote on the adoption of the merger agreement entered into by and among Sun, Oracle Corporation and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle, providing for the proposed acquisition of Sun by Oracle.

Sun has released the latest version of the OpenSolaris operating system, version 2009.06. You can get it here.

This release incorporates the networking stack improvements brought by Sun’s Project Crossbow and finally adds SPARC system/processor support.

This NY Times’ blog indicates Hewlett-Packard (HP) was a potential suitor to purchase Sun. However, with the purchase of EDS last year, HP was looking at a delay time table to pursuit Sun, which gave Oracle an opportunity to advance.

Oracle has acquired virtualization software provider VirtualIron.

According to this USA Today’s article, Sun may have broken anti-bribery laws. Sun has notified the proper government agencies. In addition, Oracle is aware of the incident before proceeding with the acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

In this transcript of a Reuters interview with Larry Ellison, he says that the SPARC architecture isn’t going away. Some quotes from the interview:

“No, we are definitely not going to exit the hardware business.”

“Once we own Sun we’re going to increase the investment in SPARC. We think designing our own chips is very, very important. Even Apple is designing its own chips these days. Right now, SPARC chips do some things better than Intel chips and vice-versa. For example, SPARC is much more energy efficient than Intel while delivering the same performance on a per socket basis. This is not just a green issue, it’s an economic issue. Today, database centers are paying as much for electricity to run their computers as they pay to buy their computers. SPARC machines are much less expensive to run than Intel machines.”

“Once we own Sun, we’ll be able to plan and synchronize new features from silicon to software, just like IBM and the other big system suppliers. We want to work with Fujitsu to design advanced features into the SPARC microprocessor aimed at improving Oracle database performance. In my opinion, this will enable SPARC Solaris open-system mainframes and servers to challenge IBM’s dominance in the data center. Sun was very successful for a very long time selling computer systems based on the SPARC chip and the Solaris operating system. Now, with the added power of integrated Oracle software, we think they can be again.”

Sun today reported results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2009, ending March 29, 2009.

Revenues for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 were $2.614 billion, as compared with $3.266 billion for the third quarter of fiscal 2008, and compared with $3.220 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2009. Total gross margin as a percent of revenues was 42.7, a decrease of 2.2 percentage points as compared with the third quarter of fiscal 2008 and an increase of 0.8 percentage points as compared with the second quarter of fiscal 2009.

Net loss for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 on a GAAP basis was $201 million, or $(0.27) per share on a diluted basis, as compared with a net loss of $34 million, or $(0.04) per share, for the third quarter of fiscal 2008, and compared with a net loss of $209 million, or $(0.28) per share, for the second quarter of fiscal 2009. GAAP net loss per share includes a restructuring charge of $46 million primarily related to the restructuring announcement of November 2008.

On a non-GAAP basis, net loss for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 was $52 million, or $(0.07) per share on a diluted basis, as compared with a non-GAAP net income of $132 million, or $0.17 per share, for the third quarter of fiscal 2008, and compared with a non-GAAP net income of $114 million, or $0.15 per share, for the second quarter of fiscal 2009. Non-GAAP net income per share excludes purchased in-process research and development, amortization of acquisition-related intangibles, stock-based compensation, restructuring and related impairment of long-lived assets, net gain or loss on equity investments and the tax effect of these non-GAAP adjustments.

Sun ended the quarter with a cash and marketable debt securities balance of $2.990 billion and generated cash flow from operations for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 of $178 million – the third consecutive quarter of positive cash flow from operations in fiscal 2009, and following upon 19 consecutive years of positive cash flow from operations.

This Register article gives details on an employee-only town hall meeting between Oracle executives and Sun employees. Not a lot of new information, but so far it looks like Sun isn’t about to be gutted and sold off in pieces.

Announced this morning:

SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 20, 2009 — Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) and Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt.

“We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle’s earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,” said Oracle President Safra Catz.

“The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”

There are substantial long-term strategic customer advantages to Oracle owning two key Sun software assets: Java and Solaris. Java is one of the computer industry’s best-known brands and most widely deployed technologies, and it is the most important software Oracle has ever acquired. Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle’s fastest growing business, is built on top of Sun’s Java language and software. Oracle can now ensure continued innovation and investment in Java technology for the benefit of customers and the Java community.

The Sun Solaris operating system is the leading platform for the Oracle database, Oracle’s largest business, and has been for a long time. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle can optimize the Oracle database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris. Oracle is as committed as ever to Linux and other open platforms and will continue to support and enhance our strong industry partnerships.

“Oracle and Sun have been industry pioneers and close partners for more than 20 years,” said Sun Chairman Scott McNealy. “This combination is a natural evolution of our relationship and will be an industry-defining event.”

“This is a fantastic day for Sun’s customers, developers, partners and employees across the globe, joining forces with the global leader in enterprise software to drive innovation and value across every aspect of the technology marketplace,” said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s CEO, “From the Java platform touching nearly every business system on earth, powering billions of consumers on mobile handsets and consumer electronics, to the convergence of storage, networking and computing driven by the Solaris operating system and Sun’s SPARC and x64 systems. Together with Oracle, we’ll drive the innovation pipeline to create compelling value to our customer base and the marketplace.”

“Sun is a pioneer in enterprise computing, and this combination recognizes the innovation and customer success the company has achieved. Our largest customers have been asking us to step up to a broader role to reduce complexity, risk and cost by delivering a highly optimized stack based on standards,” said Oracle President Charles Phillips. “This transaction will preserve and enhance investments made by our customers, while we continue to work with our partners to provide customers with choice.”

The Board of Directors of Sun Microsystems has unanimously approved the transaction. It is anticipated to close this summer, subject to Sun stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

Sun released new Open Systems products today, all powered by the Intel Xeon 5500-series processors (except for the Ultra 27, which has a Xeon 3500-series CPU).

* Sun Blade X6270 bladeserver module
* Sun Blade X6275 bladeserver module
* Sun Fire X2270 server
* Sun Fire X4170 server
* Sun Fire X4270 server
* Sun Fire X4275 server
* Sun Ultra 27 workstation

All of these new systems and blade modules have Flash-based solid state disks (SSDs) as a supported option.

Sun VirtualBox 2.2 has been released.

VirtualBox 2.2 introduces support for the new Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard, as well as significant performance enhancements and updates.

It looks like “xVM” has been dropped from the product name, and it is now just “Sun VirtualBox” instead of “Sun xVM VirtualBox”.

According to this NYTimes article, IBM has withdrawn its offer to buy Sun Microsystems for $7 billion.