MySQL Makes an Acquisition

A bit more on a previous post about the acquisition offer Oracle made MySQL recently.  The more I think about it, the more I think SAP is the intended target here.  Why?  Just look at the money involved.  While MySQL is profitable, the numbers involved in the MySQL balance sheet are nothing when you compare them to the numbers involved in the CRM battle Oracle and SAP are locked in.  With Peoplesoft and JD Edwards already absorbed, SAP is really the only competition Oracle has at the upper end.  By partnering with SAP and MaxDB, MySQL may very well have painted a bullseye on their chest.  If Oracle is able to scoop them up, it would severely impact SAP's future plans.  I for one am glad to see MySQL is not laying down though.  They just announced the acquisition of Netfrastructure, which includes Jim Starkey who will now be working for MySQL full time.  Jim is the father of Interbase (which later forked into Firebird) and is extremely well known and respected in the database world.  He's been working on Netfrastructure for six years now, as some of the things they've been doing look extremely interesting.  One has to presume that his first task will be leading the development of an in house transactional backend for MySQL, but I think long term he will benefit the company far beyond that.  While MySQL now has the benefit of learning from the limitations of multiple transactional backends and has a highly skilled lead at developer for their project, one still has to wonder if they can successfully pull off the migration from InnoDB.  This is not just from a technical perspective, but also from a perception one as much as they hyped Inno with the release of MySQL 5.x.  Here's an interesting interview with Jim, whose departure from the Firebird project as a result of this will surely be missed.
--jeremy
MySQL, Netfrastructure, Firebird, Oracle, SAP, Open Source