While the eyes of the consumer world were on Apple's shiny new tablet the enterprise world has been looking to Oracle to outline its plans for the merger with Sun.

Now that the final regulations have been overcome a lot of people, including most of Sun, have been waiting for the axe to fall. As it turns out those fears may be unfounded, for the moment at least.

While Oracle sought to reassure on the hardware and software fronts it is the human angle that has caused the most stir in the industry.

Oracle is one of the most business minded firms in Silicon Valley. Staff are suited and booted and work hard with a strong ethos on the bottom line. The same could not be said for Sun.

Sun is more of an archetypal Silicon Valley firm. Staff dress how they like, work on what interests them and the company is famed for its beer bust parties. How then will the two mix?

Well, based on today's announcements they won't at first. Oracle has had a while to plan this and the system it seems to be following is to let the parts of Sun that work well entirely separate, like MySQL and OpenOffice.

I suspect on the hardware side things will remain relatively unchanged. The server line will be cut and there will be some job losses but Oracle isn't a hardware company and is aware of that, and will tread carefully.

That said, we'll keep you updated on rumblings from Sun staff. Get in touch if you have a gripe.

28 Jan 2010