European Commission approves Oracle Sun deal

Oracle has finally got the green light to buy Sun

Enterprise software giant Oracle has just received regulatory approval from the European Commission for its acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

The announcement will effectively green light the long-awaited deal, given that regulators in the US have already approved the purchase.

In a brief statement, the software giant said: "Oracle Corporation announced today that it had received regulatory approval from the European Commission for its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Oracle expects unconditional approval from China and Russia and intends to close the transaction shortly."

Oracle has been waiting since September last year for the Commission to reach its decision over whether the acquisition would be anti-competitive or not. One of the key causes of concern was whether Oracle's acquisition of the open source MySQL database, which Sun currently owns, could lead to higher licence and support prices for the product.

Michael 'Monty' Widenius even launched a SaveMySQL petition to try to influence the Commission's decision.

However, in a statement today, the Commission said its concerns had been partly allayed by Oracle's "series of pledges to customers, users and developers of MySQL concerning issues such as the continued release of future versions of MySQL under the GPL".

"The Commission's in-depth investigation showed that although MySQL and Oracle compete in certain parts of the database market, they are not close competitors in others, such as the high-end segment," it added.

Oracle said that it will now hold an all-day event for customers, partners, press and analysts on 27 January, no doubt to discuss its plans for Sun and its raft of products.