In 2010, the American software company Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems.
Oracle announced the proposed transaction in April 2009, agreeing to pay $9.50 per share in cash. The deal was valued at roughly $7.4 billion, or about $5.6 billion after accounting for Sun’s cash and debt. It closed on January 27, 2010, after approval from U.S. authorities and the European Commission.
The acquisition transformed Oracle from a company focused mainly on database and enterprise software into a provider of integrated hardware-and-software systems. Sun brought important assets, including SPARC servers, Solaris, the Java programming language, and the MySQL database. These products gave Oracle greater control over the technology stack used by many corporate customers.
The transaction was delayed because regulators examined Oracle’s planned ownership of MySQL, which could compete with Oracle Database. Another common mistake is naming IBM: IBM had explored combining with Sun before Oracle’s successful bid, but IBM did not acquire it.