Some facts about Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., which Oracle plans to acquire for $7.4 billion:
Oracle:
_ Founded: 1977 by Larry Ellison and two other programmers, Bob Miner and Edward Oates. Their first product was inspired by IBM’s database software research in San Jose, Calif.
_ Headquarters: Redwood Shores, Calif.
_ CEO: Larry Ellison.
_ Employees: 86,000.
_ Earnings: Sales of $24.6 billion and profit of $5.7 billion over last four quarters.
Sun Microsystems:
_ Founded: 1982. Began selling “workstations” that offered high-performance computing power for scientists, software developers and other researchers.
_ Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
_ CEO: Jonathan Schwartz, since 2006.
_ Employees: 33,556.
_ Earnings: Sales of $13.3 billion and a loss of $1.9 billion over the last four quarters.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.