Acquisitions in technology companies often have far-reaching effects, and here's another one I hadn't expected - and no doubt the MobileMe team at Apple had some fun challenges with. It's been relatively well known for some time that MobileMe's underpinnings (not to say the middleware and apps layers that we interact with, as those have a clear Apple face on them) have long been Sun's Java System Messaging Server.
Right up until the wee hours of November 12th, 2010, that held true as far as I can tell. As of my first email received through MobileMe on Nov 12th however, the backend has been swapped out for Oracle's Communications Messaging Exchange Server. I make no representation about this swap other than to note that it's likely another effect of the Sun acquisition, and to remind people that Oracle didn't just become a hardware company - they also got Sun's customers in all sorts of arenas. This is easy to forget when you're looking at M&A from the outside, and it's easy to miss if you've never been in M&A deals.
Oracle's server here offers a lot to enterprise messaging apps and it may well be a benefit to Apple's ops team, for now. It's also worth noting that so far, MobileMe users haven't noticed any defects as a result of the swap. Apple hate having little control however, and there is also another aspect that leads me to believe that there'll be no free MobileMe anytime soon - Oracle doesn't give away it's products - you and I and all of us MobileMe subscribers, are paying the attendant licensing fees. So Larry, I'm expecting a call to go racing on that yacht of yours soon; anytime now whilst the Bay Area weather is still good, is fine by me.