After more than a year of expensive and disruptive business re-engineering, Sun Microsystems says it has more or less completed the installation of Oracle’s ERP software and is a long way towards becoming an ‘M&M free’ free organization, meaning no mainframes and no Microsoft software. But having gone through all this, the company is getting ready for the radical next phase, which will begin in a year or two. This will involve removing the Oracle software it has just installed, and buying Oracle ERP services from an outsourcing company, probably Oracle itself. In addition, Sun says it is interested in outsourcing all its other main systems, including its email and its web site. Sun believes that in future, computer users ranging from individuals to large organizations will outsource their systems to organizations which are far more capable of running effective IT systems. Sun itself wants to become the leader in supplying systems for these outsourcing companies.
