That was not what was being expected. MySQL was touted to go public and Sun never seemed to be wanting to become a database company. But it has happened (press release), and Sun seems to be planning to come out with global support offerings for MySQL. This will clear the doubts and hesitation of people who thought MySQL did not have support and will help Sun Microsystems provide more value and gain a good customer base.
However I see many more things happening now. MySQL was originally developed on Solaris, so it would not be wrong to believe that we can see more optimizations of MySQL on Solaris. And this can help Sun snatch lead from Linux, which today has the most number of MySQL deployments. And I believe Sun hopes that Solaris and its open source distributions will follow the same path from the servers onto the desktops of users.
The other way in which Sun can counter Linux is to come up with a cloud computing environment. It already has a solid operating system, and now with a good data storage engine Sun might very well follow Amazon in providing the infrastructure.
Either way MySQL can work as an asset for Sun to compete with Linux. In fact now Sun can get equipped to combat even the Windows and MS SQL combination.
I think it will be good for MySQL since this might improve the support offerings, and it will be good for Sun in multiple ways. Sun is slowly increasing the open source product offerings, either by open sourcing its products or buying the existing ones. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this relationship and if Sun does more acquisitions. MySQL users, Solaris users and most in the open source community are going to be waiting.
