InformationWeek's Deborah Gage this week noted that a new report from AMR Research finds that (according to Gage) "Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems and Sun's Java programming language could 'wreak havoc' on the enterprise software market... because so many vendors make applications that rely on Java."

"Of the top 50 software vendors ranked by AMR, two-thirds have applications that require Java, including many Oracle competitors... 'Not only will vendors be impacted by the fragile economy, but 33 out of the top 50 vendors will have to reevaluate their commitment to the Java programming language,' said AMR vice president Dennis Gaughan," Gage writes.

"If Dennis is right, and he has a good track record of being right, Oracle lawyers are already getting ready to go to the mattresses. This battle will make the Peoplesoft/DoJ litigation look like a first grader's Little League game," writes Seeking Alpha's Dennis Byron. "This would not be settled in the near term as Oracle hoped, and that would have major IT investment implications..."

"Anyone out there still think Oracle's acquisition of Sun was about hardware?" asks Larry Dignan at Seeking Alpha.