I'm not discounting your criticisms at all. Yes, data processing services have existed for a long time -- EDS offered this as a business model on mainframes rather famously. And while good at it, they were also highly despised for their contractual and service terms. I worked in the 1990s at a site making use of Everyone Dresses the Same, and there was a tremendous amount of friction, as well a strong internal incentive to get away from the service, however contractual obligations largely prevented this. A cautionary note to those presently looking at cloud services, though the lock-in's much smaller.

Sun faced multiple challenges, largely being a legacy product with legacy offerings in a world where price point was key, their service commanded a premium, and much existing infrastructure wasn't positioned to properly capitalize on it. That's just off the top of my head, though I'd be interested in seeing what other factors accounted for the failure.

Oracle has the kiss of death for far too much in my book. I'd consider any offering it presented with extreme reluctance.