Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The Ellison-Benioff Standoff Continued Last Week at Oracle OpenWorld


By Kelly Indrieri
While they may share a billboard on 101 and exhibit at each other's events, Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff still can't help but take digs at each other whenever there's an opportunity.

I attended last week’s Oracle OpenWorld and was in the audience for Larry Ellison's introduction of Oracle’s ‘Cloud in a box', Exalogic. I have to say, I agree with Benioff. ‘Cloud in a box?’ Sounds like an oxymoron to me. Yes, we all know, Mr. Ellison, that salesforce.com runs on servers. But isn't the business benefit of public cloud computing NOT having to have the box in the first place, but really to let someone else handle your IT?

Can you have the best of both worlds or is it just an attempt by Oracle to get into the cloud market? Whatever is at the heart of their public but friendly standoff, I think both companies know that Oracle and salesforce.com aren't going anywhere because they both add business value. So lets stop the bickering, gentlemen, and recognize the value in what you both deliver to the IT and business community. Maybe consider calling a truce...at least until December’s Dreamforce, of course.
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