This year’s Oracle OpenWorld is intriguing to me for a variety of reasons, the most important being the fact that this is probably Oracle’s last as a pure software company.
Once the Sun Microsystems purchase goes through, Oracle would invariably become a systems company, spanning hardware, software, and services…..just like it’s current hardware partners!
Would it be a good thing, competing with your partners?
It is this dynamic that beings me to San Francisco, the city known to Los Angelenos as Los Angeles’ Ugly Sister Up North.
Keynote #1: Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems
First up, on the primo Keynote slot is, is, is….Scott McNealy?
Are you kidding?
Scott looks way older, talking is more stilted, delivery of jokes is forced, ineffective.
Disclosure: I have negatively appreciated McNealy since, like, forever. However, this blog is unbiased. ::wink-wink, nod-nod:: Trust me.
Oh O, Scott says he has a couple of Top 10 lists.
First Top 10 is comical, about errors in computing or whatnot. I see Windows 7 makes the list. This from a company touting Solaris?
Second Top 10 is about innovations delivered by Sun over the past 27 years.
I’ve got to admit it: sun’s innovation portfolio is impressive. They have delivered, and in a lot of instances, made the (computing) world better.
Now, they are on to Java, and all things Java.
Java here, there, ubiquitous.
If there is one thing Sun failed in, it is Java.
For real!
For which McNealy and his entire management team should be sued, for having lost billions of dollars of potential shareholder equity in giving Java away to spite Microsoft, and not getting enough monetary returns on Java.
In all the mentions of Java’s ubiquity, no one is saying anything about the lost revenues even a minor license fee could have brought in.
I’m definitely NOT impressed!
McNealy proceeds to bash IBM, and unfairly so, I might add.
IBM is accused of complaining to the DOJ and the EU about the Oracle/Sun merger.
Since that is true, I wonder why?
Weren't all these companies former BFFs?
Remember?
As in the N.O.I.S.E. Coalition?
N.O.I.S.E.: N for Novell – replaced by Nokia at one point, now both licensees of Microsoft products and technologies, aka, part of the collective, with Novell for all purposes a Microsoft oblast; O for Oracle, I for IBM, S for Sun, and E for Everyone else.
After they succeeded in kneecapping Microsoft, at least temporarily, they have turned on each other.
FYI, Sun and Oracle see IBM as a problem.
The feeling in Redmond at this strife between former bedmates?
Schadenfreude
I don’t think so.
I may be incorrect, but the only growing part of IBM’s portfolio since the selloff of the x86 hardware business to Lenovo, has been services.
I don’t see anyone purchasing any new mainframes, do you? In fact, I believe that even Congress, specifically the House of Representatives, is about to sunset their last mainframe.
Next up, Larry Ellison.
Keynote #2: Larry Ellison, Oracle
Surprise: McNealy introduces Larry Ellison as CEO of the number one software company in the world.
Erhh, Scott: enquiring minds want to know by what metric is that in any way true? Sales? Profits? What?
As usual, Larry is in good form.
He comes of the stocks hitting at IBM for their interference in his proposed acquisition of Sun Micro.
He then takes us through a manifesto delivered as an ad in glossies targeted at Oracle users/partners.
Ellison is persuasive on that point, getting the audience to listen with rapt attention.
He then gloms on to Exabyte v2, now running on Sun Sparc.
Boy, do the superlatives start to flow!
As a friend of Steve Jobs, I expect no less.
He concludes, hands the mike to McNealy who delivers a few more trite platitudes, and we’re done.
Conclusions on the Keynotes
Oracle is a formidable, focused, and profitable company. It has a driven, CEO, competent management, aggressive sales drones, and it well respected in every segment it operates in.
It has been visionary about entering new verticals, and doesn’t suffer from the NIH (not-invented-here) malaise that sweeps through many firms still headed by their founders.
I have no doubt that they would succeed in purchasing Sun Microsystems.
However, thanks to IBM, that purchase is going to come with certain strictures that may prevent Oracle from being as competitive as they could be without them. That said, even with those encumbrances, I think they can, and would be in a position to take on IBM. And successfully, too.
They would be in a position to provide a ready mainframe/DB2 replacement, a position that must make Armonk sleepless with fright.
Schadenfreude
That said, it behooves HP, one of Oracle’s largest partners, to look askance at this potential new Oracle, the hardware and software company.
For if Oracle keeps Sun’s hardware business, it would certainly try to move HP/Oracle installations to Oracle/Sparc.
I can feel it.
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