Ellison: 'There'll be nothing left of IBM once I'm done' Oracle has pulled the rug out from under Hewlett-Packard's Intel's Itanium processor by yanking support of its database, middleware, and application software on future "Poulson" and "Kittson" Itaniums. It looks as though Larry Ellison wants to take on IBM in microprocessors for data center systems, man-to-man, head-to-head. "I …
If IBM takes Larry seriously, they’ll rollout a new increment of the Power chips with more cores that make Sparc look as slow as ever..
but Oracle has effectively hobbled their DBMS on other platforms (EXAData storage node software is not licenced to competitors).. will it try to hobble Java EE in the same way..
Nazgul lawyers is a term used for IBM in 1970s when Federal Government figured they have less lawyers than Big Blue.
So, imagine the circus when IBM sues them for delibarately undermining their business via software, Oracle ordered to open the source code etc.
IBM is named Big Blue for a reason. You can't find a single speech so childishly done without thinking in their entire history. Say anything about them but they are managed professionally, not like some small grocery store which "owner" makes whatever statement he feels like.
Wow, I guess IBM stole your dinner money! Here's a beer to take your mind off it!
I think the point people are trying to make is that when IBM "attacks" their competition, it comes across as more professional and less childish than Larry's efforts. And that, as well as being evil, IBM has a lot of good technology, a deep understanding of their target customers' business, and many many sharp (and evil, I'm sure) lawyers. Yes, IBM uses it's patent portfolio offensively at times. But they had to earn the patents first!
BTW, if we are talking about evil, a lot of people would put your cool financial organisations way up the top of the list! What's mainly wrong with IBM in recent years is sucking up to the finance market.
But don't let me interrupt your rant.
"......I think the point people are trying to make is that when IBM "attacks" their competition, it comes across as more professional and less childish than Larry's efforts....." The difference I see is that the level of IBMer making comments is a person with a balanced professional ability, whereas Larry is and always has been nothing but a salesperson.
"...But they had to earn the patents first!..."
IBM had to earn the patents first? You did not read my links above? The IBM patents were really silly. Sun used patents for deffense, IBM uses it for offense.
IBM attacked Sun heavily with lot of FUD. The difference is that IBM attacks systematically and with a plan behind - that is a bit more Evil dont you think? And IBM cooperated with the Nazis in the Holocaust as someone pointed out above. Larry is a Jew as many great IT CEOs are, so maybe Larry dont like IBM for that. I would not. Larry, go get them!
I remember an internal presentation waaaaaay back when I was an Oracle employee, but it was Microsoft then.
Nothing new here, he just keeps changing the enemy.
The thing that costs money isn't the server kit or licences, it's the yards of programmers needed to make them do useful things - if they already know IBM's offering and are effective with it, why the hell would you go to Oracle, and have to retrain them all while accepting lower productivity for several months, maybe even years? Madness.
All this bickering...
At least someone is taking it to IBM, Larry is aggressive yes, is he a bit if a cock, yes. But at least he's doing what you would expect and creating competition which in turn moves the market forward.
Oracle is doing good things with SPARC, and that's good to see. It's doing good things with it's all in one completely integrated vertical stack. No one else apart from IBM can or has done this, (HP could have done but it decided to become the worlds premier tin/ink pusher, look how thats turned out for them...share price fall speaks for itself)
I'm Ex-Sun, but unlike a certain people on here who are Sun/Oracle "supporters" (like its a bloody football team) I have a massive amount of admiration for IBM, and the thought of IBM and Oracle going head to head is great.
Exadata is doing well, like it or lump it. At Both of my last contracts at major US and German banks they bought several of them, CIO's like the idea of an "appliance" and the costs do add up, they work out cheaper and easier to maintain than your standard distributed systems model, it's gone full circle back to centralised computing or "Cloud" as the numpties like to call it.
So in a word, chill, and appreciate that a bit or bravado and competition is a good thing for all of us.....
Database performance is directly proportional to specints (assuming other bits as constants) - any database person would know that - but Larry has never been good at detail. Just look at the tables if you want proof.
So what Larry is really saying is that Oracle databases on Sun will never match those on IBM unless Larry cripples the IBM version.
"...Database performance is directly proportional to specints (assuming other bits as constants) - any database person would know that - but Larry has never been good at detail. Just look at the tables if you want proof..."
I think you are wrong here. Larry has said that POWER7 is better at specint, and still POWER7 has worse database performance than T4. In fact T4 database performance seem to be fastest today on the market - even though it has lower specint performance. How do you explain that? Just look at the T4 benchmarks if you want proof...
I was going to make a purely Ad Hominem comment about how Larry should change that bloody suit he ALWAYS wears when he is not wearing his Mustos and Henri Lloyds.
Because it makes us think that he thinks he is some kind of Bond villain.
I lightly skimmed the comments to get the gist of feedback, and it would seem that I am not the only one who thinks he is suffering from 'some kind of' Megalomania.
You think he'd change once in a while wouldn't you? Dirty bastard.
Wonder what he wears to bed. Actually, no, scrub that thought.
Scrub it hard. With bleach.
(Childcatcher - if you're interested - coz he's always wearing the same bloody thing every time I see him, and he's a dirty bastard too.)
I really think it's amazing that people are cheering while Larry turns Oracle into something that looks more like the IBM of the 70ies or 80ties. Nobody today in their right mind would be doing that.
At some point in time Larry will stand all alone, just like IBM did in the late 80ies. The problem for Larry is that back then IBM was still the biggest player and had the time, competitive space and money to turn it's business around. The problem for Larry is that he has clients desperately trying to get off his platform, the media have labelled him the 'bad guy' and two bigger competitors that are focusing more and more on him, cause he is behaving like a dork.
So IMHO what Larry should do is focusing on running his business, rather than trying to destroy others.
// Jesper
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