ElReg vs. Oracle
I`m enjoying the fight from here.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison was cross examined on Monday during the ongoing cat fight between Oracle and rival SAP. An SAP attorney grilled Ellison over claims that in pilfering Oracle intellectual property, SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow cost his company up to 30 per cent of PeopleSoft and 15 per cent of Sieble customers. The model …
Interesting to see him on the stand. He enjoys streching the truth and out right lying when he knows no one can disprove him.
"Exadata is the most successful product in Oracle history" - in reference to Exadata 1 which they only sold 25 in one year.
"Exadata has a $1.5B sales pipeline" - when they have sold less than 100 according to IDC
there is a long history of lies.....the SAP defense should bring him up and ask him questions to prove on stand where he can go to jail for lying to show all the lies he has told over the year.
Obviously SAP did not cost them more than $100M....not $4B.
East Liberty
As President For Life and sole member of the People for Ethical Treatment of the Hyphen, I must raise my voice over the crude violation that you have so carelessly committed.
Indeed, it is not "cross examined", but "cross-examined". The hyphen is not optional in this case.
You are not yet a repeat offender, so this note will be the only sanction. If, however, you continue to grossly ignore the value of the hyphen, I must warn you that you might, one morning, wake up with the remains of a beheaded hyphen lying on your pillow.
Adverbial and adjectival phrases must not be allowed to die of neglect of or mis-treatment of the hyphen. May I apply to P.E.T.H.? I will happily stand outside whatever institution is the worst offender, with a small tent, a badly-lettered but impeccably-punctuated cardboard sign, and with a megaphone in hand, making the sleeping public aware.
I speak in jest, but I am in earnest.
Good, so if Oracle had 'just' 300 customers stolen, it's suddenly back to being okay? How is that even logical, much less right? It doesn't really matter if SAP illegally stole away 300, 3 or 300 thousand customers away from Oracle, it's still illegal and it still doesn't make SAP any less culpable.
Anyway, who are those 300 customers? Are those customers small fry and inconsequential, or were these large contracts? I can still imagine 15-30% customer base (in terms of financials).
Penelope Cruz wandering around my penthouse apartment in her underwear. Doesn't make it true.
Among the impressive number of mistakes you managed to cram into such a short post is the assumption that the 300 customers were "stolen", as opposed to choosing to migrate off of Siebel or Peoplesoft rather than face life under Larry. Yes, such things do happen. In fact, they are quite commonplace in the wake of acquisitions.
Another huge blunder is your assertion that it doesn't matter how many customers they lured away. In order to be compensated, Oracle has demonstrate how much it was harmed. It can't simply claim every dollar it might ever have made from any of those customers -- unlike, say, the RIAA.
First of all, those customers did not migrate off of Siebel or Peoplesoft. The original assertion was that those customers migrated from Oracle support to SAP support, but did not change the software (which would be ridiculous otherwise and Oracle would have no case there).
If you are considering damages, it does matter how many customers have been lured away. However, the number of customers lured away is inconsequential (it could very well be zero) when it comes to determining whether SAP was guilty of IP theft or not.
Ellison did admit that the worst case scenario was averted, but you can't claim 300 customers (out of 300 thousand, give or take 299 thousand) is just a small bunch. The largest customers make up the bulk of the contract value.