Channel Strategies for the CIO1. Oracle: The world's scariest software company
Oracle has been very, very busy. As the summer merged into fall,
Requires Free Membership to View
Oracle continued to digest Sun Microsystems transition into being a hardware provider as well as a software giant. Larry Ellison hired former HP CEO Mark Hurd, much to the consternation of HP. Oracle sued Google over Android's use of Java. And it continued to make noises around churning out high-end data center appliances that would challenge big iron from IBM -- and HP. As the world's biggest database company also armed itself with a huge enterprise apps arsenal, even IBM CEO Sam Palmisano called Oracle his number one rival going forward. Ellison's gotta be loving that.
2. Ellison to HP: Nyah nyah nyah
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison relished in taunting Hewlett-Packard's board in a very public way: via email to daily newspapers. Ellison, apparently unsolicited, chastised the HP board for the way it handled Mark Hurd's exit.
3. Hurd in, Phillips out at Oracle
It was a shocker to some, a yawner to others, when Mark Hurd was named co-president of Oracle and Charles Phillips left the company. Phillips helped engineer Oracle's buyout of PeopleSoft and , oh, about 60 other software companies during his seven-year run at Oracle Corp. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, had been very public in his public defense of Hurd, a tennis buddy, after Hewlett-Packard ousted him.
4. HP sues Hurd
This one wasn't too surprising given the manner of Mark Hurd's exit from HP and quick landing at rival Oracle. Not surprisingly, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison responded with a highly public critique of the HP litigation. (The suit was later settled and while terms were confidential, HP filings with the SEC showed that Hurd waived about half of the stock compensation owed him.) Hurd also agreed not to divulge HP information at Oracle.
5. Oracle Exalogic unveiled, kinda
Exalogic, a new super-Web-serving appliance, headlined Oracle OpenWorld 2010 in September. While Larry Ellison talked at excruciating length about the box's Infiniband internal connections, its solid-state flash drives and processor capabilities in general, he never once mentioned that said processors were Intel, not SPARC chips. Oh well.
Check out the top five Channel Marker blogs from August.
Join the conversationComment
Share
Comments
Results
Contribute to the conversation