Software's 'stack wars'

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Ellison said that Oracle may consider supporting Red Hat Linux itself, rather than have customers rely on Red Hat, to fill out Oracle's stack.

"From the operating system up to the application, we're completely responsible. We test everything together, have one set of management tools," Ellison said of the idea of Oracle supporting Linux.

He added that customers would appreciate the better integration and "one throat to choke" support arrangement, "as long as we do a good job and we don't price-gouge them."

Ellison's comments could have been intended as a warning to Red Hat, the leading U.S. distributor of Linux, analysts speculated. With Red Hat set to compete with Oracle in middleware--and potentially databases--Oracle is looking out for its best interests, analysts said.

Indeed, Red Hat's stock slumped 7 percent on Monday while Novell, considered a potential takeover candidate by Oracle, saw its stock rise slightly.

Analysts also point out that Ellison is known to bluff on occasion. "However, we note that public posturing from (Ellison) does not always correlate to ORCL's actual intentions, as he repeatedly suggested that ORCL could and would competitively crush Siebel Systems--only to end up acquiring the company," wrote First Albany analyst Mark Murphy in a report issued on Tuesday.

Given that history, an acquisition is always a possibility. "The super platform vendors are playing a game of musical chairs and there could be a significantly fewer number of chairs when the music stops next time," said Burton's O'Kelly.

How stacks stack up
Adding additional products and features is nothing new for software companies eager to grow revenue. But technology changes are making the need to build technically coherent packages more important--and realistic--than in the past, said analysts.

Broader adoption of industry standards, such as Web services protocols, is making product integration easier. In a way, customers are forcing the creation of stacks, say analysts. Many corporations are seeking to upgrade their systems around a services-oriented architecture, or SOA, a modular software design that promises to make business applications easier to write and maintain.

As a result, software vendors are busy creating--and selling--the tools and infrastructure required for this architectural shift from Web applications to SOA.

Oracle's Fusion Middleware, which is based on Java standards, is being designed to run the now-disparate packaged applications Oracle has acquired, including those from Peoplesoft, Siebel, J.D. Edwards and various industry-specific applications.

Packaged-application giant SAP, meanwhile, has made a high priority of the NetWeaver infrastructure software and Enterprise Services Architecture.

Through dozens of acquisitions over about 10 years, IBM has significantly amended its software line--which covers application development, systems management and security, information management, collaboration, and back-end middleware.

Rangan said that growth for enterprise software companies hinges on their stack strategies and how "effectively they penetrate their installed base with the expanded product portfolios."

Room among the giants?
The largest software vendors--Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and SAP--have the most complete stacks. But pursuit of stacks and application "platforms" is not limited to the industry's giants.

Analysts speculate that Red Hat will eventually offer support for a commercial open-source database, further filling out its lineup. Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik declined to comment on its database plans last week, saying that in the short term the company will focus on integrating JBoss.

Meanwhile, software-as-a-service providers are building their own "platforms" meant to provide customers with a suite of hosted applications. Online companies such as Google and Salesforce.com are building up the infrastructure to host third-party applications, a move also being pursued by Microsoft and IBM.

Saleforce.com executives argue that the company's AppExchange catalog of hosted applications is designed around the Internet and connectivity, a more modern approach compared with a single vendor's on-premise vertically integrated software.

"AppExchange is a platform with an OS (operating system) tools and database. It runs hundreds of applications on any device," Benioff said. "But, it is not a traditional stack of code that you install, upgrade, update, etc. That concept is just not relevant any more."

Even as larger vendors seek to build clout with deeper stacks, smaller specialized vendors can outrun them, said Forrester's Rymer. He sees a split among corporate customers, some of which favor buying integrated goods from a handful of vendors while others are more ambitious users of technology.

"The problem with the approach (of buying suites from a few vendors) is that we are starting to see a shift toward service-oriented architectures and what we call digital business architectures...it's the next platform wave," said Rymer. "These people want features, they don't just want relationships and they don't want to wait for IBM or Oracle."

CNET News.com's Mike Ricciuti contributed to this report.

[neilwd]

Best of breed - ancient history

The article talks about the large enterprise IT vendors' focus on "stacks" as if it's a recent rediscovery: but the truth is that "best of breed" strategies haven't been popular since the mid 1990s. That's practically ancient history in the world of IT. SAP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, BEA et al have been playing the stack game since way back. All that changes is the labels on the boxes.

What's interesting to me, is for how long the tired and entrenched stack plays of these vendors are going to hold up in a world where enterprise customers increasingly look to the power of the network as the driver of value and innovation.

Yessir, in tomorrow's world value will come from leverage of software service networks, not software product stacks.

[fakespam]

Ellison is Satan!

Larry Ellison is Satan and a clone of Howard Hughes!

[ntis]

You have to pick a stack

You can't not pick one - and when you pick one, you are basing a lot of that selection on the guy at the top. Ellison, McNealy, or Ballmer?
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://blog.tallsails.com/2006/04/18/who-are-you-gonna-bet-on.aspx" target="_newWindow">http://blog.tallsails.com/2006/04/18/who-are-you-gonna-bet-on.aspx</a>

[Thomas, David]

CNET, validate Stack Diagram

Enterprise Manager, is the administration user interface for MSSQL.

Because of that mistake, I have no confidence in the diagram.

You need to validate that diagram.

[mike ricciuti]

It's not a mistake....

Enterprise Manager is also the name of oracle's management tool.

[jrolin1]

link for your benefit

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.oracle.com/enterprise_manager/index.html" target="_newWindow">http://www.oracle.com/enterprise_manager/index.html</a>

[rneubert]

Diagrams

These diagrams you have started incorporating with your stories are lame and, as far as I can tell, pointless. What are we supposed to get from them? Certainly not any spatial relations. A geek's dream perhaps but a reader's nightmare. Kind of reminds me of PowerPoint, also useless, except for those who can't read.