In spite of a valiant and unexpected effort, Howard Dean's 2004 run for the White House will always be remembered for one unfortunate sound bite. This is a perfect analogy with regard to this year's RSA Conference and software giant Oracle.
Oracle obviously wanted to put its best foot forward. The company's booth was substantial and unavoidable, right in front of the entrance to the show floor. In a year when one of the main topics at RSA was identity management, Oracle's visionary strategy and aggressive execution was one of the more refreshing nuances at Moscone Center this year.
Everything was going so well, and then Larry didn't show up for his keynote speech. He apparently had the flu.
To be clear, I have no reason to question whether Larry was actually sick. What I can report as fact is that Larry's absence was not well received by the security community. A disappointed audience left the Moscone Center en masse when it was announced that Larry would not be participating. Finger-pointing and rumors immediately ensued--"Larry found something better to do" and "Another proof point that Oracle doesn't care about security." I heard comments like these hundreds of times this week.
Oracle had a chance to really shine at this year's RSA Conference, but Larry's untimely absence moved the company to the security doghouse. In other words, Oracle went from hero to zero on the biggest security stage in the world in front of this year's record-breaking crowd.
In some cases, perception is reality.
MySQL plans an initial public offering, Computer Business Review reported Tuesday. "We are planning to go public," Chief Executive Marten Mickos told the publication, adding that he's in no hurry to do so.
Mickos said in the interview that his company has spent less than half of the venture financing it's raised.
The move isn't a surprise, but Mickos hasn't been so overt about the possibility until now. Last year, when Mickos confirmed that Oracle sought to acquire MySQL, he gave the following explanation of his corporation's ambition: "We will be part of a larger company, but it will be called MySQL."
A trail of breadcrumbs seems to be connecting database powerhouse Oracle with the Ubuntu version of Linux.
The most recent crumb was a report last week by Jeffries & Co. analyst Katherine Egbert. "Our independent checks in the past two weeks indicate that Oracle seems to be close to introducing its own software 'stack,' featuring Ubuntu Linux. We have heard that Ubuntu is currently working to certify its recently introduced server operating system to all of Oracle's major products, including database and middleware," Egbert said.
A likely time to announce such news, she said, would be the Oracle OpenWorld conference next week. The remarks sent Red Hat's stock down 7 percent the next day, and it remains down.
Ubuntu is a newly popular version of Linux funded by a South African company, Canonical, which is trying to profit from selling Ubuntu support.
Christopher Kenyon, Canonical's business development manager, offered another crumb in a recent interview, when he said Oracle makes sure its 10G Express version works on Ubuntu.
Oracle 10G Express, a free product limited to single-processor servers with up to 4GB of memory, is only a first step, but Kenyon spoke encouragingly of a broader alliance involving the full-featured 10G product: "They have been great at ensuring that Oracle 10G Express works on Ubuntu. We also know that an increasing number of their customers would like to see Oracle fully certify Oracle database 10G on Ubuntu," he said.
Earlier crumbs came from Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison, who ignited the Oracle-Linux speculation in April with remarks in an interview that he wants to own a "full stack" of software and that the company may support or bundle the Linux operating system.
Oracle already has some deep in-house Linux expertise, but packaging and maintaining an entire operating system is a massive task. Marc Fleury, head of Red Hat's newly acquired JBoss division (which competes directly with Oracle application server software), has said he thinks an Oracle Linux plan is more speculation than reality.
PALO ALTO, Calif.--Hewlett-Packard and Intel were pleased when Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison made a video appearance to help tout Itanium servers before mutual customers.
But there was much whispering and hubbub when the audience noticed the Compaq logo on his chest. The logo was retired for all but a few PC products after HP acquired its rival in 2002. Even HP and Intel CEOs Mark Hurd and Paul Otellini suppressed a chuckle as they watched from the stage at HP headquarters here.
It's likely Ellison can't plead ignorance for his branding faux pas. In a January meeting with Ellison and Sun Chief Executive Scott McNealy, the Oracle CEO wore the same outfit--but with some black tape concealing the logo.
JBoss Chief Executive Marc Fleury isn't commenting on reports that Oracle plans to acquire his company, but the outspoken exec has published remarks in his blog that indicate there could be serious philosophical incompatibilities between the companies.
Specifically, JBoss' priority on open-source software (OSS) might not fit well with Oracle's proprietary products, judging by Fleury's view.
"JBoss has always been about pure open source. We started in OSS and we will die in OSS," Fleury said Tuesday on his blog.
In his blog, he singled out rivals IBM and BEA Systems with criticisms of appropriating open-source code or blending it within proprietary products. Fleury advocates a business model of selling services to support open-source software, in contrast to proprietary models that charge for the license to use it.
While he didn't mention Oracle, his remarks challenge the database giant. "Shifting from a software license revenue model to a subscription revenue model is painful for big vendors like BEA and IBM who need to protect their sacred cows so Wall Street doesn't devalue them," Fleury said.
Mark Hurd and Paul Otellini, the respective chief executives of Hewlett-Packard and Intel, are joining mutual customers on March 2 in Palo Alto, Calif., to discuss work to further their alliance around the Itanium processor.
According to an advertisement for the event, which HP will Webcast, the two executives will "take the challenges of enterprise computing head-on." A video appearance by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison hints that there may be news addressing some of the software hurdles that have hobbled Itanium's arrival in the marketplace.
HP initiated the Itanium project in the late 1980s, then signed a partnership with Intel to commercialize the processor. Slow initial performance, product delays and software incompatibilities undercut the once-prevalent assumption that the processor would dominate, and Intel gradually pared back its ambitions. The chip is now designed for higher-end servers.
An IDC study released last week showed that customers have rosier-than-expected views of Itanium, including a forecast of $6.6 billion in customer spending on Itanium servers in 2009. That projection falls far short of much more bullish Itanium projections in earlier years, such as a 1997 forecast that predicted sales of $33 billion in 2001.
Oracle and JBoss haven't commented on a BusinessWeek report that the database giant is acquiring the open-source Java application server specialist--but a rival of both companies has confirmed that JBoss has been on the market.
BEA Systems, which sells application server software of its own, decided against acquiring JBoss when presented with the opportunity, said Chief Marketing Officer Marge Breya in an interview Friday. One significant problem was the price was too high, and another was that BEA didn't like JBoss' open-source practices.
"JBoss has been shopping itself around for months," Breya said, during which BEA and JBoss representatives discussed purchase prices and other details several times.
"At first, everybody was tossing around numbers from $100 million to $200 million. Then we started hearing more," Breya said. The price tag was way too high compared to JBoss' revenue. "When you look at that multiple to revenue without a working business model, it was pretty amazing," she said.
Price wasn't the only problem BEA had. JBoss' controlling programming style was a bad match for BEA, Breya added. "It's like getting an open-source product with a closed community," she said. "We're into a more democratic approach to open source. This one seems very autocratic."
BusinessWeek reported on Thursday that Oracle plans to acquire JBoss for as much as $400 million, and the Wall Street Journal reported the same figure Friday.
However, Breya said she's heard the JBoss price is "a little bit above" $400 million. She also said she's heard rumors the deal will be announced Monday. Oracle declined to comment on rumor and speculation, and JBoss didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about BEA's views.
Oracle, BEA, JBoss and IBM all sell middleware, a software layer for Java programs on a server. These so-called application servers typically run business programs such as e-commerce sites in conjunction with other servers running databases and Web site software.
Oracle, IBM and BEA all have proprietary application server packages, but the companies are adjusting as open-source options are burgeoning. IBM acquired one specialist in the market, Gluecode, in 2005, and Sun Microsystems has made its application server an open-source project called GlassFish. BEA has adopted a "blended" strategy under which its programming tools will create software for multiple application serers, including open-source Apache Tomcat and proprietary WebSphere.
REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.--Oracle will extend its license to Sun Microsystems' Java software technology for another 10 years, Sun CEO Scott McNealy and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said Tuesday.
"You guys are signing up for another 10 years of collaboration and cooperation," McNealy said at an employee meeting at Oracle's headquarters here, praising Oracle for its years of work
The move comes a few months after another long-term Java licensee, IBM, also extended its Java license 10 years.
Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy, the respective CEOs of Oracle and Sun Microsystems, will squeeze their egos into the same room at Oracle headquarters Tuesday to detail partnership plans, according a Thursday news advisory.
The two executives have had a close business relationship for years; Oracle's database and other server software products are popular on Sun's servers. But there has been some friction of late as Oracle touted Linux and Dell servers and McNealy bashed Oracle's pricing.
Tuesday's meeting, billed as a "Sun/Oracle employee town hall," will address a number of issues, according to the press advisory. Among them: "Why the time is right to kick off the next phase of the Sun/Oracle alliance, how both companies intend to extend the importance of Java for the future, how Oracle's new pricing model for multi-core systems benefits customers, (and) how Sun and Oracle will go to market together to expand adoption for Sun and Oracle technologies."
Given that list of subjects and the fact that neither company has a shy and retiring publicity department, it's probably not too much to hope that this event will provide some concrete details and not just marketing fluff. The bar has been set pretty low: Sun and Google drew frenzied speculation but offered few details when they announced the Snoogle partnership in October. Even a few scraps of detail should be enough to keep people from snoring through Snoracle.
One probability is some patching-up of a relationship has shown some signs of fraying in recent years.
McNealy has aimed gentle barbs at Ellison--making fun of his aggressive acquisition strategy and expensive suits, for example. But he also has made a more serious charge, complaining about how Oracle based its software prices on the number of cores a processor has. Sun, which has the most aggressive multi-core processor strategy in the server market, would have been at a major pricing disadvantage by such a move, but Oracle in December announced more liberal pricing.
Meanwhile, in 2003, Oracle said Linux would become its primary software development platform. But in November 2005, the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company updated its position, saying Solaris is the "preferred development and deployment platform" for 64-bit x86 processors.
Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Scott McNealy took potshots at many of his peers in the computing industry during a keynote address Tuesday--even at Larry Ellison, leader of the company hosting the Oracle OpenWorld conference at which McNealy spoke before an audience of 12,000.
Shortly after introducing servers based on Sun's new UltraSparc IV+ processor, McNealy showed a slide picturing him in jeans and Ellison in characteristically sharp attire. "That suit! You can buy 14 of our new servers for that suit," McNealy quipped.
He also listed the supposed song playlist on Ellison's iPod: "Hey, Big Spender," "I Like Big," "Turning Japanese," "Come Sail Away" and "I'm Too Sexy."
And he remarked on Oracle's aggressive acquisition strategy. "Technology has the shelf life of a banana. Everything you buy from us, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, or anybody is going to be obsolete in 18 months, or end-of-lifed, or bought by Oracle."
McNealy also jabbed Hewlett-Packard's new CEO, Mark Hurd, by putting words into his mouth: "Who needs a strategy? We need to execute!"
Dell CEO Kevin Rollins didn't get a personal slight, but his company did. "Imagine if everyone on the planet got up in the morning and turned on their Xeon Dell PCs. You think we have a global warming problem now? Move away from the shores! There's not enough power, enough oil, enough energy on the planet to drive that compute model," McNealy said.
IBM CEO Sam Palmisano also got an iPod playlist--songs included "I Can't Make You Love Me" and "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking for"--as well as a product jab. "The mainframe is easily the least cost-effective piece of computing equipment ever. If it was an airplane, it would have pedals on it," McNealy said.
