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Note: Oracle badly needs to articulate a customer-centric vision. The cloud seems like a great place to start--and here's what Larry Ellison should say.
Everything you need to know about Oracle CEO Larry Ellison sprang out like a predator's claw during an on-stage interview last week with AllThingsD editor Kara Swisher at D10, the business news site's annual insider gathering. Swisher hardly needed to put the "H" and "P" together to get Ellison cranked up about that company's former blink-of-an-eye CEO, Leo Apotheker, who had also been at the helm of SAP when the German-based software giant misappropriated Oracle software.
Ellison called Apotheker a thief, reminding the audience that SAP later on had admitted guilt as part of a three-week trial. Then Ellison relived fond memories of Apotheker avoiding Oracle's subpeona by visiting HP customers in Bolivia and Mongolia: "They should have left him in Mongolia, because when he got to California, it got bad," Ellison said.
Upon hearing Ellison call Apotheker "Lee-o," Swisher corrected his pronunciation: "It's Lay-o," she said.
"I'm not going to call him Lay-o," Ellison responded with a smirk.
It reminds me of a classic scene from the Academy Award winning movie "Unforgiven." Fancy boy gunman English Bob, a.k.a. "The Duke of Death" (played by Richard Harris), rides into town with his fawning biographer, W. W. Beauchamp (played by Saul Rubinek). The Duke's nemesis, ruthless sheriff Little Bill (played by Gene Hackman), disparagingly refers to him as "The Duck of Death." Beauchamp corrects Little Bill: "It's Duke." To which Little Bill responds with a glare: "Duck, I says."
Something else interesting happened on that D10 stage. Ellison, whose company is gearing up for some big announcements this week, said he might tweet the announcement ahead of the formal event (never mind that he essentially revealed a good portion of the game plan during the interview). What's next, a tongue piercing?
Maybe for an encore Oracle will embrace the cloud.
Well, yes, actually, it seems Oracle will.
Oracle Cloud Speculation
Ellison's claim is that he's never had a problem with the concept of the cloud, just the hype behind it. In his estimation, "cloud" is just another embodiment of what the Internet has been delivering for years. Thus, Oracle will announce...