Oracle Aims to Dethrone IBM in Business Hardware 31 May 2012

Oracle aims to dethrone IBM in business hardware 31 May 2012

been a priority for the century-old New York-based technology pioneer.

The servers are a relatively new business for Oracle, which was founded in 1977 and specializes in business software and databases.

Oracle boss Larry Ellison (pictured in 2011) said on Wednesday that he is out to dethrone IBM in the realm of business network hardware, including high-end computer servers.

Oracle boss Larry Ellison said that he is out to People crowd the IBM exhibition at the CeBIT IT fair in dethrone IBM in the realm of business network Hanover, central Germany, in March. Oracle boss Larry hardware, including high-end computer servers. Ellison said on Wednesday that he is out to dethrone IBM in the realm of business network hardware, including high- "Our biggest competitor is IBM," Ellison said on end computer servers. Wednesday, during an on-stage chat with Kara Swisher at the prestigious All Things Digital conference hosted by the Rupert Murdoch-owned technology news website. Ellison has been head of engineering at the company since it was founded. Oracle got into the "IBM was number one in databases. Now we are hardware business when it bought server-maker number one," he said. Sun Microsystems in 2010.

"And they were number one in middleware According to figures released Wednesday by IDC, (programs that help different elements of a Oracle is currently ranked fourth in worldwide computer system communicate), now it's us; they server market revenue, with its share declining to were number one in high-end servers, and we will 6.1%, behind Hewlett-Packard (29.3%), IBM ( be number one in the high-end servers." 27.3%) and Dell (15.6%).

Oracle's high-end offerings, such as Exadata and But Ellison said tracking market share was Exalogic, are well placed to "beat" IBM pSeries misleading, since Oracle was sacrificing sales of systems, according to Ellison. entry-level systems to focus on more profitable high- end gear with fat profit margins. However, he said that California-based Oracle was not a competitor to IBM in services, which has "Our margins are probably higher in the server

1 / 2

industry," Ellison said.

He explained that Oracle was emulating the model set by Apple in the consumer electronics market by providing fully integrated systems designed to be simple for users.

"We found that data centers were unnecessarily complex", Ellison said.

That led to the decision to bring together hard disks, data storage, networks, and rich databases, because "if we do all we can do it is much more reliable, much lower cost."

"This is the Apple model," he said, before paying tribute to the iPad, iPhone, iPod and Macintosh computer maker's legendary co-founder and boss Steve Jobs, who died last year.

Mr. Ellison also announced that on June 6 all Oracle software will be accessible online in the Internet "cloud" and that he will mark the occasion with his first "tweet" on the micro-blogging website Twitter.

All Oracle applications have been "rewritten" to be offered online, which he said had given the company a wide edge over its biggest competitor in software, Germany-based SAP.

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

2 / 2