Long before Mark Pincus talked about making revenue any way he could, there was Oracle’s Larry Ellison. Brash, funny, ladies-man-playboy and intensely competitive, they don’t make tech entrepreneurs like Ellison anymore. Bloomberg’s Game Changers series is taking on Ellison in a special airing tomorrow at 6 pm pacific time on Bloomberg TV. It sounds like it’ll be a juicy send up of my favorite eyebrow-less mogul, and I’m setting my TiVo now.
They wouldn’t send me a transcript before it airs, but I did get a few teasers out of them. Here are some quotes from the show by some of the people who worked the closest with Ellison. → Read More
After an 11 day trial whose highlights included the hilarious “Where In The World Is HP CEO Leo Apotheker?“ the Oracle vs. SAP intellectual property case has finally ended today in a whopping $1.3 billion dollar verdict, “The largest amount ever awarded for software piracy” according to Oracle co-president Safra Catz. → Read More
ATG, provider of eCommerce software and related on-demand commerce optimization applications, this morning announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Oracle for $6 per share in cash, or approximately $1 billion.
ATG’s eCommerce software platform is complementary to Oracle’s CRM, ERP, Retail, and Supply Chain applications, as well as its portfolio of middleware and business intelligence technologies, the company said in a statement. → Read More
I used to cover enterprise software for BusinessWeek. You’re probably not impressed by that, and you shouldn’t be. That beat is a combination of a punishment and proving ground because despite being a huge market, most enterprise software purchases are ones that IT managers grow to hate and one that few everyday readers care much about. One thing has made enterprise software an interesting beat: Larry Ellison.
Whether it’s his love of the ladies, his yachts, his mysterious lack of eyebrows, his strategic brilliance, his quick-witted jabs at competitors, random musings that he may buy Apple, or declarations that software is done as a category and he’d just buy everyone up, Larry Ellison has long been the software reporter’s gift that keeps on giving. Tony Stark in IronMan was reportedly based on a hybrid of Larry Ellison and Elon Musk, and I recognize way more Ellison than Musk in the depiction.
It looks like Larry has a new foil: HP. Hallelujah, enterprise software is getting interesting again. → Read More
Here we go again.
It seems like a week can’t go by now without some company suing another company over some lame software patent. The latest is Microsoft which today announced it was suing Motorola for features on their Android phones.
As it continues to rapidly grow in size, Android is increasingly a target of such suits. But the weird thing about these suits is how they always seem to be indirectly targeting Android. That is, companies aren’t suing Google for Android, they’re suing manufacturers using Android on their phones. See: Apple suing HTC for another example of this. → Read More
The dramatic battle between Mark Hurd, HP, and Oracle continues. Yesterday Oracle announced that it was hiring recently-ousted HP CEO Mark Hurd as Co-President and a member of its Board. HP responded this morning by suing Hurd, alleging that he would potentially leak trade secrets to Oracle. Oracle has just responded to the suit, and it isn’t pulling any punches:
“Oracle has long viewed HP as an important partner,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees. The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace.”
It seems like only yesterday that Oracle announced it was hiring former HP CEO Mark Hurd to be a Co-President and member of the Board — that’s because it was just yesterday. And now just one day later, we have a lawsuit filed by HP to block such a maneuver by Oracle.
In confirming the lawsuit in a brief blog post today, HP’s official corporate blog highlights what they see as the key issue here: trade secrets and confidential information. HP even included a link to the full complaint that they’ve posted on Scribd (embed below). Here’s the key nugget: → Read More
Oracle has confirmed that former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd has found a cushy place to land after one of the year’s messiest tech scandals. Hurd will be joining the company as Co-President alongside Oracle CEO and close friend Larry Ellison.
This comes as no surprise if you believed yesterday’s rumors of Hurd’s hire or took note of the fact that Ellison came to his defense during the controversy over allegations of harassment by former HP contractor Jodie Fisher. → Read More
IBM put out a new report (embedded below) on security threats to enterprise computer networks today from its X-Force security research group. It found a 36 percent increase in security vulnerabilities, with Web applications being the main culprit. Web apps with security exploits accounted for 55 percent of all disclosed vulnerabilities.
One of the biggest threats are hidden attacks using Javascript. There was a 52 percent rise in such “obfuscated attacks” in the first half of 2010. The increased adoption of cloud computing and virtualization brings with it its own security threats. For instance, 35 percent of virtualization vulnerabilities affect the hypervisor, meaning that gaining control of one virtual machine can give attackers controls of other machines on the same system. → Read More
Picture this. You’re the world’s biggest search engine, and you just became the target of a patent lawsuit that could potentially put your massively successful mobile operating system at risk. Your hardware and carrier partners are keenly watching your response, not to mention the constant government scrutiny you see on a day-to-day basis. So, throwing caution to the wind, you pull out your digital middle finger and delist your opponent entirely from search results, then shoot off an internal memo with the subject line “FREEDOM” and a link to the Braveheart Theme.
That’s the story that IPWatchdog published last night, claiming that Google “seemingly tampered with [its] search algorithm and database by eliminating Oracle altogether” from its search engine (okay, there wasn’t anything about an internal memo). Gene Quinn, the article’s author, claims to have confirmed the search issue at 3 PM EST yesterday, stating that it was back to normal a few hours later. Unfortunately, it’s totally bogus. → Read More
I knew I would be touching a raw nerve with my last two posts, on patents. But I was really surprised at the divergence of opinion. Entrepreneurs overwhelmingly supported my stance that software patents hamper innovation and need to be abolished, but friends in Microsoft, IBM, and Google were outraged at my recommendation. The big companies’ executives argued that abolishing patents would hurt their ability to innovate and thus hamper the nation’s economic growth. (They believe that companies like theirs create the majority of jobs and innovations, and they claim that without patents they cannot defend their innovations.) I am not convinced that software patents give Google any advantage over Microsoft and Yahoo, or make IBM’s databases any better than Oracle’s. But I do know one thing for sure: it isn’t the big companies that create the jobs or the revolutionary technology innovations: it is startups. So if we need to pick sides, I vote for the startups.
Let’s start with the question of who creates the jobs. This is one of the issues that I recently took Intel co-founder Andy Grove to task for, in BusinessWeek. Grove wrote a profound essay lamenting the loss of American manufacturing jobs. I share his concerns about jobs. But Andy’s protectionist recommendations for restoring America’s competitiveness were largely based on his flawed premise that companies like Intel create all the jobs—not the startups. I also discussed the tradeoff between bailing out companies like General Motors, AIG, and Citibank and nurturing startups in this BusinessWeek piece. This question is more important than it may seem. → Read More
Last night, Oracle filed suit against Google over its Android operating system, alleging that Google was infringing on seven Java patents with Android and its Dalvik virtual machine. Oracle acquired the rights to the patents when it bought Sun Microsystems last year, and now that Android has taken off, it’s looking to shake Google down for a big payday. Google has been quiet until now about the suit, but they’ve just given us this statement:
“We are disappointed Oracle has chosen to attack both Google and the open-source Java community with this baseless lawsuit. The open-source Java community goes beyond any one corporation and works every day to make the web a better place. We will strongly defend open-source standards and will continue to work with the industry to develop the Android platform.”
Oracle is acquiring Secerno, an Oxford, UK-based provider of database firewall solutions for Oracle and non-Oracle databases. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and Oracle expects the transaction to close before the end of June 2010.
Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently.
Secerno’s solution adds a critical defensive layer of security around databases, which blocks unauthorized activity in real-time. With the purchase, Oracle intends to enhance its portfolio of database security solutions, including Oracle Advanced Security, Oracle Database Vault and Oracle Audit Vault to “further ensure data privacy, protect against threats, and enable regulatory compliance”. → Read More
Oracle is acquiring Secerno, an Oxford, UK-based provider of database firewall solutions for Oracle and non-Oracle databases. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and Oracle expects the transaction to close before the end of June 2010.
Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently.
Secerno’s solution adds a critical defensive layer of security around databases, which blocks unauthorized activity in real-time. With the purchase, Oracle intends to enhance its portfolio of database security solutions, including Oracle Advanced Security, Oracle Database Vault and Oracle Audit Vault to “further ensure data privacy, protect against threats, and enable regulatory compliance”. → Read More
Enterprise giant Oracle will acquire healthcare software firm Phase Forward for $685 million. Of course, this is small change compared to Oracle’s $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems, which was approved recently. The deal is expected to close mid-year in 2010.
Phase Forward’s software is used by drug companies for clinical trials. The company’s software automates the entire clinical development process — from Phase I through regulatory submission, post-approval trials and and more. The company will be folded into Oracle’s Health Sciences Global Business Unit. → Read More
Oracle is snapping up companies left and right lately: this year the company not only closed the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, but also purchased smaller players like Silver Creek Systems, AmberPoint and now, Convergin.
The transaction is expected to close in the first half of this year, and financial details were not disclosed. After the close of the transaction, Convergin employees and management are “expected to join Oracle”. → Read More
On the heels of the EU’s approval of Oracle’s $7.4 billion deal to acquire Sun Microsystems, the tech giant has opened up the purse strings to acquire application management software provider AmberPoint. Terms of the deal were not disclosed and the acquisition is expected to close in the first half of this year.
AmberPoint’s software helps organizations diagnose and resolve issues in application performance and business transactions, such as insurance claims processing or account provisioning where multiple applications need to work together. → Read More
Jonathan Schwartz deserves better. Sure, he’s got a rich payout from his years at Sun. Sure, he’s leaving because Ellison doesn’t need anybody explaining why the cloud is a good thing. Sure, there are a lot of hurting people who can use Jonathan as an easy target for what’s become of the dot in dot.com. But what Jonathan did for Sun, and the rest of the industry, was to twist the conventional wisdom of the enterprise into a new shape now being leveraged by a host of successful players. Jonathan somehow got that ubiquity in the consumer space would translate into platform power. The rising tide of the social network has its roots in many of the things Jonathan was saying long before it was popular or even wise politically. Probably nobody could have pulled off what Jonathan was tasked to do. At Oracle’s absorbathon last week, Larry Ellison reiterated his nothing-new-here cloud bashing while actually affirming the investments Schwartz made in consolidating the best of breed system solutions Oracle will use to go after weakened competitors like SAP who looked the other way as Salesforce expanded. The rumblings at the end were that Jonathan couldn’t close the IBM deal, forcing McNeally to quick-punt to Ellison. But Ellison’s analysis of the Sun assets shows that most if not all of the value Schwartz claimed in the financial community will be reflected in revenue from Day One, that keeping Java away from IBM will turn out to be a hugely valuable investment, and that a nuanced use of MySQL as a customer-facing sales tool for the SMB market will stave off the growth of any other open source database. As the smoke clears from this epic consolidation, what’s left are the explosive pairing of Apple and Google in the new mobile architecture, predicted by Schwartz with his relelntless observation that devices go to free. With Oracle/Sun now positioned as the fuel for the virtualization layer of the cloud, the big freakin’ webtone switch of this era, the iPad Era launches a race to spread the gospel of the financial community infrastructure across the micromessage bus and its media partners. Jonathan Schwartz was brought in to finesse the transition from the Good Old Days to the Good New Days, and he’ll deserve to harvest irreplaceable time with his young family. It will be interesting to see him return, because he has little → Read More
When you’re on your way out of a job, there’s a lot of fun ways to exit. Some choose to take all the staplers in the office, some show up to the last day in shorts, some pull a Jerry Maguire. And some tweet out a haiku.
That’s exactly what Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz did tonight. Here’s his tweet:
Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more
Really, what more needs to be said? → Read More
It’s official: the European Commission has granted regulatory approval for Oracle to acquire Sun Microsystems for approximately $7.4 billion, without further conditions. In a statement released moments ago, Oracle says it expects unconditional approval from China and Russia as well and intends to close the transaction shortly.
Oracle will host an all-day live event for customers, partners, press and analysts on January 27th, 2010 at 9:00 AM Pacific time at its headquarters in Redwood Shores, CA. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
