Google, Salesforce.com Execs Chide Oracle, Microsoft on Cloud Computing (
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SAN FRANCISCO—In
a perfect world, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison
and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer would have
been on the cloud computing panel moderated by Tim O'Reilly at the Web 2.0
Summit here Nov. 6.
They would have been able to defend themselves from the stinging digs from
Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard. Indeed, it would
have been the kind of contest reserved for males over cloud computing and SAAS
(software as a service), where software providers host applications and
infrastructure for customers.
Instead, the jibes went uncontested. Benioff said that when Ellison dismissed Salesforce.com and cloud computing, Ellison was
leveraging the Sun
Tzu "Art of War" strategy—"when weak, feign strength"—and
that that was the "right approach for him." Oracle specializes in on-premises
database systems.
In answer to O'Reilly's question about margins for cloud computing being lower
than traditional software businesses, another claim made by Ellison, Benioff
said it's unfair to compare the cloud model to "mature, dying models like
Oracle or SAP, which may be already dead. ...
It's a little bit apples and oranges."
Benioff, looking worn out from his company's Dreamforce event this week, also
welcomed Microsoft to the cloud, with a caveat:
"I think it's fantastic that they're coming in and saying they're going
to have something one day," he said, referring to Microsoft's announcement
of its Azure cloud computing platform at its Professional Developers
Conference last week. Azure is not expected until 2009.
Girouard was more diplomatic, but picked up where Benioff left off with the
fruit metaphor. He welcomed Microsoft, which is building Office Web, an answer
to Google Apps, by saying that Microsoft will eventually be able to go
apples-to-apples with Google, but "we think our apples will taste
better."
VMware President and CEO Paul Maritz (who
once oversaw Windows, Office, Visual Studio, and other key platforms and applications
for Microsoft, and now runs an EMC-owned
business focused on providing virtualization infrastructure to enable companies
to run their computer systems on the cloud) and Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch were
also on the panel, though they did not partake in the spear throwing.
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