Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Applications
    • Applications
    • IT Management
    • Networking
    • PC Hardware

    Hewlett-Packard’s Apotheker Takes Grief from Oracle’s Ellison

    By
    Nicholas Kolakowski
    -
    October 4, 2010
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is mincing no words about Hewlett-Packard’s recent appointment of Leo Apotheker as its chief executive. His vitriol emphasizes the increasingly combative nature of the HP-Oracle relationship.

      “I’m speechless,” Ellison reportedly wrote in an e-mail to the Wall Street Journal, reprinted Oct. 1. “HP had several good internal candidates … but instead they pick a guy who was recently fired because he did such a bad job of running SAP.”

      Ellison reportedly followed that missive with a weekend e-mail to Reuters, which described SAP as an intellectual-property thief under Apotheker’s tenure. “SAP has already publically confessed and accepted financial responsibility for systematically stealing intellectual property over a long period of time,” Ellison wrote, according to the news service. “Much of this industrial espionage and intellectual property theft occurred while Leo was CEO of SAP.”

      HP has largely refrained from commenting on Ellison’s supposed attacks. The company anointed Apotheker as its chief executive Sept. 30, replacing Mark Hurd, who stepped down in the wake of scandal and was promptly named co-president of Oracle.

      “I bring to HP a lot international and global experience,” Apotheker told reporters and analysts during an Oct. 1 conference call. “HP is a global company, and one of my attributes is that I’m a global citizen.” He also promised to expand HP’s focus to “every part of the stack.”

      Apotheker’s nomination led to furious online debate over his relative merits as a chief executive. While some pundits expressed concern over what they perceived as his lack of consumer-product knowledge, the general consensus is that, after two decades at SAP, the man knows his enterprise software.

      That knowledge should prove useful as HP competes with Oracle for its share of enterprise IT. The combination of Apotheker and former Oracle COO/president Ray Lane, recently named HP’s chairman, “represent the strongest brain trust of folks who know how to fight Oracle and build a company that could do that well in particular,” Enderle Group principal analyst Rob Enderle wrote in an Oct. 1 e-mail to eWEEK.

      HP will certainly focus more of its attention on software as a growth engine. “HP should be more valuable than the sum of its parts,” Apotheker said during his conference call. “We all believe that software is the glue to make that happen.” Not unsurprisingly, software is also a key part of Oracle’s plan to offer an integrated and holistic stack to its enterprise customers.

      In the end, HP’s hiring Apotheker is as much a statement as Oracle hiring Hurd: Both companies seem to be gunning for a true battle royale in the quarters ahead.

      Avatar
      Nicholas Kolakowski
      Nicholas Kolakowski is a staff editor at eWEEK, covering Microsoft and other companies in the enterprise space, as well as evolving technology such as tablet PCs. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Playboy, WebMD, AARP the Magazine, AutoWeek, Washington City Paper, Trader Monthly, and Private Air. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×