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The world, and Microsoft, according to Larry Ellison

R Jagannathan in Beijing

The world is dividing into two camps," he thunders. "One camp believes in open systems and standards, and the other that one company or one person should set the standards."

That, in case you haven't guessed, is Larry Ellison, chairman and chief executive officer of the $11-billion Oracle Corporation, a global leader in database software and e-business technology.

He is, however, better known as one of the main crusaders, along with Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems, against the Evil Empire of Bill Gates and Microsoft.

Not surprisingly, he used his keynote address at OracleWorld, a global showcasing of Oracle technology and partnerships in Beijing to land in a few jabs at Gates. Talking about Microsoft's efforts to use its Windows monopoly to dominate the Web with its .Net technology, Ellison pooh-poohs the idea.

"One company cannot dictate a standard. Standards belong to the world. MS.Net is not a standard. It is a personal property of Microsoft, which largely belongs to one person."

While Western audiences may treat Ellison's diatribes as old hat, his theatrics in Beijing show that Oracle is keen to get a foot in the door in Asia's software markets, where open standards and free software have a great following. Oracle sees China as its third fastest growing market in the Asia-Pacific after Japan and South Korea.

To emphasise its commitment to China, Ellison also announced the opening of two development centres at Shenzen in south China and in Beijing itself.

These do not yet compare in size with the ones Oracle has in India (a staff of 2,000, mostly in Bangalore and Hyderabad, versus a few hundred in China), but it is clear that in terms of market, China is the bigger prize for now.

The OracleWorld event in Beijing, scheduled to run from June 12-14, has drawn over 6,000 delegates from all over the world, the bulk of them from China and the Asia-Pacific region.

At a press conference later, Ellison was quick to deny any personal antipathy towards Gates and co. "It's not a personal battle with Microsoft. It's the rest of the world which wants open standards - that's against Microsoft. I am on the side of the world. Humankind. It's Bill versus the world."

In this battle, according to Ellison, the good guys are Sun, IBM and others like Oracle who support open-systems like Java, SQL Linux and other such open standards. Not Microsoft, which believes in owning the whole world.

But doesn't Oracle license its own proprietary database software for large sums of money? So why should it rail against Microsoft leveraging its Windows software? Ellison's defence: "Companies get upset if they lose their database." Hence they need reliability, which cannot come from open source software and user groups.

If Ellison comes into his own while bashing Microsoft, he was at this trenchant best even when rubbishing his other competitors.

When a questioner asked him why IBM was eating into Oracle's database market, Ellison roared: "Eating? If IBM is eating, they are on a diet. IBM is not eating. It is starving."

As evidence, he referred to a Goldman Sachs survey showing that Oracle had a 60 per cent market share in new database applications against IBM's 3 per cent. "Sixty looks larger than three to me," he remarked tartly.

According to him, IBM may be doing well in mainframe-based databases, but elsewhere it was a puny player. And mainframes are from the dinosaur era. To rub it in, he claims that when IBM wanted to demonstrate how fast its hardware was, it used Oracle, not its own DB2 database. As for Microsoft, which has a 20 per cent share in database software, Ellison believes he is actually gaining share.

In Ellison's world, SAP, a former powerhouse in enterprise software, will also face trouble in view of its dependence on proprietary technology. "SAP is an older system. But Oracle (enterprise software) is designed to run on the Net," he said. Evidence: Tata Teleservices threw out SAP and installed Oracle's enterprise software.

When Ellison is not bashing rivals, he comes across as a great visionary. The following are his main summarised observations on the technology industry:

Silicon Valley's future: At one stage, there were 100 companies coming up every month. It will be home to just a few IT companies in future. The best of breed companies are dying.

i2 Technologies (once a leader in supply chain management), is dying. Similar is the case with companies like Ariba and CommerceOne. Silicon Valley's next big thing may be biotechnology.

On visiting India: It's not so important whether I am there. It is important for Oracle to be there. Our commitment to the Indian market is strong. We are in India to stay, crisis or no crisis. (The last a reference to the fact that many foreign nationals have left in response to Indo-Pak tension)

On China: The economy is growing at 7 per cent. It has become the engine of Asia. Besides, it does not have the problem of legacy systems in computers, and is growing fast in wireless. "We are here to stay in China."

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