oracle

The mid-afternoon headline on Marketwatch.com read, "Rift opens in Silicon Valley," a conclusion which further confirmed a long-standing suspicion that editors ought to drastically reduce their caffeine intake. The story centered on the billionaire boy bust-up that everyone's writing about since Oracle unceremoniously dumped Salesforce's Marc Benioff's keynote slot at the Oracle OpenWorld conference taking place this week in San Francisco.

A better headline would have been: "Larry Ellison walks into Benioff trap, Oracle CEO now rues the day."

And so he should.

On Tuesday evening, Benioff went public with a couple … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Salesforce.com CEO and Chairman Marc Benioff is not happy with Oracle, and he didn't mince words one bit during his last-minute rescheduled keynote speech, which he gave across the street from Oracle OpenWorld 2011 on Wednesday morning.

Benioff's earlier planned OpenWorld keynote was canceled abruptly by Oracle on Tuesday afternoon with an offer to reschedule for 8 a.m. PT on Thursday--basically when the conference was ending.

Nevertheless, Benioff used that exact incident as a jumping point for describing what's wrong with Oracle OpenWorld and the company putting on the show. He gave his own … Read more

Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce.com and onetime close friend of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, said he has been removed as a speaker from Oracle's OpenWorld conference going on this week in San Francisco, and he blames Ellison for the move.

"Larry just cancelled my keynote tomorrow! Beware of the false cloud," Benioff said in a Twitter post this evening. Despite the cancellation, Benioff seemed undeterred, announcing that he had moved his appearance to the St. Regis. "The show must go on! Sorry Larry!"

In a statement on the matter, Oracle characterized the … Read more

There might have been more than meets the eye to the decision by Hewlett-Packard's board of directors to oust Leo Apotheker as CEO, according to a new report.

Bloomberg is reporting, citing multiple sources, that the board replaced Apotheker with former eBay CEO Meg Whitman at least in part to prevent its stock price from falling to a point where it would face an unsolicited buyout offer from Oracle. However, according to other Bloomberg sources close to Oracle, that company did not have any immediate plans to acquire HP, even though the idea was under consideration.

HP's stock … Read more

Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison made his fortune with software, but he'll take the stage today to show off the first servers powered by the company's new Sparc T4 processor.

The product, called the Sparc SuperCluster T4-4, is "the first engineered system from a new generation of high-performance Oracle Sparc servers," according to an Oracle invitation to the event . Ellison will share the stage with John Fowler, the systems executive vice president who also led Sun's server group, at Oracle's Redwood Shores, Calif., headquarters.

Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems last year for its server products, … Read more

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman in her debut yesterday talked about better execution, harnessing a talented workforce, hitting metrics, strategy, and innovation, but the one thing that matters most for the company--continuity--wasn't mentioned.

Continuity frames HP's challenges well. Simply put, HP has little to no continuity. Strategies, product lines, research and development spending, and CEOs--seven of them since 1999--all change regularly at HP. As a result, HP never quite seems like it has a long-term plan. The HP Way isn't in the DNA anymore and that prevents the company from being a long-term strategic partner to customers.

HP … Read more

Oracle delivered a better-than-expected first quarter, but hardware revenue came in at the low end of expectations.

Oracle today reported first-quarter earnings of $1.8 billion, or 36 cents a share, on revenue of $8.4 billion, up 12 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 48 cents a share.

Wall Street was expecting Oracle to report first-quarter earnings of 46 cents a share on revenue of $8.35 billion. The first quarter is typically Oracle's weakest as it sets its fiscal 2012 plans into motion.

Oracle didn't provide its guidance in the statement, but will provide … Read more

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Google CEO Larry Page spent a day in court yesterday to hammer out an Android settlement, but the two sides appear to be far apart. However, the two Larrys are ordered to be in court again in hopes that they can hammer out a settlement.

According to Bloomberg, Oracle and Google didn't get all that far in their negotiation talks. A federal magistrate judge ordered Oracle and Google to have another negotiation session tomorrow.

How far apart are the sides? Oracle wants about $6 billion for Java infringements by Android. Google thinks a $100 … Read more

Oracle's Larry Ellison and Google's Larry Page are expected to face each other on September 19 in an attempt to settle the year-long patent infringement case between their respective companies.

After trying to skirt any appearances by promising to send other people to the conference table, the two CEOs were ordered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal last Friday to attend the settlement talks themselves.

"The party representatives required to attend this and any further conferences include, but are not limited to, Larry Ellison of Oracle and Larry Page of Google," according to a copy of the court order … Read more