Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff Suddenly Playing Nice, Weirding Everyone Out 27
Nerval's Lobster writes "Once upon a time, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison took what seemed like inordinate amounts of pleasure in firing off verbal broadsides at each other. In 2011, for example, Ellison referred to Salesforce as 'the roach motel of clouds' and 'a very bad security model.' But Benioff's given as good as he's gotten, swiping at Oracle's early cloud efforts as 'cloud in a box' and 'just another server.' But oh, how things change: Ellison and Benioff have revealed that their firms would come together in a joint effort. They were on their best behavior during a conference call this week. 'The Oracle database has been a key part of Salesforce's infrastructure from the very beginning of our company 14 years ago,' Benioff told Ellison at one point, according to a transcript posted on ZDNet. 'Absolutely the best decision we ever made was to go with Oracle.' Why the sudden reversal? Simply put, after years of sticking with a hardware-and-software model, Oracle now has cloud religion. For Salesforce, the benefits are a little murkier, but some analysts think that Salesforce will be able to leverage Oracle's name to gain a heightened profile with businesses. But can Benioff and Ellison continue to play nice?"
It's Called 12c (Score:2)
And you won't beat it so you might as well play nice.
True Multi Tenancy for Oracle Databases will hurt a lot of other Database/Instance providers.
Salesforce needs 12c as much as Oracle needs a another sales guy. Period.
Re: (Score:3)
Salesforce is already running on Oracle. Salesforce is paying Oracle about 300 million for the next couple of years to continue running Oracle. I don't understand why that requires a special bro-hug to be consummated. Benioff hands over the money, Ellison hands over the hardware, and everyone continues sniping about their cloud models. Why the love fest suddenly?
Re: (Score:3)
That's not so weird.. (Score:2)
First Microsoft and now Salesforce (Score:2)
This is truly the end of days, as written in the book of stallman.
mmm tasty tasty toenail
A perfect example (Score:1)
Of two mice who have erected monoliths to looks down at everyone else, but they built them too high and can't even see their customer base anymore. I could not care less about their relationship status. I hope they friend each other on Facebook.
Play nice and get a good price (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
But did they get enough of a good price to justify having everyone wonder wtf is going between Oracle and Salesforce? It's kinda hard to trash-talk the other team during a sales cycle if officially the captains of the two teams are best buddies.
Re: (Score:1)
It's kinda hard to trash-talk the other team during a sales cycle if officially the captains of the two teams are best buddies.
Oh no. Lawyers and politicians do this all the time. All fodder for the tabloid press to gobble up and distract us from the dirty deals.
Was PostgreSQL just a bargaining chip? (Score:3)
So all the mutter about a Salesforce / PostgreSQL [zdnet.com] linkup was just to scare Oracle into being nicer? I guess it worked.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really. There were real projects inside Salesforce to move everything over to PostgreSQL. This could have been a good bargaining chip for Salesforce, and the rumored price tag for the rumored 9-year hardware deal of $300M is exceedingly cheap..... but it's one thing to get a good deal on hardware, and it's another one entirely to get in bed with one of your three biggest competitors.
Well, it might have something to do... (Score:2)
...with recent Supreme Court rulings. Times are a-changin'!
It's just diplomacy (Score:1)
It's like when leaders of the US, Russia, China, India, Brazil (pick any two) meet and hold a conference where they smile for the cameras and remark on the strength of the relationship between the two countries. It's just good business sense - you've got nothing to lose by doing that, and you might gain something. Plus, you impress the people at home for showing you can behave like a grownup.
the thing in common (Score:2)
is being sleezeballs.
Muppets (Score:2)
If Bert and Ernie can make it work, I don't see why Ellison and Benioff can't.
http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/06/28/new-yorker-cover-bert-ernie-gay-marriage-580_custom-81c8cb2f30d2e95d402cd7d8c45fb35de627f5d4-s6-c30.jpg [npr.org]