Microsoft goes after larger clients, will compete directly with Oracle

Microsoft goes after larger clients, will compete directly with Oracle "Microsoft Corp., which has denied it was targeting big payroll- and accounting-software clients, is changing strategy and selling to larger customers, a move that puts the company in direct competition with Oracle Corp.
"This will be a head-on collision with Oracle, you bet," Orlando Ayala, a Microsoft senior vice president who runs sales to small and mid-sized companies, said in an interview. "They are moving down to smaller customers, and we are moving up."
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"Ayala acknowledged that the company still isn't aiming to be the main program used by big companies such as Ford, just one application used by a specific division. He wouldn't rule out the possibility of entering that market in the future."
"We'd never disregard entering that part," he said. "But it won't be next year."

So I guess few people took "software scale-out" seriously, if this comes as a surprise...