Monday, September 29, 2003

Barron's Online - Plugged In: Andreesen v. Ellison: Marc Tells "Why Larry's Wrong"

Barron's Online - Plugged In: Andreesen v. Ellison: Marc Tells "Why Larry's Wrong" "Andreesen respectfully -- and quite understandably -- disagrees. He contends that we are simply entering another era of computing, and for the first time in his career, Ellison is on the wrong side of the curve. "For 25 years, he has been on the right side of trends," Andreesen says. "Now, he's using consolidation as a self-serving prophecy."
Andreesen argues that Oracle's core database business has matured, and Ellison is desperately groping for growth and using Darwinian takeover tactics as a way to obfuscate his company's potential irrelevance. Ellison built Oracle by emulating once-formidable Digital Equipment's vaunted database during the minicomputer era. Conventional wisdom was that databases needed to be purchased from the same vendor that made the computer. Ellison saw great opportunity in defying that thinking, launched his own best-of-breed database company -- at least from a marketing and sales standpoint if not a technological standpoint -- and the rest is history. Oracle has proven to be the dominant database concern of client-server computing.
"Either Larry is completely wrong or just very good at [rewriting history], otherwise Oracle should not exist today," Andreesen retorts."

No comments: