Oracle CEO Larry Ellison may have got his heroes mixed up, but there was no mistaking his message at Oracle’s OpenWorld on Wednesday as he challenged IBM on business software performance. “IBM, you are more than welcome to enter,” he said in his keynote speech. “If you’d like to take us on, make our day.”
The line comes from actor Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of Dirty Harry in Sudden Impact, but Ellison was joined on stage by actor and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. At least Ellison didn’t say, “I’ll be back,” Schwarzenegger’s line in The Terminator.
Schwarzenegger came to tout California as a technology hotbed and praised Oracle’s planned $7.4 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems. “Technology’s impact is flesh and blood,” Schwarzenegger told the conference, according to an Agence France report. “I’ve seen the infinite limits of technology. Even though we’re going through tough times, I’ve never been more confident about the future.”
$10 Million Dare
IBM and Hewlett-Packard have been attempting to steal business from Sun while European antitrust regulators decide whether to approve the purchase. Sun has lost more than a percentage point of market share, while IBM has increased its lead as the number-one seller of servers, according to IDC.
IBM has released numbers indicating that twice as many Sun customers migrated to IBM in the second quarter than in the first quarter, IT analyst Charles King said in a telephone interview.
Ellison put his money where his mouth is, offering $10 million to anyone who can prove that Oracle software doesn’t run twice as fast on Sun systems as on IBM’s. That dare came after Oracle incurred a $10,000 fine for “jumping the gun” by announcing the latest performance benchmarks from the TPC-C (Transaction Processing Performance Council), King said. Oracle announced the news in a Wall Street Journal ad ahead of the…