Welcome!

Cloud Expo Authors: Jeremy Geelan, Elizabeth White, Sue Poremba, Pat Romanski, Patrick Burke

Related Topics: Oracle, Java

Oracle: Article

The Oracle-Sun Buddyfest: What's It All Mean?

Larry Ellison Commits to Java For At Least Another Decade in "Town Hall Meeting" with Sun's McNealy

In what the two companies billed as an "employee town hall," Oracle and Sun put their respective CEOs on stage January 10 to talk about the companies' relationship and future directions.

The "town" in this case was Redwood Shores, CA, or, more specifically, Oracle's Oz-like campus within that city's confines. The "hall" was Oracle's conference center.

Because the presentation was pitched primarily at employees of Sun and Oracle, the two chiefs, known for their aggressive stances, were in a jovial, frequently joking mood. Oracle's Larry Ellison (pictured) came off as the funnier and more amped up of the two. Sun's Scott McNealy seemed uncharacteristically subdued, perhaps because he wasn't on his own turf. He even joked that Sun lacks a capacious venue like Oracle's conference center, which was why he was in Redwood Shores.


Watch McNealy and Ellison on SYS-CON.TV

Employees of the two companies comprised most of the several-hundred strong that filled the center, and the message to them was:

* Take your Oracle/Sun counterpart to lunch
* Get out and sell
* Hammer the competition
* Prefer Oracle on Sun (over IBM)
* Java Rules, .Net drools

After both confirmed that Oracle was not buying Sun, McNealy did say, "We're on the same side, on the same team." The two men then brought the audience back to the 1980s, extolling the virtues of open systems and standards.

Interestingly, Ellison, more than McNealy, emphasized the "open" message, even though Sun had first staked out that territory with "Open Systems for Open Minds" campaign, launched 20 years ago. "We're betting that standards win," said the Oracle chief.

As part of their mutual initiative, Sun Ultra Sparc 4 models will come with Oracle bundled "free"--"going for share," as McNealy termed this arrangement. Buyers may elect to receive the software by agreeing to buy a one-year service contract from Oracle. Ellison assured the audience that Oracle sales reps will receive a commission on each such bundle.


More Stories By John A. Barry

John A. Barry is a former managing editor of InfoWorld and former editor-in-chief of DBMS Magazine. He also worked for Sun Microsystems in the late 1980s, and is the author of Technobabble, the definitive guide to the use (and misuse) of language in the IT industry.

Comments (11) View Comments

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.


Most Recent Comments
Bill H. 01/19/06 12:05:40 PM EST

Ellison was funnier than Scott??? By what measure?
I seemed to me Ellison had a tough time trying to think of something witty to say, whereas Scott was always finding funny lines. He got more laughs too.

Technology Tuesday 01/12/06 09:13:08 AM EST

How often do 3 of the Valley's biggest superstars make public apperarances on the same day: Steve Jobs of Apple, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems and Larry Ellison of Oracle...incredible.

InOtherNews 01/12/06 09:09:10 AM EST

'Sun CEO Scott McNealy started Tuesday's "town meeting" session for media and employees at Oracle headquarters by dispelling rumors that the two companies might be poised to announce a merger. But when he turned to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison for confirmation, he only heard hems and haws.' That was eWeek's take.

Oracle-Sun vs Apple 01/12/06 08:41:06 AM EST

Whats it all mean? The answer surely is simple: it means that Steve Jobs was getting all the attention because of Apple's sales reaching $5.7 billion last quarter, outstripping the company's $4.7 billion prediction as demand soared for iPod music players and Macintosh computers.

This was the Sun-Oracle answer. But the Apple numbers deservedly got 100x more attention.

NZheretic 01/12/06 08:21:00 AM EST

It makes a lot of sense for Sun to open source the Java Libraries and Solaris Kernel.

fm6 01/12/06 08:19:11 AM EST

I find it hard to believe that Sun can create software that's so good, people will buy Sun hardware just to run it. And if it's open source, they probably won't need Sun hardware to run it

No Surprise 01/12/06 08:16:32 AM EST

||| Oracle's Larry Ellison came off as the funnier and more amped up of the two |||

McNealy's too clever by half, and humor has to be scripted for him. Larry's funny on the fly.

Sun-Oracle 01/12/06 08:04:30 AM EST

So Larry's not gonna buy out Scottie? oh well...Bill's heart must have stopped there just for a moment. It seems he'll continue to be King Pin however for a goodly while yet.

QuoteUnquote 01/12/06 07:50:41 AM EST

McNealy (commenting on Oracle's plush auditorium): "We don't have a room like this. The hardware business has lower margins, I think. ... So, Larry, are you buying Sun?"
Ellison: "Well, you know, Scott ..."
McNealy: "A simple 'yes' or 'no' will do."
Ellison: "You'll see it in the newspapers. Oracle's strong preference is to do everything hostilely."

JDJ News Desk 01/11/06 01:26:44 AM EST

Because the presentation was pitched primarily at employees of Sun and Oracle, the two chiefs, known for their aggressive stances, were in a jovial, frequently joking mood. Oracle's Larry Ellison came off as the funnier and more amped up of the two. Sun's Scott McNealy seemed uncharacteristically subdued, perhaps because he wasn't on his own turf. He even joked that Sun lacks a capacious venue like Oracle's conference center, which was why he was in Redwood Shores.

JDJ News Desk 01/11/06 01:04:49 AM EST

Because the presentation was pitched primarily at employees of Sun and Oracle, the two chiefs, known for their aggressive stances, were in a jovial, frequently joking mood. Oracle's Larry Ellison came off as the funnier and more amped up of the two. Sun's Scott McNealy seemed uncharacteristically subdued, perhaps because he wasn't on his own turf. He even joked that Sun lacks a capacious venue like Oracle's conference center, which was why he was in Redwood Shores.

Cloud Expo Breaking News
What do the CTO of the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the CIO of the National Reconnaissance Office have in common with the CEOs of Eucalyptus, GoGrid, ActiveState, Appcara, OpSource and Nortonworks, the CTOs of Rackspace, SoftLayer and AppZero, the Founder & General Manager of Dell Boomi, the VP of Big Data & Streams at IBM and the Chief Strategy Officer at Pacific Controls? Answer: all are shortly to present breakout sessions as members of the distinguished Speaker Faculty of Cloud Expo New York, ...
The cloud has many benefits, but when it comes to application development, how does the cloud help enterprises and development teams create custom software and applications that end users actually care about? Using real world examples from Adobe, Herff Jones and Navy Federal Credit Union, this session will highlight the advantages cloud computing provides for quickly developing custom software and applications with compelling user experiences. In their general session at the 10th International ...
Nearly every enterprise is evaluating cloud computing solutions either today or in the near term. Many have already made the leap, and many more are getting close to putting that first toe in the water. But there are key considerations that should be made, questions to be asked, and designs to consider before you can feel secure with your provider. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, David Gulick, Product Manager, Hosting Product Management at Savvis, will help give you food f...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is t...
SYS-CON Events announced today that Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI), the leading innovator in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology, is a premier provider of advanced server Building Block Solutions for Embedded Systems, E...
SYS-CON Events announced today that ScaleMP, a leading provider of virtualization solutions for high-end computing, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. ScaleMP is the leader in virtualization for high-end computing, providing maximum performance and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). The innovative Versatile SMP (vSMP) architecture aggregates multiple independent systems into a sin...
Come learn real-world examples where cloud and mobile are changing the way business works and the impact they're having on efficiency and productivity. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Rodrigo Coutinho Senior Product Marketing Manager at OutSystems, will look at how mobile and the cloud are interwoven and the wave of change these two 2012 megatrends will bring to your organization. He will also provide a roadmap to assure you can navigate this sea change for business succes...
Enterprise IT organizations want to deploy a virtualized data center fabric that will provide the foundation for agile private cloud computing. Getting there does not have to be difficult, but it does require a new approach to data center infrastructure design – an approach that is non-disruptive, vendor-agnostic, and very adaptable to changing business requirements. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Bruce Fingles, Chief Information Officer and VP of Product Quality at Xsigo...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
How can businesses harness the power of APIs to reach new customers and markets? In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Alistair Farquharson, CTO at SOA Software, will walk the audience through the growth and evolution of the API, why effective API management is important, and how the game changes when companies expose business applications to the outside world. He will also discuss: A brief history of the API How to use APIs to make money, save money, build brand "Appificatio...