Microsoft says Oracle’s strategy is grounded in 1960s

Oracle Sun Deal

Microsoft's president of Server & Tools, Bob Muglia, points out that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's comments on their purchase of Sun promotes stagnation and is a "Back to the Future" strategy. Larry Ellison proclaims that their strategy of one-stop-shop is the 2010 version of IBM's 1960's strategy which made them the most important company in the world.

Microsoft has been promoting digital collaboration and enterprise integration to make sure that disparate technologies would be able to communicate and combine under one roof. This approach clearly means that Microsoft doesn't aim to be the one-stop-shop vendor but instead they want to be the central piece of various vendors thru their SharePoint platform and integration tools (current Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010).

I am feeling Bob Muglia on this that companies wants to have the power to choose and not be binded by one single entity. Larry Ellison think otherwise, getting old perhaps.

Bob says to Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference

"I sort of look at it, and I admit I shake my head. It's the back to the future sort of trend of this highly verticalised company that feels a lot like the mini-computer companies of the 1970s, and sort of the structure that's expected where everything will be purchased from one vendor.

I don't believe that's what customers will want in a long-term perspective. I think that customers want to have the ability to have choice at different layers of the stack and the horizontal nature of the computing industry that's emerged over the last 20 years.

I don't see how Spark can live long-term.

The economics associated with competing with the Intel ecosystem... are so powerful that the idea that Oracle is going to be able to overcome the natural evolution of the industry and be able to maintain what is unambiguously a dying architecture I don't know what to think about that."

I am not opposed to Larry Ellison's thoughts on this but I majority of companies specialize in various things which support having various vendors for a client. Larry cannot stop this trend and it would be an uphill battle for him and Oracle. Clearly, it was the 1960s strategy and how many companies have that mindset?

Image from Oracle.

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