Oracle chairman and chief executive Larry Ellison devoted his
hour-long keynote speech at Openworld to attacking Microsoft and
IBM.
He criticised the rival companies' software, claiming it is slower
and less secure than Oracle's, and said IBM and Microsoft are also
more expensive than Oracle.
"Despite what everyone says, our software is actually cheaper,"
Ellison told delegates. For example, users would have to pay
$140,000 (£99,000) for a 500-user licence for Microsoft Exchange
running on a four-chip server, he claimed, citing what he said are
Microsoft's published prices.
Oracle can offer customers an e-mail server for the same number of
users on the same hardware for $80,000, because the Oracle9i
database comes bundled with an e-mail server, Ellison added.
Turning to IBM, he said a user would have to pay $272,000 for
software to build a portal for 25 users. Oracle bundles portal
software with its application server, so users could build a
similar portal using Oracle's software for $40,000, he
argued.
However, Stan Sorensen, Microsoft's director of enterprise server
marketing, said: "It's ironic to hear Larry claim they [Oracle] are
price leaders in anything."
The enterprise edition of Microsoft Exchange costs $4,000 per
server and then about $60 per desktop, said Sorensen. The price of
the software does not change with the number of chips being used,
so the system Ellison described could easily be had for less than
$40,000, he added.
"If you're paying $140,000 for the system from us, then someone has
sold you something you don't need," Sorensen said.
Some users at Openworld were also sceptical of Ellison's claims.
"It seems too good to be true," said one Oracle database
administrator, adding that Microsoft Exchange features several
back-end administrative features built in that may not be available
from Oracle's e-mail server.
"Notice he [Ellison] didn't say anything about SQL Server pricing,"
the administrator added, referring to Microsoft's own database,
which competes with Oracle9i.
The delegate said his company currently uses a version of Oracle8i.
The features in Oracle9i touted by Oracle would not entice him to
upgrade before the company issues a second release of the product,
which is due early next year.
"If you do [upgrade] now, you're basically a beta tester for
Oracle, helping them clear out all the bugs," he said.
"My concern with Oracle is: how much does it cost to use all of
this?" said another delegate. The Oracle9i database and application
server are "inclusive and well-packaged", but hiring staff that can
figure out how to use all the features could prove expensive, he
added.
A third delegate said performance benchmarks highlighted by Ellison
for Oracle's database and application server looked impressive, but
he wondered how many customers use the software for the types of
applications tested.
"The benchmarks do look better, but you wonder how many customers
they really apply to," he said. "Do many people need to run 4,000
transactions per second?"
Ellison maintained that customers would do better if they stopped
using software from Microsoft, IBM and their partners, and switched
to an Oracle stack composed of its database, application server and
business applications.
He cited a series of benchmark tests intended to show that Oracle's
application server runs faster than those of IBM and BEA Systems,
and also said Oracle's software is "unbreakable" when used in
clustered configurations.