Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff took his cloud computing
message to Oracle's customers at OpenWorld yesterday, arguing that
there was no reason why there could not be a "best of both worlds"
approach.
Talking at a small theatre - 700 seat capacity - next to the
main OpenWorld conference venue, Benioff started by professing his
admiration for Oracle.
"Thank you Oracle for allowing us to be here and have a booth at
the show," he said. "We have always had a fantastic relationship
with Oracle as key supplier and partner. Larry was our first
investor and first board member and I worked at Oracle for 13
years. Thanks to everyone at Oracle for being so magnanimous and
letting us be here today."
On a more pragmatic level, Benioff acknowledged that Oracle and
Salesforce.com had to co-exist.
"A lot of our customers use Oracle products, the Oracle
database, Oracle financials, as we do. But they can also find
benefit in cloud computing. We understand that there are lots of
companies who are using Oracle and Salesforce.com and we want to
bring those worlds together."
Benioff told the audience of Oracle delegates that he had once
stood on the same stage during his time at Oracle. For this, he
apologised.
"I used to feel a bit guilty that I was really only talking to
the largest customers," he said. "Cloud computing is democratic, a
new type of business model. It is not just for the largest
companies."