Oracle sparks a software revolution

Larry Ellison, Oracle's chief executive, may be many things, but he's not sociopathic. And he's not a liar either. He'd like everyone to know that. In fact, he can't understand why anyone would ever dream of applying either of those labels to him and, for a moment, his face falls into a puzzled frown as though baffled by the iniquity of the whole thing.

The Oracle boss has just heard that Craig Conway, PeopleSoft's chief executive, has accused him of creating a sociopathic company that is based on lies. Conway is a former Oracle executive and one-time colleague of Ellison's, so the comments have an added bite.

"I'll let you judge Craig Conway based on that remark," said Ellison, momentarily thrown off balance before getting back to evangelising to the faithful at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco this week.

But moments later, he returned to the topic and his momentary coyness was gone. "Maybe he hadn't had a lot of sleep when he said that," he sneered, back in control of the situation. "He's saying the entire company is sociopathic. We've got 4500 sociopaths. Well, cool! Really it's an astoundingly irresponsible and childish statement to make."

The cracks in Ellison's facade were particularly striking as the flamboyant bossman has had what can only be judged as a good conference. Oracle's profits continue to soar, the competition is in disarray, and there's a brand spanking new version of its core database just around the corner.

But more than that, customers are turning into Larry-groupies right before his eyes. As Ellison walked on stage at the Moscone Centre on Tuesday afternoon, the capacity crowd roared in approval in anticipation of the performance to come.

And they were not disappointed. Ellison was on top form as he demonstrated the forthcoming Oracle 9i database, a product that he claims will revolutionise the way the software industry works.

Pre-installed products
He has decided to take away a lot of decisions that user companies have previously had to make about how to configure their software. He wants to be able to ship Oracle products pre-installed on hardware from partner companies such as Sun Microsystems, Compaq or the supplier's current best friend, Hewlett Packard.

It's the latest logical extension of the thin-client/fat-server thinking that he first articulated in Paris in the mid-1990s. Contending that the PC was a ridiculously complicated device, he managed to spark the network computer craze, and although it never really appeared in the form he originally envisioned, client machines did get thinner and thinner to the point where internet appliances have now become a growth industry.

But his current intention is to kick start the second phase of his vision: the fattening up of the server. "The application service provider (ASP) model is the future of the software industry," he claimed. "Back in 1995, I said applications belonged on big servers, not PCs. At the time, it was thought to be revolutionary."

"The next step is to have computers that are not managed by end users, but managed for them by someone else. This internet thing is a big deal. We've got the applications off the PCs onto servers. Now we're getting the servers out of the companies," he added.

So how will Ellison achieve this? He has decided to take the 75 or so individual products in the company's portfolio and condense them down into two suites: the 9i Application Server and the 9i Database Server. The other individual products in the rest of Oracle's product range will be clustered around the two new offerings when they are launched in March next year.

This means that every Oracle product will be available to customers when they buy these two, although Ellison now wants users to rent rather than buy the software due to his belief in the ASP model.

Limiting choice
"We've got 75 products, so the possible configurations are infinite. Customers pick from a menu and they install what they want to install. The result is a configuration that is almost unique. When they call us for support, they ask if we've tested the configuration. We've tested the components, but not the configuration," Ellison explained.

"So we want all of our customers to run identical configurations. That doesn't mean they have to use all the features and functionality, but we'll know what the configuration is and will have tested it completely. The idea that there should be an infinite number of configurations that people can do is insane," he continued.

He claimed that such a situation would never be allowed to happen in any other industry. "Would you buy the wings from Boeing and the engine from Rolls Royce and so on? They all work well as components, but does anyone want to try putting them all together? I think if that happened, then everyone would decide to drive to OpenWorld in San Francisco. Choice is great in some cases, but not all. Every child should be unique, software should not," he attested.

As a result, he boasted that Oracle's move represents a break with software industry tradition. "The rest of the industry is focused on adding and offering more and more knobs and twirls to their products. Our thinking in Oracle is that this is a horrible policy. There are just too many choices," he said.

So the revolution continues. But Oracle customers will get a taste of things to come in the months leading up to the scheduled launch of 9i in March next year. Whether they like it or not is another issue, but they will get it.

"It is inconceivable to me that we will have a single customer that only has our database. If you don't have our application server now, you will," promised Ellison in a totally non-sociopathic sort of way.