Larry Ellison made his ambitions pretty clear at Oracle Open World last week about becoming as big and broad as IBM. But while he may well be on his way on the hardware side with Sun and Hurd in tow, what is unclear is how he competes with IBM Global Services with a limited business application and services portfolio.
A decade ago, Larry Ellison called Ariba and other web companies like CommerceOne “single feature, not single product” companies. Now he honestly needs to acknowledge his applications are "features" compared to complex, Polymath solutions many companies are increasingly bringing to market.
There is Oracle’s major customer GE which is packaging software algorithms to optimize locomotive trips, to manage home energy usage , to run its healthcare devices and so much more . There is Oracle’s America Cup partner BMW with tens of millions of lines of software (and sensors and other tech) in its cars. There is the former Oracle president, Ray Lane presiding over a wide portfolio of cleantech applications down the street at Kleiner Perkins. Little of what Oracle showcased around Fusion last week would be considered a feature, let alone a product, in what GE or BMW or KP are packaging or investing in.
No disrespect to Steve Miranda or Anthony Lye and other smart folks involved with Oracle applications, but I did not hear of a Grand Strategy around applications. And hopefully, they don't believe a planned joint innovation center with Infosys will give them that. With a phone call or two they can get access to thinking at GE, BMW and KP and many others. They really should if they want to scale their application and related services business in a meaningful way over the next few years.
