Will SAP sue over Ellison's taunts?
An old school playground smackdown has broken out between Oracle and SAP. Fueled by strong quarterly earnings, a reinvigorated Larry Ellison indulged in a fierce bit of SAP-bashing in a call with analysts and investors: "I cannot imagine them holding on to their existing strategy in the face of market share losses and what is turning out to be rather slow organic growth for them," he said, among other mean things. A little while later the home page of Oracle was - and still is - emblazoned with the headline "Oracle grows 10x faster than SAP!" Ouch!
The rhetorical broadside quickly fetched what Webpronews.com delightfully describes as an "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I" response: "Larry Ellison's statements in today's Oracle earnings press release about SAP's product and acquisition strategy are a complete misrepresentation," retorted SAP's Bill Wohl. And he didn't stop there: "Oracle's statements about SAP and their own Fusion progress continue to be inconsistent and misleading... Oracle needs to adopt one version of the truth, and be honest with the market on its actual progress." Booya!
Nothing like a little blood in the water to draw the biggest sharks of all - the lawyers. SeekingAlpha is already predicting litigation: "SAP's rebuke sounds like the beginning of a lawsuit," the blog writes. Cool.
And where's the truth? The Browser notes Mr. Ellison has long been a master of propaganda, and that everyone knows the best defense is a good offense. Certainly, Oracle's recent results are welcome news after a prolonged period in which the company struggled mightily to absorb a series of major acquisitions including Peoplesoft and Siebel, and its stock languished. Software is a fickle business, of course, and both companies must maintain a near constant state of aggression. But SAP investors worried by Ellison's taunts may be reassured by this glowing report by Ismael Ghalimi, who is blogging live from the company's TechEd conference.
-Oliver Ryan