Ellison: "I like Microsoft Outlook"

No wonder Oracle CEO Larry Ellison did comment on the Microsoft antitrust
settlement. Ellison, who has made a career out of criticizing Microsoft, its
management and its products, has discovered a clever way to potentially make a
lot of money from Microsoft Outlook by offering its users a solution that will
save them money and reduce security risks. Ellison surprised most in his Comdex
keynote audience, many who had come for the expected doze of anti-Microsoftism,
when he had little but praise for Microsoft's email program. "I like
Outlook. I use Outlook," said Ellison adding with a broad smile, "But
if you say I said this I will deny it."

"Microsoft is famous for email, and we don't want anyone to stop using
Outlook. Normally you don't think about e-mail as database data. But it holds
precious business information. Don't store your emails in a system that is very
fragile and breakable. Why have hundreds of Exchange servers when you can have
one or two Oracle databases?" Ellison said.

Although Outlook may be an excellent email program, Ellison said, it also has
some major weaknesses, most of which have been widely exploited by hackers
around the world, causing havoc and disrupting business operations.
"Outlook's problem is that it runs on the sheet of glass that is Windows;
which makes it extremely unstable."

Ellison said Oracle has developed a solution by letting Outlook run it on its
Oracle 9i email database software under control of a far more stable and secure
Unix-based server. "Exchange is a terrible thing that no one ever sees.
Sure, an Exchange server is cheap but you need 50 of them. Now, you can replace
all those Exchange servers with one or two Oracle 9i systems. Outlook becomes a
full Oracle database that you can search and query. You can even eliminate all
viruses with a single query. The users won't see any changes, except they will
wonder why mail is up all of the time."

Oracle migrated to an Oracle9i email system and as a result, consolidated 97
email systems in countries around the world into one Oracle9i email system with
back-up and recovery support. Oracle estimates it saved $24 million. Oracle's
solution comes just three weeks after analysts at the Gartner Group urged
companies to look for alternatives to Microsoft email server solutions which
have proven too vulnerable to hacker attacks.

Making Outlook more reliable and secure formed the basis for the
"Unbreakable" theme of Ellison's keynote address in which he pushed
for broader acceptance of Oracle's 9i-based fault-tolerance solutions. "You
can't break it. Your application won't go down even if there is smoke pouring
out of the server. Or if the entire building falls down because of an
earthquake, the application will keep running. Any Oracle application is now
unbreakable, without having to change a single line of code. And this now
includes Microsoft Outlook."

Ellison also said that Oracle is also "unbreakable" when it comes
to security. Two of the first customers for the new Oracle database were the CIA
and the National Security Agency, and the system has 14 security verifications.
This compares to one for Microsoft and none for IBM. Furthermore, Ellison said
his company has issued a challenge to hackers to attempt to break into Oracle's
servers. Even with about 1,000 attempts per day, no one has yet succeeded.
Ellison had some harsh words to say about IBM, which has been marketing its DB2
database products against Oracle. "There are two IBM DB2 products, but they
are totally different. They have completely different code and a completely
different development team. The two development teams hate each other. But a few
years ago IBM renamed its Unix/NT product 'DB2' after its mainframe product,
which is actually pretty good."

Ellison also drummed up support for Oracle 9i's ability to support the
clustering of systems in which large databases are shared across several
machines. This feature has been available for a decade from Oracle, Microsoft
and IBM's DB2. But Ellison said this is the first time that clustering actually
works. "Clustering has been one of the great database con jobs. Until now
they have been used just for queries and to run benchmarks. With IBM, every time
you add a computer the application actually runs slower. I am not making this
up. This comes from a paper published on IBM's site. Contact me, and I will
supply you with the URL."

Of course Ellison did not let his audience go without a few jabs at
Microsoft, Bill Gates and the antitrust case. He took particular aim at
Microsoft's new program that forces corporate customers to pay an annual fee for
new Windows or Office upgrades whether they want to upgrade or not.
"Microsoft is now bundling lunch with Windows. It costs $4,000 a year, but
you get a sandwich every day. Of course the lunchrooms were upset. McDonald's
was upset. They sued. But Bill won the suit. 'They gotta innovate, and move into
some new markets' Gates argued."