The cloud is getting crowded. On Wednesday, Oracle announced that it is launching a suite of services that businesses can access from just about anywhere.
To celebrate, Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison joined Twitter and opened with a taunt to rival company SAP.
“Oracle's got 100+ enterprise applications live in the #cloud today, SAP's got nothin' but SuccessFactors until 2020,” read a tweet on the executive’s new account, @larryellison.
Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger confirmed that the Twitter account is real and that Ellison is tweeting. As of Thursday afternoon, Ellison had more than 22,000 followers.
Ellison’s known for being a tad outspoken — and that may be an understatement — so having his input in the Twittersphere should be fun to watch.
As for the products he’s launched, the company now offers suites of application and social services in the cloud and claims to have the “most comprehensive Cloud on the planet Earth,” according to a news release.
The move to the cloud is the result of nearly seven years of work, Oracle said, and will offer resources for developers, social services, collaboration and content creation tools, as well as a host of personnel and customer service applications for businesses.
Consumers will be able to move between desktop and mobile apps easily, the company said, and their data will not be commingled with other clients’.
SAP issued a statement of its own in reaction to the tweet, saying it was not impressed by the taunt.
“As usual, you can tell who Oracle is most worried about by the competitors they criticize most. In this case, Larry’s crystal ball is cloudy,” the statement said. “SAP’s strategy offers customers a long-term road map of innovation without disruption. Oracle customers face a difficult upgrade challenge with Fusion, and we invite them to see who can provide the most business value for their investment.”
Most the analysis of Oracle’s announcement seems to indicate that the company really isn’t offering so much more than its competitors, though it is doing a good job of packaging its products in a comprehensive way.
InformationWeek had an in-depth analysis of Oracle’s Web services versus those of its competitors, coming to this conclusion: “So Oracle now has its cloud, but where cloud-based apps are concerned, it's still in the same boat with Infor, Microsoft, SAP and other vendors with roots and almost all revenue in on-premises apps. Oracle just has a few more boxes that have been officially checked.”
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