5 years ago... Ellison offers Gates a $1m stakes duel

17.11.98: Oracle chief executive, Larry Ellison, used his Comdex keynote address to poke fun at Microsoft's database application strategy.

Ellison talked up the capabilities of Oracle's latest offering, Oracle8i, and challenged Gates to go head-to-head in a benchmarking test with Microsoft's SQL 7.0 server, offering $1m cash to anyone who could persuade Gates to pick up the gauntlet.

Today it is the turn of Computer Associates chief executive, Charles Wang to address the Comdex attendees. He is expected to discuss how companies can take advantage of technology.

Bill Gates gave the first keynote address of the conference on Sunday night on the potential power of the Internet in the future, while Lotus chief, Jeff Papows took to the podium on Monday morning to talk about the power of knowledge management technology.

17.11.03: Good old Larry Ellison. When he's not racing his jet fighter planes or throwing his money around on other 'lavish expenses', he's bad-mouthing Microsoft and bringing some much-needed interest into the otherwise rather boring world of databases.

Comdex, for anybody who's never been, is evidence that even the best venue in the world - Las Vegas - doesn't make for the best party. However, Ellison can normally be relied upon to turn up, spice things up a little, annoy a fair proportion of the crowd and then leave, like a curiously popular gatecrasher.

And to prove he's not a one trick pony, here are some our favourite Ellisonisms from down the years:

Ellison on 'vanishing' rivals

"These best-of-breed competitors - Ariba, Commerce One and i2 - are in the process of vanishing. Siebel, I predict, will be the next huge crash."

Ellison on IBM

"As its hardware business gets smaller, and its software business gets smaller, its only growing business is glue - guys with glue."

Ellison makes a promise

"Let's say you spend $10m a year on IT. We guarantee you that after one year you won't be spending $10m to run your systems you'll be spending $9.5m. After two years it'll be $9m, and after three years $8.5m."

Ellison on the mistakes of the IT Department

"We know there is such a massive inefficiency the way companies are running their systems. They buy them all wrong. Companies have all these different systems and they try to glue them together."

Ellison on 'media' Ellison

"It's strange, like I am an actor in a soap opera who plays himself."