5 years ago... Ellison talks up web business

11.05.99: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is claiming all his company's software will be sold exclusively over the web within a year.

The outspoken IT veteran was addressing the iDeveloper conference held in California yesterday. He claimed the plans are part of Oracle's strategy to become a complete e-business company.

Robin Bloor, CEO of Bloor Research, put the comments down to Ellison's tendency to overstate strategic plans to create attention around the company. "Ellison is clearly exaggerating as usual," he said.

11.05.04: "Ellison is clearly exaggerating as usual." Never has an analyst quote been quite so 'on the money'.

Ellison is the epitome of a CEO who talks a good game - and the industry is a better place for it. Dull pronouncements and worthy sentiments are all well and good, but the IT industry as it limps out of recession is all the better for the few characters it still has.

The outspoken Oracle CEO is no stranger to 'talking the talk' when things turn nasty and he didn't hold back in his criticism of the running of hostile takeover target PeopleSoft, pointing to dodgy accounting and mismanagement.

Ellison said: "There is going to be all this bizarre accounting that will confuse investors. Perhaps they can manufacture a couple of good quarters. But their real business has actually been deteriorating for some time."

He's similarly controversial where other major players in the industry are concerned.

He once said of IBM: "As its hardware business gets smaller, and its software business gets smaller, its only growing business is glue - guys with glue."

Though over the years his strongest criticism has often been reserved for long-term rival Bill Gates and his Microsoft empire.

When Oracle launched a product to rival Exchange in 2001 Ellison said: "We don't want people to migrate from Microsoft email. We want people to throw out Microsoft Exchange for a server that works."

A particular thorn in Microsoft's side will also have been Ellison's support for the mainstream adoption of open source.

"For a long period of time Linux has been the province of computer hackers, computer scientists and universities. Now I'm afraid to say you're going to have a lot of people in here with suits on. I apologise for that but it's going to happen."

And then there are those Ellison-isms which probably make more sense to him than they do to others, such as: "If our bodies looked like our computer systems we'd all be dead."

But perhaps his strangest comment to date referred to himself.

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

Whatever you say Larry, whatever you say...