Last month, the news that Larry Ellison invited Marc Benioff to speak at Oracle’s OpenWorld Conference was enough to drive me out of the closet with my months-long speculation that Oracle may be edging toward buying Salesforce.com. At the time, I wrote an entry in this blog called “Salesforce.Oracle.com: A Look into One Man’s Crystal Ball” setting forth my beliefs that because the world is moving away from on-premise applications, and because SFDC is besting CRMOD regularly in application selections, it would make sense for Oracle to make a play for Salesforce if it wants to retain a leadership position in the CRM space.

Lately, I have been hearing rumors that Oracle is de-emphasizing development on the CRMOD platform, which tells me they are either preparing for a shift to a new platform, or are quietly giving up on the SaaS CRM space. And I don’t think the latter is Oracle’s style. . .

As I have been thinking further about this, it occurs to me that I have been looking at the world through my CRM-colored glasses (which is not unusual for me, having been in this business for much of my career!). But in noodling this around today, as I gaze out my hotel window overlooking San Francisco on this opening day of the SFDC Dreamforce conference, it struck me that there is a lot more at stake here than simple dominance of the CRM space. With SFDC’s strong emphasis on The Cloud, by buying Salesforce, in one fell swoop Oracle could not only irrefutably own the CRM space, but also take on a hugely dominant role in the SaaS applications space in general. The SFDC cloud and Force.com applications paradigm could easily become the platform upon which Oracle can deliver many or all of its applications — CRM, ERP, BI, integration, you name it — with the scalability and performance levels for which SFDC has become known.

Think I’m right? Think I’m wrong? I’m certainly willing to bet that I am one or the other of those! But I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment here or on our Facebook page.

Also, in my original blog about this, I had posted a poll asking readers’ opinions on the fate of Siebel, CRMOD, and Salesforce.com. At the time I first posted the poll, about 50% of readers felt Oracle would buy Salesforce.com. Since then the opinions have drifted a bit — if you care to weigh in, the poll is still available on that blog entry.

Thanks!

Eric Heine
Vice President
Integra Technology Consulting

781-890-0070
eheine at integratc dot com

www.integratc.com

Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/IntegraTC

I already gave up on them and I am encouraging you too. Not forever, like I did, but just until they get new ownership. Here is one of the many reasons to give up on them.

When they broke that up opening night with me in the stands, it was over. Mitch Richmond, the guy that they dealt was my favorite player, even though Mullin and Timmy were awesome as well. While this is not a treatise on me, or on Billy Owens, who I like, since he was an Orangeman, they broke the bond, between fan and team. All good things come to an end, but so should the pain and heartbreak of having to watch and inferior product and knowing that others have what you want.

Here is the current owner of the Warriors, Chris Cohan.

You need to step your suit game up if you are that rich...I'm just sayin...

Wiki ells you the story of why Warriors fans have had too much…

Christopher J. Cohan is the current owner of the Golden State Warriors of the NBA. He acquired a 25-percent interest in the team in 1991; in 1995, he became sole owner; he sold 20 percent of the team to four Silicon Valley investors in 2005.

Here is how he got the team….

Chris Cohan sued his business partners to gain sole ownership of the Golden State Warriors in 1994. The Warriors were a popular, 50-win team at the time, and soon turned into a nationally ridiculed loser. Not only that, there was a long list of parties dragged into civil courtrooms by “Cohan the Contrarian” which included his stockbroker, life insurance agent, and primary attorney. Hard to believe, but all were longtime friends. One was the best man at Cohan’s wedding and another a groomsman. Cohan was sued, too, for failing to pay his bills by his landlord — the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority,[1]

Cohan’s tenure as owner of the Warriors has been highlighted with the longest playoff drought of any team in NBA history. From 1994 to 2007, the Warriors did not make the playoffs under Cohan. Under Cohan, the team has had nine head coaches and did not have a winning season until the 2006-2007 season, after Cohan rehired Don Nelson as head coach. The 2006-2007 season was highlighted by one of the most memorable upsets in NBA Playoff history when the eighth-seeded Warriors knocked off the heavily favored top-seed Dallas Mavericks in six games in the first round. The Warriors went on to lose to the Utah Jazz in the second round of the playoffs. Cohan was the guiding force behind a completely refurbished arena in 1997 (now the 19,596-seat ORACLE Arena) and the building of a modern practice facilities in downtown Oakland for the Warriors in 1998. Cohan has been intensely criticized for his unsuccessful ownership.^[1]

Here is the plea of a lifelong Warrior fan and friend of the Blog…

“I am a die hard Warriors fan who grew up with the Run TMC squad and has loved the team ever since. Like most or all of you, I suffered through the PJ Carlesimo era, the Dave Cowens era, and the Erik Musselman era; the decision to draft Joe Smith over Kevin Garnett in ‘95, the decision to draft Todd Fuller over Kobe Bryant in ‘96, and the decision to draft Mike Dunleavy over Amare Stoudemire in ‘02; the Latrell Sprewell incident, the Stephen Jackson extension, and every other tragic and horrible mistake that this franchise has committed over the past 15 years. In that time, the team’s combined win percentage has been 37%. In 15 years, the Warriors have made the playoffs exactly ONCE, in a league where MORE THAN HALF THE TEAMS MAKE THE PLAYOFFS EACH YEAR.

Enough is enough.

Through 15 years of staggering incompetence and futility, there have been exactly two constants in the Warriors’ organization: owner Chris Cohan and his sidekick and team president, Robert Rowell. Tim Kawakami at the Mercury News recently reported that Cohan is in financial trouble, and that if his problems get worse, he may be forced to sell the team. Larry Ellison, the billionaire owner of Oracle, has stated on numerous occasions that he would like to buy the team and keep it here in the Bay.

I say that we put the squeeze on Chris Cohan, make him feel the pain we have felt during his tragic reign of incompetence and neglect, and stick it to him in the one place where he will actually feel it: his pocketbook.

Starting this year, I am boycotting the Warriors. I will still watch the team on TV and follow it in the papers because I am a die hard fan and I love the team and the game of basketball, but I will not spend one red cent that could possibly flow to Chris Cohan and his organization. If enough of you join me, this can become a real movement, and one that can actually result in positive change.

In the short term, a boycott may create more pain. The Warriors may be forced to unload some of the few players we still love on this dysfunctional squad. We may lose Monta, Andris, Anthony Randolph, and even Steph Curry. But in the long run, all of that talent will be destroyed for our purposes anyway, whether the players remain here or not. If history has taught us anything, it is that Chris Cohan and his cronies will find a way to ruin anything good, to turn every plus into a minus.

The only way to save our beloved franchise is to force Chris Cohan to sell it.

Boycott the Warriors until Chris Cohan sells the team, and spread the word to every Warriors fan you know to do the same.”

My buddy has some fire to his points. Yahoo concludes VOTE SELL…there are people out there with deep pockets and the timing is right. Don’t spoil the items in the refrigerator for the next ownership group/coach. It will be the best move you have ever made.

The bid of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has been out there, but details of another intriguing offer to buy the Warriors have emerged, several sources told Yahoo! Sports. There is a well-moneyed and politically connected Bay Area group that has approached Cohan about purchasing the team and building a privately funded arena in downtown San Francisco. What’s more, the group has already had third parties call several well-respected NBA front-office executives about running the team.

As for Ellison, sources say he knows what the Warriors are worth in his mind and he isn’t inclined to raise the offer Cohan has already rejected. The Warriors and NBA deny the team is for sale, but as one official with knowledge of the bids says, while Cohan “can go hot and cold,” the San Jose Mercury News’ reports over the summer were accurate. It’s just a matter of time until he sells.

So, boycott the Warriors and follow someone who needs your help. The Clips are just owned by a racist, but he was willing to give Baron a bunch of money to play…

just in the interim until the Warriors are sold.

crossposted at Too Old for Maxim…

I already gave up on them and I am encouraging you too.  Not forever, like I did, but just until they get new ownership. The Warriors as currently organized are the functional equivalent of the Titanic. Would you buy tickets for that ship?  Then why spend it on the Warriors?  Here is one of the many reasons to give up on them.

When they broke that up opening night with me in the stands, it was over.  Mitch Richmond, the guy that they dealt was my favorite player, even though Mullin and Timmy were awesome as well.  While this is not a treatise on me, or on Billy Owens, who I like, since he was an Orangeman, they broke the bond, between fan and team.  All good things come to an end, but so should the pain and heartbreak of having to watch and inferior product and knowing that others have what you want.

Here is the current owner of the Warriors, Chris Cohan.

You need to step your suit game up if you are that rich...I'm just sayin...

Wiki ells you the story of why Warriors fans have had too much…

Christopher J. Cohan is the current owner of the Golden State Warriors of the NBA. He acquired a 25-percent interest in the team in 1991; in 1995, he became sole owner; he sold 20 percent of the team to four Silicon Valley investors in 2005.

Here is how he got the team….

Chris Cohan sued his business partners to gain sole ownership of the Golden State Warriors in 1994. The Warriors were a popular, 50-win team at the time, and soon turned into a nationally ridiculed loser. Not only that, there was a long list of parties dragged into civil courtrooms by “Cohan the Contrarian” which included his stockbroker, life insurance agent, and primary attorney. Hard to believe, but all were longtime friends. One was the best man at Cohan’s wedding and another a groomsman. Cohan was sued, too, for failing to pay his bills by his landlord — the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority,[1]

Cohan’s tenure as owner of the Warriors has been highlighted with the longest playoff drought of any team in NBA history. From 1994 to 2007, the Warriors did not make the playoffs under Cohan. Under Cohan, the team has had nine head coaches and did not have a winning season until the 2006-2007 season, after Cohan rehired Don Nelson as head coach. The 2006-2007 season was highlighted by one of the most memorable upsets in NBA Playoff history when the eighth-seeded Warriors knocked off the heavily favored top-seed Dallas Mavericks in six games in the first round. The Warriors went on to lose to the Utah Jazz in the second round of the playoffs. Cohan was the guiding force behind a completely refurbished arena in 1997 (now the 19,596-seat ORACLE Arena) and the building of a modern practice facilities in downtown Oakland for the Warriors in 1998. Cohan has been intensely criticized for his unsuccessful ownership.^[1]

Here is the plea of a lifelong Warrior fan and friend of the Blog…

“I am a die hard Warriors fan who grew up with the Run TMC squad and has loved the team ever since. Like most or all of you, I suffered through the PJ Carlesimo era, the Dave Cowens era, and the Erik Musselman era; the decision to draft Joe Smith over Kevin Garnett in ‘95, the decision to draft Todd Fuller over Kobe Bryant in ‘96, and the decision to draft Mike Dunleavy over Amare Stoudemire in ‘02; the Latrell Sprewell incident, the Stephen Jackson extension, and every other tragic and horrible mistake that this franchise has committed over the past 15 years. In that time, the team’s combined win percentage has been 37%. In 15 years, the Warriors have made the playoffs exactly ONCE, in a league where MORE THAN HALF THE TEAMS MAKE THE PLAYOFFS EACH YEAR.

Enough is enough.

Through 15 years of staggering incompetence and futility, there have been exactly two constants in the Warriors’ organization: owner Chris Cohan and his sidekick and team president, Robert Rowell. Tim Kawakami at the Mercury News recently reported that Cohan is in financial trouble, and that if his problems get worse, he may be forced to sell the team. Larry Ellison, the billionaire owner of Oracle, has stated on numerous occasions that he would like to buy the team and keep it here in the Bay.

I say that we put the squeeze on Chris Cohan, make him feel the pain we have felt during his tragic reign of incompetence and neglect, and stick it to him in the one place where he will actually feel it: his pocketbook.

Starting this year, I am boycotting the Warriors. I will still watch the team on TV and follow it in the papers because I am a die hard fan and I love the team and the game of basketball, but I will not spend one red cent that could possibly flow to Chris Cohan and his organization. If enough of you join me, this can become a real movement, and one that can actually result in positive change.

In the short term, a boycott may create more pain. The Warriors may be forced to unload some of the few players we still love on this dysfunctional squad. We may lose Monta, Andris, Anthony Randolph, and even Steph Curry. But in the long run, all of that talent will be destroyed for our purposes anyway, whether the players remain here or not. If history has taught us anything, it is that Chris Cohan and his cronies will find a way to ruin anything good, to turn every plus into a minus.

The only way to save our beloved franchise is to force Chris Cohan to sell it.

Boycott the Warriors until Chris Cohan sells the team, and spread the word to every Warriors fan you know to do the same.”

My buddy has some fire to his points.  Yahoo concludes VOTE SELL…there are people out there with deep pockets and the timing is right.  Don’t spoil the items in the refrigerator for the next ownership group/coach.  It will be the best move you have ever made.

The bid of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has been out there, but details of another intriguing offer to buy the Warriors have emerged, several sources told Yahoo! Sports. There is a well-moneyed and politically connected Bay Area group that has approached Cohan about purchasing the team and building a privately funded arena in downtown San Francisco. What’s more, the group has already had third parties call several well-respected NBA front-office executives about running the team.

As for Ellison, sources say he knows what the Warriors are worth in his mind and he isn’t inclined to raise the offer Cohan has already rejected. The Warriors and NBA deny the team is for sale, but as one official with knowledge of the bids says, while Cohan “can go hot and cold,” the San Jose Mercury News’ reports over the summer were accurate. It’s just a matter of time until he sells.

So, boycott the Warriors and follow someone who needs your help.  The Clips are just owned by a racist, but he was willing to give Baron a bunch of money to play…

just in the interim until the Warriors are sold.

1. On May 7^th – Larry said so in his interview with Reuter’s
2. Sun’s tape is a significant proportion of Sun’s overall sales and service revenue.
3. Sun’s tape portfolio is viewed as the best in breed in every category. Sun tape is recognized as an innovator and leader in this market segment and over the past 18 months Sun has refreshed its entire tape hardware and software portfolio
4. Sun and Fujifilm announced the expansion of their relationship on next generation tape drive and media development on May 19^th.
5. Sun’s tape products are installed in many of the world’s largest companies
6. Sun’s tape automation is #1 in factory out tape automation revenue according to IDC
7. Sun’s tape automation received top honors in Storage Magazine’s Quality awards. In the enterprise space Sun tape automation has received this award for the 4th time in 2009 for the 4 years the award has been given
8. Tape’s future is clearly positioned as the most green, energy efficient, and price leading storage for unreferenced and long-term archival enterprise data. Tape is up to 290 times more energy efficient and up to 23 times less expensive than SATA disk.
9. On September 22^nd – Larry Ellison said so at the Churchill Club event during his conversation with Ed Zander
10. On October 27^th Oracle provided additional insight stating “Sun brings … leadership in long-term information management and retention … . We plan to enhance investments in Sun’s storage core areas … .”

If you doubt any of this, please request an update from your authorized Sun Storage representative.

This is completely speculation on my part but I was wondering if Larry Ellison has any intention of speaking at Dreamforce the same way that Marc Benioff spoke at Oracle Open World.  Might be fun but keep in mind that this speculation.  If you have any information I would love to hear it.

October 10, 2009. I braved the cold winds of San Francisco to attend Oracle Open World 2009. It was my first time to attend this event and true to what my hostess told me, it was jam packed with people wanting to listen to Larry Ellison deliver his welcome keynote address. What surprised me was Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun Microsystems peddling his stuff to a crowd of Oracle guests and employees. Everyone was expecting McNealy to give his traditional Top 10 “funny, sometimes insightful, and almost always highly Microsoft-targeted” list. But the on-going Oracle acquisition of Sun prevented him from being his usual self (or so he said). Watch him deliver what may be one of his last keynotes as CEO of Sun Microsystems.

In his keynote, McNealy reminded everyone that Sun has “always been about innovation and despite today’s technology having the shelf-life of a banana, you have to keep inventing, creating and breaking-through with new stuff.” He also emphasized that the combined Oracle and Sun companies will create one of the largest pools of R&D in the world. Innovation is not just about creating something new but you need to provide value to your customers, and must result in success.

Larry Ellison, for his part, shared the ’same excitement’ about the potential that two industry innovators (Sun on the hardware and Oracle on the application software) can bring together to the market. He promised to continue investing in Sun’s core innovations including the Sparc chip and the Solaris operating system.

The announcement of the next release of the Exadata server series seems to corroborate this promise. The first Exadata released was a HP-Oracle venture. Exadata Version 2 sees Oracle partnering with Sun to produce an even better product. While the first version focused on speeding up data warehousing (DW), the succeeding version included online transaction processing (OLTP) compute capability in the same box. What Oracle is trying to do here is deliver a complete DW/OLTP solution that integrates server, storage, operating system, middleware and application to do something faster than is possible by amalgamating different elements from different vendors, the way system integrators do.

Certainly the Exadata offers a slightly radical way of running your data warehouse. If you believe Larry Ellison’s slide on the comparative cost of the Exadata to the IBM near equivalent offering, the price differential is staggering. Such a shift in the way data warehouses are built and delivered should amount to what McNealy calls innovation that delivers true value and profits to an organization.

So am I sold on the idea that Sun will thrive under the Oracle umbrella? The Exadata 2 proves there may be a future for Sun inside Oracle. But I still have some lingering doubts and perhaps its because of the way McNealy left the stage as he closed his keynote. In my mind, it signalled a quiet resignation on the part of this entrepreneur who co-founded a company that today represents a sizeable install base in finance, education, and government industry sectors. But maybe I am just reading too much into it. Watch for yourself below.

Click here for other stuff around Oracle Open World 2009.

When Alinghi won the America’s Cup for the first time in March 2003 in Auckland, I admit it, I was thrilled and very proud of what some of my compatriots just achieved in the sport of sailing. The Cup was returning to the European continent for the very first time since the inaugural race in 1851!

Then Ernesto Bertarelli and Team Alinghi put together what was probably the greatest and best sailing spectacle ever. Four years of intense and high-level competitions, four years that ended up with a second victory in a row for Team Alinghi in July 2007 in Valencia, I was speechless and truly impressed.

The Swiss organisation and the America’s Cup model initiated by Alinghi and Societe Nautique de Geneve under the impulse of Ernesto Bertarelli was a real success from which the sport of sailing benefitted tremendously. No one contests this fact.

Since then, the Cup turned out being a legal duel. A legal duel between the America’s Cup Defender, Societe Nautique de Geneve (Team Alinghi) and the Golden Gate Yacht Club (BMW Oracle Racing team) or should I say between two high-profile team leaders and owners: Ernesto Bertarelli and Larry Ellison.

A lot is being said and written about the numerous rounds of litigation surrounding the 33rd America’s Cup, I will not go there, this is not the purpose of this post and I will leave this to lawyers, judges and other clever people who probably enjoy this as much as I hate it.

The purpose of this post is a call, a call for the sake of the sport of sailing.

Ernesto, Larry, Gentlemen: I realize the considerable amount of money involved in your sailing ventures. I even understand that it is difficult not to listen to and follow his amour propre in situations like yours today but please, give our wonderful sport a court break. Stop sabotaging the fantastic aura sailing acquired thank to the America’s Cup’s Challengers and Defenders prior to the end of July 2007. Return to the fundamental rules of the sport of sailing, return to the water to compete with fair play!

America’s Cup News on ISAF’s Web site

Yesterday I watched Triumph of the Nerds (1996), an edutaining documentary by the technology journalist Robert X. Cringely, which tells the story of how personal computers took over the world. This is some of my reflections after having watched the film:

The film was originally made for British television, and is divided into three parts. The first two episodes describes the period from 1975 when Ed Roberts invented the first personal computer, the Altair 8800, to 1984 when Apple launched the first user-friendly PC, the Macintosh. But, how fascinating and interesting this crash course in computer history may be, it is not until episode three I get truly excited, because here we enter the era of digital convergence and the Internet. Although the documentary is almost 15 years old, it still makes some intriguing points. Hearing Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, talk about how much he loves the Internet is nothing but inspiring. It also reminds us of the fact that we are living in an extremely exciting period right now; a period where we have a constant flow of information, where old and new media are coexisting side by side and we are starting to learn the meaning of social media (see video below). All these things have changed the way we live, work and communicate, and it makes me happy to be a part of this period of time.

(You should probably watch this video with a grain of salt at hand, but admit that social media is exciting?)

Sendung vom 28. Oktober 2009

Wieviel ist der Schweizer Sport wert gemessen an den Milliarden, die Larry Ellison und Ernesto Bertrarelli für ihre Privatregatta ausgeben (Nimmt man die Schönheit von Rainer H.M.s Krawatte zum Massstab, dann ist der Preis nicht sehr heiss)? Roger Federers Preisgeld wiegt wohl ein paar Prozent davon auf (ebenso Martina Hingis Geld, das sie jetzt bekanntlich lieber verpulvert). Dazu die Budgets der zehn angeblich besten Schweizer Fussball- und Hockeyteams. Schliesslich fliessen noch ein paar Skifränkli auf die Gegenseite. Das ganze restliche Geld, das in der Schweiz für Sport ausgegeben wird, fliesst in das Yachting (hier geht’s zur Aussprache). Genauer gesagt, in die Alinghi. Gewissermassen eine Bankrotterklärung für Jugend+Sport (J+S), Swiss Ski, das BAG und den SFV.

Solche Filme laufen parallel zu “Sport Aktuell” – natürlich auf gebührenpflichtigen Sendern (allerdings keine Zwangsgebühren)

Dass Sport erstens nichts mit Gesundheit und zweitens nichts mit Bewegung zu tun hat, beweist einerseits das SF täglich mit Themen, die nichts mit Sport zu tun haben (immer diese Dopingdiskussionen! Zum Teufel damit, oder sollen wir jetzt auch noch zum Dopingtest, immerhin waren in letzter Zeit einige unserer volksaufklärerischen Beiträge nur durch das Sponsoring von DAFALGAN möglich) . Zum anderen aber beweisen auch ganz bestimmte Mitglieder dieser Communitiy, dass sie im Grunde keinen anders definierten Zugang zur Welt des Sports suchen. Sie suchen, die Statistik lügt nicht, reiche Männer und Lustknaben. Wohin kommen wir denn da? Wir erfüllen hier einen Auftrag und tragen die Fackel, die in der Französischen Revolution entzündet wurde, weiter ins Dunkel der Nacht, die vom Leutschenbach mit viel Elektrosmog verbreitet wird, und die verbigbrotherisierte Leserschaft sucht Gold und Sodomie. Da sieht man erst, wie schlecht der Einfluss vom Schweizer Fernsehen auf die Gesellschaft ist: Gold und Sodomie! Wenn das BR Leuenberger wüsste… Vermutlich hat er aber gestern erst zugeschaltet, als Jacques Rogge heuchelte: «Doping im Sport ist das, was die Kriminalität in der Gesellschaft ist.» Heuchelei? Würde ja zum Medienminister passen (oder wie er sagen würde: «Tumme Siech!»). (L.T.)

Das Fernsehen hat einen Auftrag (bloss, welchen?)

Sendung vom 27. Oktober 2009

Fragt man ehemals mächtige, nunmehr alte Männer (eine Spezies, die in der Schweiz, mit Ausnahme von Brig. u. Alt BR Dr. Dr. Kurt Furgler, nicht vertreten ist), was sie mit der plötzlich im Überfluss zur Verfügung stehenden Zeit, die Sie früher in Sitzungen verschlafen haben, anfangen, erhält man – verständlicherweise – selten die Antwort «Ich verbringe viel Zeit mit meiner Frau», sondern «Ich lese die Klassiker wieder» (Klassiker sind Bücher, die zwar keiner gelesen hat, die aber ständig wieder gelesen werden). Wenn wir dereinst alt sein werden (selbstverständlich ohne Milde) werden wir die Klassiker, die wir schon längstens gelesen haben (damals, in der Adoleszenz), ins Brockenhaus bringen (oder die Füsse darauf hochlagern). Wir wollen dann, wenn wir endlich Zeit haben für die wichtigen Dinge im Leben, das Lesen, was wirklich wichtig ist im Rückblick auf unser Leben: Das «Reglement der SSR SRG Idée Suisse über die notwendige Versorgung der Bevölkerung mit täglichen Informationen». In diesem vieltausendseitigen Kompendium werden wir hoffentlich auf das Kapitel «Sport – Geistige Landesverteidigung für den Fauteil» stossen und endlich erfahren, warum Daniela Milanese mit Urs Leutert (und dem Wutzelmännchen Haldimann) Themen für das allabendliche Sportmartyrium aussucht, die uns wirklich nicht interessieren. Wie beispielsweise das Hickhack der Milliardäre mit ihren Segelschiffchen.

Vielleicht sind Ihnen in den Nachrichtenmagazinen auch schon diese vollständig austauschbaren Uhrenwerbungen (ab 2700 CHF) aufgefallen und augenblicklich verleidet (ein dreiundfünzigjähriger Schläcki mit graumeliertem Föhnscheitel im casual look, Carréhemd von Burberrys mit Joopsweater über den Schultern, der genauso aussieht wie diejenigen, die bei der UBS und anderen mittlerweile halb verstaatlichten Firmen das am besten gemacht haben, was sie wirklich nicht konnten, zusammen mit einem Milchbubi mit Bläserlippen, der genauso aussieht, wie einer, der die Matur nur in einem Internat bestehen kann und der auf jedem staatlichen Pausenplatz mit glühenden Zigaretten drangsaliert würde, schauen auf eine No-Style-Uhr, und über den beiden thront der Satz: Bla bla bla kauft man schon für die nächste Generation – wer poliert eigentlich dem Werber dieses Satzes die Fresse? ).

Bis vor sechs Monaten glaubte ich, diese Ente sei eine Karikatur. Heute weiss ich: Duck hatte recht.

Aber genauso stellen wir uns mittlerweile Milliardäre vor: Salzlose Männer, die ihren inzestuösen Buben teure Uhren kaufen. Und wir sind von der Wahrheit nicht so weit entfernt. Wenigstens Ernesto Bertarelli (nicht zu verwechseln mit Silvano Beltrametti) könnte ohne Schminke und doppelten Boden in einer solchen Werbung platziert werden. Dafür wären wir ihm dankbar. Leider aber hat der Millarden-Bub aus Genf Freude am Böötle, zudem einen Schweizer Pass und er will ungefähr alle drei Jahre die hässlichste Kanne der Welt gewinnen. Ein anderer Milliardär, Larry Ellison, will diese Kanne dummerweise auch gewinnen. Weil einer der beiden Milliardäre Schweizer ist, muss das SF darüber berichten. Aber muss es wirklich darüber berichten? Steht das auf Seite 771 des bundesstaatlichen Föderalismusberichts über die Zwangsversorgung mit Sportnews für das Calancatal und andere schützenswerte Allerweltsgebiete? Wir werden es nie erfahren. Der Bericht liegt bei Urs Leutert im Safe. Davor sitzt er, Zigarren rauchend (erst am Nachmittag im Büro). Hin und wieder besucht in ein Pistolero mit schwarzen Stiefeln und hellblauen Augen. Dessen Auftrag ist klar. Derweil spielen wir weiter auf unserer harmonica.

So sehen heute Miliardäre aus, für die auch Urs Leutert Meilenweit geht

P.S. Es gab mal zwei Milliardäre, die duellierten sich im Kampf, wer mehr Geld hatte. Sie wechselten all Ihre Besitztümer in Goldtaler um und häuften sie auf einen Berg. Wessen Berg am Schluss höher war, sollte gewinnen. Einfach nicht? Und um einiges spektakulärer als die beiden Softies mit Ihren dummen Schiffen. (L.T.)

Roman Abramovich's 525 ft. 'Eclipse' ... "It is the biggest private yacht in existence and comes with a missile-detection system, two helipads, a luxury spa, swimming pool and a miniature submarine."

The subject of money is a complex one.  Don’t you agree that there is nothing quite like the subject of money, that evokes strong feelings and reactions in people? Except perhaps, sex and religion?  That is because, as Abraham-Hicks says;

“…it touches most of you in one way or another, hundreds or even thousands of times in every day, it is a large factor in your vibrational make up and in your personal point of attraction… Because such a high percentage of your thoughts in any given day reside around the topic of money and financial success, as soon as you are able to deliberately guide your thoughts, not only it is certain that your financial success must improve, but the evidence of that success will then prepare you for deliberate improvement in every aspect of your life experience…”

It may be hard for someone who struggles to pay the bills every month, to sympathize with someone at the opposite end of the spectrum who has his own painful issues with money.

But it is true; money is an emotional button, a contentious issue.  But I am not here to debate the pros and cons of dosh.  I just want to tell a different story about money, because the one that I have been telling hasn’t worked for me.

“…abundance cannot find us unless we offer a vibration of abundance… even in the absence of something we want, we must find a way of feeling the essence of it, or it cannot come… when you ask for the manifestation prior to the vibration, you ask the impossible.  When you are willing to offer the vibration before the manifestation, all things are possible…”

I have found a great tool to help me feel comfortable about money.  It is a book called The Official Filthy Rich Handbook by Christopher Tennant.

Before doing the filthy rich handbook therapy, I used to raise my eyebrows at the filthy rich excesses.

“One could end world hunger with what they spend on a birthday party,” I used to say.

Not anymore!  Two weeks of sitting on the toilet first thing in the morning with a latte macchiato in one hand, and the filthy rich handbook in the other, has worked like a charm.   I’ve had a change of heart.  I’ve come to see that the many ways these people can come up with, to spend their money, is brilliant.  No, I really mean it.  You want to try sitting there every day, as I do, with a checkbook in your hands panicking that you can’t think of a single thing to buy.  Seriously!  You see, in Ask and It Is Given, Abraham suggests the following exercise to help us pinpoint our energy: write yourself a check every day and spend it on the same day.  Starting with $1,000 on the first day, $2,000 on the second and so on.  It is also suggested that one should be as descriptive as possible on the memo.  I have to tell you, I am stumped.  When I finally figure out what to spend the money on, I sigh with relief.  Then I worry about thinking of something to buy the following day.

Pathetic, pathetic, PATHETIC!  Now do you see why I think the filthy rich are geniuses when it comes to spending money? Did you know that one of them bought a plot on the moon, for God’s sake!?

“How big is 525 feet,” I asked my son after reading that Roman Abramovich’s Yacht, Eclipse, is 525 feet long. “Is it as big as the QE2?”

“No, the QE2 is bigger,” he said.

“Well then, what’s all the fuss? It can’t be that big.”

“Yes but,” he explained.  ” A 525 ft yacht is big enough to block out the sun, and The QE2 carried thousands of people.”

I see the point, and it increases my admiration for the-larger-than-life-sense of self these people have!  Truth be told, they deserve some sort of public recognition.

Take Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich again, he paid $282 million for a house in London.  Do you know something? I’m rethinking my position about being on a Real Estate sabbatical.  In fact, if the likes of Abramovich, Rupert Murdoch, Bruce Kovner, Larry Ellison, Paul Allen and Bill Gates want to buy a house, I’ll be happy to make an exception for anyone of them, anytime.  Just fly, sail, drive on over in one of your custom built cars, and I’ll postpone writing a chapter until after I sell you a house.  I’ll even include you in one of the chapters.  Oh, please don’t be upset if you didn’t see your name on the list.  Anyone on Forbes 400 is welcome.

Feel better?  Good.

Now, jokes apart (who’s joking? Not me), money is a great thing. And I want to say a big thank you to Patty Stonesifer and the Bill and Melinda Gate’s foundation for their generous grant to help save babies from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.  Also to Jeffrey Lewis, Chief of Staff to Teresa Heinz and President and Chief Operating Officer for the Heinz Family Philanthropies for his support of First Candle national Kicks Count! campaign.  None would be possible without money.

And last but not least, thank you to my elder son who brought the Filthy Rich Handbook home, and left it lying around in the bathroom.

See you tomorrow

Your friend,

Success

“In all countries with a settled bureaucracy people used to say: The cabinets come and go, but the bureaus remain.”

“Only to bureaucrats can the idea occur that establishing new offices, promulgating new decrees, and increasing the number of government employees alone can be described as positive and beneficial measures.”

~Ludwig von Mises

FCC Approves Proposed Net Neutrality Rules

FCC Debates Net Neutrality -Full video

The Communicators: Net Neutrality

Mike McCurry on Net Neutrality

Paul Misener of Amazon.com on net neutrality

Q & A: Faceoff between Mike McCurry and Paul Misener

More government regulation and intervention into the economy is the problem not the solution.

The government is attempting to screw the consumer in the name of protecting them from the big bad Internet Service Prodivers or ISPs.

We are from the government and are here to protect you.

Really?

Go take a hike. 

Promote competition and investment in the internet or broadband deployment and cut government spending and regulation–abolish  the Federal Communications Commission.

The Progressive Radical Socialists are all on the side of network neutrality.

Network neutrality is the hostile takeover of the internet by government regulations.

The Progressive Radical Socialists are true believers in government command and control.

I trust private companies before I would even consider trusting the integrity of the government.

Time for the American people to wake up and speak up.

“Capitalism means free enterprise, sovereignty of the consumers in economic matters, and sovereignty of the voters in political matters. Socialism means full government control of every sphere of the individuals life and the unrestricted supremacy of the government in its capacity as central board of production management.”

“Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.”

~Ludwig von Mises

Background Articles and Videos

The Essential Guide to Network Neutrality

A guide to the future of Internet services and the Internet Freedom Preservation Act.

By John Edwards

“…The Case Against Network Neutrality

The nation’s largest ISPs, including AT&T, Time Warner, Verizon, Cox Communications Inc. and Comcast, are the strongest network-neutrality opponents. Yet these firms steadfastly deny that they are trying to hijack the Internet, as some as their critics claim.

The ISPs insist that their primary interest is simply to ensure better and more reliable service by prioritizing content to meet their customers’ needs. They also state that their actions are essential to comprehensive Internet security; they must prevent outlaw services from taking advantage of customers through illegal Net activities, such as phishing sites and intellectual-property-robbing peer-to-peer file-sharing services. Many neutrality opponents also believe they should be able to charge Web-site operators, especially high-bandwidth services like video streamers, for the right to use the ISP’s portion of the network, which feeds content directly to customers.

Neutrality opponents assert that any government measures directed at promoting a so-called “even playing field” would unnecessarily meddle with Net activities and, in effect, place the government in charge of critical aspects of the Web’s design and operation. Such interference, opponents claim, would stifle Internet growth, hinder the roll out of broadband access and tilt the market toward businesses that use the most bandwidth yet pay the least for network costs within a neutral environment.

The Case for Network Neutrality

Supporters of network neutrality include the businesses that have the most to gain from a neutral Internet — companies such as Amazon.com, Google, Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft and Facebook. Also backing the cause are the editorial boards of several major newspapers, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News. Organizations such as the American Library Association, Gun Owners of America, Christian Coalition of America and Consumers Union, as well as Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, are also carrying the “free Internet” banner.

Network-neutrality proponents claim that rather than protecting their customers’ interests, ISPs are trying to squash competition in order to benefit their own Internet services, including email, IP telephony, search technology, news and information content aggregation, classified advertising, and social networking. They argue that by attempting to monopolize both access and content, such firms are essentially “double-dipping.”

According to network-neutrality advocates, the loss of a free and open Internet would lead to less innovation, since individuals and small startups buckle under new service and cost restrictions imposed by ISPs. The biggest losers in this situation will be consumers, who will inevitably face fewer service choices and higher fees, argue neutrality supporters. The national business and financial climate will also suffer, they allege, as Internet innovation and growth slows. …”

http://www.voip-news.com/feature/guide-network-neutrality-030508/

Sector to Watch – Internet

FCC Net Neutrality: Arbitrary and Capricious?

FCC Commissioner on Net Neutrality

Oracle Chief Opposes Net Neutrality

Internet Regulation – Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

Net neutrality: Necessary or necessary evil?

Lawrence Lessig on Net Neutrality and Google-1/2

Lawrence Lessig on Net Neutrality and Google-2/2

“Preserving a Free and Open Internet: A Platform for Innovation, Opportunity, and Prosperity”

Gov 2.0 Summit 09: Julius Genachowski, “Broadband as Platform”

Genachowski Says AT&T Move Doesnt End Need for Web Rule: Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhqzQkJTc5M

Barack Obama: On Net Neutrality

CTO Aneesh Chopra on net neutrality

C-SPAN’s Communicators with CTO Aneesh Chopra

Anti-Net Neutrality Propiganda Ad

Net Neutrality – Plain English

DN! Net Neutrality (1\2)

DN! Net Neutrality (2\2)

Net Neutrality

Anti-Net Neutrality Propiganda Ad

Net Neutrality – Plain English

Google Violates Motto Debate: Jim Harper (3 of 13)

Related Posts On Pronk Palisades

Network Neurtrality–FCC Julius Genachowski–Tim Wu–Free and Open Internet Or Slow and Stupid Internet?

Robert W. McChesney–Videos

Cass Sunstein–Regulatory Czar–Animal Rights Activist, Body Part Taker, Gun Grabber, Internet Regulator, Nudger–Nuts!

Mark Lloyd, FCC Diversity Czar, and Cass Sustein, Regulatory Czar: Progressive Radical Socialist Silencing of Free Speech On Internet Blogs and Talk Radio

Susan P. Crawford–Videos

Tim Wu–Videos

Beck and Hannity Expose Corrupt Ethics Waived Slumlord Valerie Jarrett–Senior Advisor, Olympics Czar and Close Friend of President Barack Obama–Videos

The Battle For The World Economy–Videos

Obama’s Progressive Radical Socialist Democratic Party’s Propaganda War On Freedom of Speech

Anita Dunn–White House Communications Director–Exposed By Beck As Mao Tse-Tung Admirer On Video!

Fox’s Glenn Beck Installs Hotline to Narcissist Obama–Beck Continues To Be Obama’s Narcissistic Supplier!

Fox News Scares Narcissist Obama–Mirror Mirror Mirror On The Wall Who Is The Fairest Of Them All–Sarah Palin–Obama Attacks Mirror!

Obama’s Socialist Mopster Red Bucket Brigade for The Rockefeller and Soros Agenda of World Socialist Government–A New World Order!

Fox News Scares Narcissist Obama–Mirror Mirror Mirror On The Wall Who Is The Fairest Of Them All–Sarah Palin–Obama Attacks Mirror!

Sam Vaknin–Videos

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)–Videos

Barack Obama Cult?

Jim Jones–Cult of Personality–The Tragedy of Jonestown–Videos

There Are No Coincidences: Three Progressive Presidents Won The Nobel Peace Prize–Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Barack Obama–Narcissistic Personality Disorder!

Change You Can Count On: The 2,000,000,000 Health Care Plan Requires Massive Tax Increases and Huge Cuts In Medicare Reimbursement for Doctors and Hospitals!

President Obama–Killer of The American Dream and Market Capitalism–Stop The Radical Socialists Before They Kill You!

Cloward Piven Strategy–The Crisis Strategy Of Barack Obama

Yuri Bezmenov On KGB Soviet Propaganda and Subversion–Videos 

President Barack Obama Puppet of Trilateral Commission?–Videos

G. William Domhoff: Who Runs America–Videos

Eugenics–Rockefeller–United Nations–Population Control–Holdren–Abortions/Sterilization–Browner–Cap and Trade–Obama–Compulsory Socialized Medicine–Euthanasia–Transhuman–Brave New World!–Videos 

Eugenics, Planned Parenthood, Population Control, and Designer Babies–Videos

Barrack Obama’s Kansas Values–Killing Babies in Cold Blood?

Black Genocide–Eugenics–Planned Parenthood–Population Control–Videos

George Soros: Barack Obama’s Money Man and Agenda Puppeter

George Soros: Government Interventionist and Global Socialist–Obama’s Puppeter Master–Videos

Soros Funded and Obama’s Manufactured Hate Generator–The Southern Poverty Law Center–Disinformation Propaganda Campaign 

Change You Can Count On: The $2,000,000,000 Health Care Plan Requires Massive Tax Increases and Huge Cuts In Medicare Reimbursement for Doctors and Hospitals!

Second Opinion: Doctors Speak Up On Proposed Health Care Reform–And A Third Texas Opinion!–Videos

Republican Health Care Reform: The Patients’ Choice Act

Medical Doctor and Senator Tom Coburn On Health Care–Videos

The Senate Doctors Show–Videos

Obama’s Waterloo– Government Compulsory Single Payer Socialized Medicine!–Videos

President Obama’s Plan of Massive Deficit Spending Is Destroying The US Economy–The American People Say Stop Socialism BS Now!

The Bum’s Rush of The American People: The Totally Irresponsible Democratic Party Health Care Bill and Obama’s Big Lie Exposed

Chairman Obama’s Progressive Radical Socialist Health Care Bill Kills Individual Private Health Care Insurance–Join The Second American Revolution!

The Obama Big Lie and Inconvenient Truth About Health Care–The Public Option Trojan Horse–Leads To A Single Payor Goverment Monopoly of Health Care and The Bankruptcy of USA!

The Obama Public Option Poison Pill For A Government Health Care Monopoly–Single Payer System–Betting Your Life and Paying Though The Nose

Government Bureaucracy: Organizational Chart of The House Democrats’ Health Plan

Dr. Robert W. Christensen–Videos

John Stossel–Sick In America–Videos 

Μαζικές απολύσεις προανήγγειλε η εταιρία πληροφορικής Sun Microsystem – Pathfinder Tech

Νέα Yόρκη: Σε απολύσεις 3.000 εργαζομένων της, ή αλλιώς του 10% των 29.000 υπαλλήλων της παγκοσμίως, θα προχωρήσει η εταιρία πληροφορικής Sun Microsystems, εξαιτίας -όπως υποστηρίζει η διοίκησή της- της καθυστέρησης της εξαγοράς της, έναντι 7,4 δις δολαρίων ΗΠΑ, από την Oracle, η οποία εξετάζεται από τις αντιμονοπωλιακές αρχές της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης.

Οι απολύσεις θα γίνουν μέσα στους επόμενους 12 μήνες, σύμφωνα με έγγραφο της Sun το οποίο στάλθηκε στην επιτροπή κεφαλαιαγοράς των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών (SEC).[next]

Currently it seems we are in this form of transformation phase and a battle between software as a service and locally run applications. As the much quoted cloud computing terminology being associated and marketed as the next big internet revolution. Google has built their business based on offering services online either through Google Docs or Gmail. Where Microsoft is acknowledging the importance to be in this field and releasing their own revision of office 2010 in a from where it is marketed as a service available online.

This can be seen by Larry Ellison, the CEO and founder of Oracle during the TechPulse360 conference. Where Larry points out very strongly that what really is meant by the term cloud computing, a re-invention of the word networking.

Some key points of what Larry feels about cloud computing

1. Cloud computing has been the past and present of computing not only seen to be the future.
2. The cloud is still a computer network
3. As long as there is an internet there will be hardware and local based software, because what runs these services online.
4. Software as a service is not new, his example Netsuite

However in all this i think the industry has got caught up in the idea that cloud computing is a new technology. Where the focus has been drawn towards the marketability of offering these services online. Where the real story is not that cloud computing as a platform is new, but through technologies like ajax, RSS, XML, KML and API’s have been used to expand the capabilities of what the internet cloud computing is truly capable of. Perhaps what is shifting is the approach that consumers are no longer required to have powerful machines, but access to high speed broadband internet, and the massive explosion of netbooks and smartphones in the market can be a sign of things to come.

~Matt

What can I say, Oracle OpenWorld 2009 was a great show all around. Professionally run, great companies, great exhibit areas, and exceptional presentations. The big surprise to me was seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger on stage with Larry. Which is a great segue into my first topic for my OOW09 notes on the show. The amazing Exadata 2 and the challenge presented to IBM.

After Arnold left the stage, Larry made the comment “IBM, take the [Exadata challenge] and make our day.  Oh, that is a different action hero, sorry.”

Then Larry goes on to say “Ten Million dollars to anyone who can make their IBM machine run better than half as fast as an Exadata machine.  Anyone who needs $10M, that is all you have to do to get it.”  

Here is the site for the “official” Oracle Challenge page: http://bit.ly/4xm0RS

So do I think that Larry can back up his statements? How can he make such a claim? Well, to start, he has a lot of Sun technical research and credibility behind him. The Sun Oracle Exadata Storage Server is a storage product optimized for use with Oracle Database applications and is the storage building block of the Sun Oracle Database Machine. The Sun servers combine the power of the latest generation of Intel® Xeon® processors with Sun’s system engineering expertise.

So the benefits of Exadata 2 can be boiled down to four things: more pipes, wider pipes, smart software, and NO physical moving parts.

Traditional storage devices offer high storage capacity but are relatively slow and can not sustain the I/O rates for the transaction load the enterprise requires for its applications. When you have hundreds of disks behind a single storage controller you limit the speed of the mechanical disks and the number of disks connected to a storage controller. There are several I/O path bottlenecks restricting data bandwidth. Database servers need many Storage Area Network (SAN) Host Bus Adapters (HBA) to provide the bandwidth necessary to deliver data, from storage to the database, at an adequate rate. Large storage arrays cannot deliver adequate bandwidth to the hundreds of disks they house. This results in the potential performance of disks being artificially constrained below what they are capable of providing. They are also not “aware” that they are speaking to a DB and therefore can’t optimize their transactions for SQL and DB-specific Input/Output.

Exadata devices address all of these limitations. Exadata is based on a massively parallel architecture which provides more pipes to deliver more data faster between the database servers and the storage servers. It is built using wider pipes that provide extremely high bandwidth between the database servers and the storage servers.  Exadata is database aware and can ship just the data required to satisfy SQL requests resulting in less data being sent between the database servers and the storage servers. Exadata overcomes the mechanical limits of disk drive technology by automatically caching frequently accessed data delivering unprecedented levels of bandwidth and IOPS.

More specifics:

Each Exadata cell comes with 384 GB of Exadata Smart Flash Cache. It provides a ten-fold improvement in response time for reads over regular disk; a hundred-fold improvement in IOPS for reads over regular disk; and is a less expensive higher capacity alternative to memory.

The Sun Oracle Exadata Storage Server comes with either twelve 600 GB Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disks or twelve 2 TB Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) disks. SAS based Exadata Storage Servers provide up to 2 TB of uncompressed user data capacity, and up to 1.5 GB/second of raw data bandwidth. SATA based Exadata Storage Servers provide up to 7 TB of uncompressed user data capacity, and up to 0.85 GB/second of raw data bandwidth. The automated caching of the Flash cache enables each Exadata cell to deliver up to 3.6 GB/second bandwidth and 75,000 IOPS when accessing uncompressed data.

You can configure the racks to be expandable to any configuration, or contract the configuration all the way down to an 1/8th rack. My opinion is that for medium to large enterprises these boxes are going to be unbeatable for a while. So here are the four reasons again:

More pipes: Exadata is based on a massively parallel architecture which provides more flow channels to deliver more data faster between the database servers and storage servers. As Exadata servers are added to the database configuration bandwidth scales linearly.

Wider pipes: InfiniBand is 8 times faster than Fibre Channel. Exadata is built using wider InfiniBand pipes that provide extremely high bandwidth between the database servers and storage servers.

More IOPS: With the intelligent and automatic use and management of Exadata Smart Flash Cache to avoid physical I/O.

Smart Scan Software: processing less data needs to be shipped through the pipes by performing data processing in storage.

As we start to pull ourselves out of this economy I can see more medium-to-large size enterprises replacing their old traditional storage devices with the new Exadata offering from Oracle/Sun.

Larry Ellison Presents the Exadata 2

The Oracle Sales Executive Summit 2009 that I attended during Open World attracted senior sales talent from major corporations and many of them spoke about their experiences and successes with Oracle CRM and SFA products.  All of the speakers’ biographies were printed in a handout and, since the session included a live feed from Larry Ellison’s keynote, his biography was also included.

It read in full:

Lawrence J. Ellison

Chief Executive Officer

Oracle Corporation

Larry Ellison has been CEO of Oracle Corporation since he founded the company in 1977.  He also races sailboats, flies planes, and plays tennis and guitar.

‘nuff said.

Marc Benioff decided against returning fire after Larry Ellison’s recent mocking of Salesforce.com’s offering as a ‘little itty-bitty application’

Attendees packed into a presentation by Salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference Tuesday, but those hoping the executive would deliver some of his trademark trash talk toward Oracle left the room disappointed.

Some sort of throwdown seemed possible, even likely, given that during a shareholder meeting last week, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison mocked Salesforce.com’s offering as a “little itty-bitty application” that is dependent on Oracle’s own technology.

But Benioff made no response to Ellison’s jibes on Tuesday, instead referring to the companies’ “fantastic relationship” and thanking Oracle for being “magnanimous” enough to let Salesforce.com appear at OpenWorld. Salesforce.com is a sponsor of the show.

Ellison was an early investor in Salesforce.com, but left the vendor’s board after he and Benioff had a falling out.

Since then, the two executives have repeatedly slammed each other’s business model, with Benioff declaring on-premise software a dying model and Ellison famously mocking cloud computing on a number of occasions, even as his own company tests those waters.

Their history caused surprise and curiosity among some observers, who questioned why Oracle would allow such a direct rival to tout its products at OpenWorld.

Indeed, beyond slamming Salesforce.com’s technological achievements, Ellison has made it a point during recent earnings conference calls to cite deals it won against the on-demand vendor.

And during the shareholder meeting, Ellison said he could provide a long list of customers who once used Salesforce.com but “chucked it out” in favor of Oracle’s own on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) software.

But in the end, Benioff seemed more intent Tuesday on building bridges than burning them.

At one point, he was joined onstage by Dell CEO Michael Dell. The two companies announced a partnership on Monday for selling Salesforce.com CRM and related services to small and medium-sized businesses.

Salesforce.com and Dell already had close ties, having used each other’s products for some time. Dell said its experience running Salesforce.com will give it an edge when working with new customers.

Source:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/salesforcecom-ceo-plays-nice-oracle-openworld-805

Chicago Web Design Firms

This is the first of several posts on Open World.  Too much stuff to put into one so this one concentrates on blurbs of key findings from the many goings on.  I will probably need to expand on many of these.

First, flying Virgin America is like flying used to be.  Room for my knee caps is a plus, wi-fi, better food, uncrowded departure lounges, and security lines no cattle call for boarding.  My first time and I am spoiled.

Why does Larry Ellison wait until Wednesday to give his keynote.  Some people are already on their ways home by that point and they miss the significant news.

So many Oracle people walking around visibly tired by Wednesday as am I.  The sheer volume of news, presentations, briefings, meetings, demos and trying to digest it all is too much.  Tuesday night I was too tired to eat dinner.  Too tired?!  But I have pity on the Oracle people who keep a stiff upper lip and keep up this pace.  My prediction is few people in their offices on Monday.

Arnold Schwarzenegger gives a good speech, much less wooden in person, almost life-like.  Arnold really likes technology and if he could have gotten ten bucks for every time he used the word in his speech at OOW he could have balanced California’s budget.

If Carley gets elected governor will Larry invite her to OOW?  Would she come?  Larry will own Sun by then and Carley ran HP.  Hmmm.

OOW was a little cat and mouse game on the inside track.  Larry criticizing Cloud Computing at the Churchill Club followed by Marc Benioff walking into the lion’s den on Tuesday to extol its virtues and then Larry’s introduction of Fusion apps on Wednesday.

Larry played cat and mouse with IBM too challenging Big Blue to a gun fight over benchmarks.  He offered a ten million dollar prize to anyone who could best his sparc server array. Pure chutzpa, the Sun deal isn’t even closed yet and Larry’s got a dog in the fight.  Is this the beginning of the Ellison prize?

I am not a gear head but the gear introductions were impressive. Exadata 2 based on Sparc technology is twice as fast as version 1 which uses HP.  Version 1 was ONLY about 50 times (sic) faster than the fastest database servers on the planet.  Proof that Larry is slowing down LOL!

Larry (finally) announced Fusion applications on Wednesday.  He made four major announcements – Fusion, Exadata 2, a sophisticated service and support automated system that would find problems and recommend fixes for all subscribing customers proactively and Oracle Enterprise Linux rules the known universe or some such thing.  More on those coming soon.

Well, that was interesting.  Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff just completed a speech at Oracle Open World, perhaps the ultimate example of co-opetition.  It was apparent to me early on that Marc’s purpose for being there was to refute Larry Ellison’s rant at the Churchill Club in which he compared Cloud Computing to vapor.

I got a hint earlier today when someone said that the event had been put together quickly, which to me confirmed the need to refute Larry who spoke a couple of weeks ago at Churchill.  Benioff started out by graciously telling the audience that he had worked at Oracle and attended Open World many times in his 13-year career, even presenting on the same stage he was now on.  He went further pointing out that the Oracle database is one of the key components of the Salesforce service and thanked Oracle executives for the graciousness.

But there was little doubt in my mind that Benioff felt he needed to refute Ellison’s off the cuff assertions at the Churchill Club.  He did that with ease and just when you might have thought he’d reached the end of his talk, he brought up the CIO of EMC Corporation Sanjay Mirchandani to discuss that company’s hybrid CRM approach that includes Salesforce and Oracle for on-premise CRM.  It was almost as if he wanted to say that Salesforce can play the hybrid game as well as Oracle.

I guess the Open World setting proved too much of a temptation for Benioff.  It’s in the same city as Benioff’s office.  The venue was easy to get, Michael Dell another big Salesforce customer spoke at Open World this morning and was available to be on stage with Benioff for part of the afternoon.

There’s little doubt that Benioff was able to refute Ellison but the bigger question for me was why he felt he needed to.  We haven’t seen this kind of action for many years and it makes for lively times in these challenging days.

De acordo com o ranking da Revista Forbes divulgado no dia 30 de Setembro, a liderança dos homens mais ricos do mundo continua com Bill Gates, presidente do conselho da Microsoft atualmente.

O cofundador da Oracle, Larry Ellison ficou em terceiro lugar no ranking, com uma fortuna pessoal estimada em 27 bilhões de dólares. Na frente de Larry Ellison está Warren Buffet ocupando a segunda posição.

Ainda participaram desta lista grandes nomes de TI como Sergey Brin e Larry Page do Google, Michael Dell, Steve Ballmer da Microsoft e Jeff Bezos da Amazon.

This was posted on yahoo on Oct. 10th 2009, great post clears up a few things that I post so often on this site. But let me tell you, there is no luck about a billionaires empire. It’s created through the laws of attraction. Learn more about what the laws of attraction are by viewing more of this site.

Peace
Simranjeet Singh
Aim: Kether1985

America’s Richest

A Recipe For Riches
Duncan Greenberg, 09.30.09, 06:00 PM EDT

Want to become a tech titan or hedge fund tycoon? Up your chances by dropping out of college or going to Harvard and working at Goldman Sachs.

Are billionaires born or made? What are the common attributes among the uber-wealthy? Are there any true secrets of the self-made?

We get these questions a lot, and decided it was time to go beyond the broad answers of smarts, ambition and luck by sorting through our database of wealthy individuals in search of bona fide trends. We analyzed everything from entrepreneurs’ parents’ professions to where they went to school, their track records in the early stages of their careers and other experiences that may have set them on the path to extreme wealth.

Our admittedly unscientific study of the self-made members of the Forbes 400 yielded some interesting results.

First, a significant percentage of them had parents with a high aptitude for math. The ability to crunch numbers is crucial to becoming a billionaire, and mathematical prowess is hereditary. Some of the most common professions among the parents of Forbes 400 members (for whom we could find the information) were engineer, accountant and small-business owner.

Consistent with the rest of the population, more American billionaires and near-billionaires were born in the fall than in any other season. However, relatively few of them were born in December, historically the month with the eighth-highest birth rate.

Of the 274 self-made tycoons on the Forbes 400, 14% either never started or never completed college. The number of precocious college dropouts is highest among those who forged careers as technology entrepreneurs: Bill Gates of Microsoft (MSFT), Steve Jobs of Apple (AAPL), Michael Dell of Dell (DELL), Larry Ellison of Oracle (ORCL) and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

Forbes 400 members who derive their fortunes from finance make up one of the most highly educated sub-groups: half of them have graduate degrees. Roughly 70% of those with M.B.A.s obtained their master’s degrees from one of three Ivy League schools: Harvard, Columbia or the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

Goldman Sachs (GS) has attracted a large share of hungry minds that went on to garner 10-figure fortunes. At least 11 current and recent billionaire financiers worked at Goldman or one of it subsidiaries early in their careers, including Edward Lampert, David Tepper, Daniel Och and Leon Cooperman.

Several Forbes 400 members suffered bitter professional setbacks early in their careers that heightened their fear of failure. Pharmaceutical tycoon R.J. Kirk’s first venture was a flop–an experience he regrets but appreciates. “Failure early on is a necessary condition for success, though not a sufficient one,” he told Forbes in 2007.

According to a statement read by Phil Falcone during a congressional hearing in November 2008, his botched buyout of a company in Newark, N.J., in the early 1990s taught him “several valuable lessons that have had a profound impact upon my success as a hedge fund manager.”

Several current and former billionaires rounded out their Yale careers as members of Skull and Bones, the secret society portrayed with enigmatic relish by Hollywood in movies like The Skulls and W. Among those who were inducted: investor Edward Lampert, Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, and FedEx (FDX) founder Frederick Smith.

Parents Had Math-Related Careers

The ability to crunch numbers is typically a key to becoming a billionaire. Often, mathematical prowess is hereditary. Some of the most common professions among the parents of American billionaires for whom we could find that information were engineer, accountant and small-business owner.

September Birthdays

Of the 380 self-made American tycoons who have appeared on the Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires in the past three years, 42 were born in September–more than in any other month.

Tech Titans Who Dropped Out of College

Forget everything your guidance counselor told you: You don’t have to go to college to be successful. Close to 15% of the self-made American moguls on the Forbes 400 never finished college. Many of the list’s drop-outs made their fortunes in tech, including Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Michael Dell (Dell), Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook).

Skull and Bones

Several current and former billionaires rounded out their Yale careers as members of Skull and Bones, the secret society portrayed with enigmatic relish by Hollywood in movies like The Skulls and W. Among those who were inducted: investor Edward Lampert, Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwarzman and FedEx founder Frederick Smith.

Goldman Sachs

A stint at investment bank Goldman Sachs is a prime credential for achieving greatness on Wall Street. Of the 61 tycoons on our list who derive their fortunes from finance, at least six cut their teeth in Goldman’s investment banking, trading, or asset management divisions. The company’s crown jewel: its “risk arbitrage” unit, which launched the careers of billionaires Edward Lampert and Daniel Och, as well as former billionaires Tom Steyer and Richard Perry.

This is an amusing video and worth watching to see what one of the industry thought leaders, Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, has to say about Cloud Computing.
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As luck would have it, I knew nothing about Larry Ellison’s rant at the Churchill Club on September 21 about cloud computing when I wrote last week’s piece on cloud computing.  I saw it on YouTube.

You have to admit that Larry is a heck of a showman and the video is fun to watch.  But whenever someone in that kind of situation starts to nit pick over definitions it says to me that they’re hoping no one will notice that they might be a bit threatened by a next generation technology.

Various analysts have pointed out the cloud is really an amalgamation of several technologies including Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).  I can’t disagree with any of that though it is a rather mechanistic summation, but my reaction to all this parsing of nomenclature is, so what.

Say what?

Really, so what.

My take on cloud computing is different, it’s part cultural and part historic and the two are twisted tightly together.  The history of the technology industry is one of overcoming shortages and cloud computing is part of that progression.

When storage and memory were in relative short supply we kept data on tape and programs on punch cards.  We responded by building more and denser capacity until the shortage went away and we found ourselves with extra capacity at greatly lower costs.  We had capacity to spare and instead of wasting it, clever individuals built the relational database.

Computing power has always been short but once we got into Moore’s Law the curve kept delivering new capacity to burn every eighteen months or so.  Did we waste it?  Some did, but enterprising souls built the graphical user interface of GUI and graphics cards and they changed computing.

Along the way as these improvements became ubiquitous and cheap — then something magical happened.  We started branching out and the improvements didn’t stay in the confines of enterprise computing.  They leaked out into a plethora of unimaginable products.  Consider the iPod, for example, nothing but a tiny computer with a baby-sized disk.  Talk about unintended consequences, I know some people were thinking about these devices but there weren’t that many and look at the effect this one device has had on our culture.

iPod is only the best known example but there are many others.  For example, our cars are now bristling with processors and memory for fuel injection, ABS brakes, navigation systems (probably with a DVD in your trunk) and more.

But we are not done.

Then it was bandwidth.  Ethernet was an interesting standard but it was slow.  Bright minds turned their attention to networking, changed the way our applications use networks so that they use less bandwidth and others made more of it available culminating in the ultimate consumer bandwidth, the Internet.  Tell me that hasn’t changed your life.

What’s different today is that we have a relative abundance of everything.  If it comes to us as a service we no longer think about all of the provisioning and cost that was once part of our calculus.  Platforms and applications coming in as a service ensure that bright minds can dream big and who knows what they’ll come up with?

So far all of that abundance has enabled us to build not artificial intelligence, that appears to still be in the future, but artificial, or should I say synthetic, relationships.  I mean social media here.  The relationships we maintain through social media are available to us because the cost of maintaining them in time and effort and real dollars is so low that it might as well be free.  And the power of these relationships is that at any time, for the right reason, they can become full blown active relationships that provide friendship, information, help or anything you might expect of a friendship.  And, of course, physical distance is much less of an issue than ever.

Our advances in technology have been the sometimes-surprising results of efforts to overcome scarcity and other adversities.  Social media is a child of the ubiquity delivered through the Internet and it is still in its precocious early years.  And logically, social media is not the only advance we should expect from this ubiquity, though I can’t say what the next things will be.

So when I hear someone, even kiddingly, say that cloud computing is nothing new or that it’s just water vapor, it makes me think that someone isn’t getting it.  We only have a few faint ideas about what cloud computing will ultimately yield and that alone is why it is so important.