Trash talk at Oracle app server roll-out

by John K. Waters

December 8, 2000 —

Redwood Shores, Calif. - An Oracle press conference intended as a
showcase for its Oracle Internet Application Server 8i middleware offering took on a
somewhat surreal aspect Wednesday, as company CEO Larry Ellison was peppered with
questions on the company's admitted role in a private investigation intended to uncover
material unfavorable to Microsoft.

The firm did manage to get some news in about a host of mid-tier software offerings
before the deluge of Microsoft-related questions carried the day. Ellison was
unflappable and apparently unrepentant.

Speaking to a crowd of reporters jammed into a conference room at Oracle
headquarters, Ellison was unapologetic as he defended his company's decision to hire
Washington-based Investigative Group International (IGI) to uncover the financial
connection between Microsoft and several lobbying and trade groups.

"It is absolutely true that we set out to expose Microsoft's covert
activities," Ellison said. "Microsoft has been spending a tremendous amount
of money on these organizations... and we thought it was important to get that
information out."

At one point, Ellison described the undertaking as "a civic duty."

Ellison produced what he called "a cheat sheet," from which he read the
names of organizations to which he said Microsoft gave substantial amounts
of money. The list included the Association for Competitive Technologies,
Americans for Technology Leadership, the Independent Institute, the National
Taxpayers' Union, and Citizens for a Sound Economy.

"These organizations pretended to be independent, pretended to represent American
citizens and taxpayers and America's technology industry, but they were none of the
above. [These organizations] did not exist until the Microsoft antitrust trial.
They were bought and paid for by Bill Gates and [Microsoft CEO] Steve Ballmer,"
he asserted.

Ellison charged that these organizations published "bogus polls and false
economic reports," which asserted "whatever was good for Microsoft was good
for America."

"It was our intent to expose that...Microsoft is creating front
organizations," Ellison said, "and there's no reason for us to deny that. We
believe in full disclosure. I feel very good about telling you what we did."

The financial ties between Microsoft and two of the groups -- the Independence
Institute and the National Taxpayers Union -- were previously reported by the Wall
Street Journal and the Washington Post. In a prepared statement issued
yesterday, Oracle admitted to hiring IGI after the publication of newspaper reports
that investigators tried to pay two cleaning women $1,200 for trash from the
Association for Competitive Technology.

Ellison claimed that, although he was aware that his company was looking
into Microsoft's connection with these organizations, he learned the details
of IGI's activities only yesterday. Although he allowed that IGI might have
engaged in activities that were "unsavory" and (in the case of the trash
picking) "unhygienic," he emphasized that his company had broken no laws, nor had it
instructed IGI to break any laws.

"What we did was perfectly legal," he said. He added, chiding reporters, "People
like you are supposed to expose this stuff... We're just trying to help."

Ellison's appearance was preceded by product announcements and demos. The
press conference was originally scheduled to brief reporters and analysts on
the latest developments in Oracle's Internet Platform, which included the
introduction of two new products: the Oracle Internet Application Server 8i
(Oracle iAS) and the Oracle Internet Developer Suite.

Oracle executive vice president Gary Bloom, who described the two products
as "the finishing touches" on Oracle's Internet Platform, opened the
conference. Bloom called the product announcements "the culmination" of
Oracle's ongoing efforts to provide everything needed to operate an
e-business. Oracle's Internet and e-business offerings are complete and
available today, Bloom said.

Oracle iAS and Oracle Internet Developer Suite each combine in single
packages integrated collections of products that perform functions
previously available only through multiple products from multiple vendors.
The application server, Oracle iAS, includes a range of middleware and
server-based application functionality, including dynamic data caching, component
services in the form of Enterprise Java Beans, and portal services. The tools suite
includes a Web-based report builder, a Web-based Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
query tool, and forms design tools.

An integral part of both iAS and the developer suite is Oracle Portal, a framework
for managing hundreds of different software services
for employees, trading partners, or suppliers. Web portals are "the new
e-business desktop," Bloom said. Oracle's portal strategy involves blending
business content, business applications, and intranet and business
intelligence data to make "portlets." "You wrap port technology around a set of
information to make it displayable in a single view from a browser," Bloom
said. "That's a portlet."

Compaq Computer Corporation will be adopting the Oracle Internet Platform
across its full line of server and storage offerings, according to Bill
Heil, vice president and general manager of Compaq's business critical
servers groups. Heil appeared at the conference to announce that Oracle and
Compaq will be jointly optimizing and testing the Oracle platform for Compaq's ProLiant
servers running Windows NT/2000, the AlphaServer running Tru64
UNIX or OpenVMS, and Himalaya running the NonStop Kernel, as well as the
StorageWorks storage offerings.

The company also announced Oracle8i Release 3, which introduces new XML,
Java, and security features to the company's popular database platform.

Ellison concluded the conference by saying that he has no regrets about
investigating Microsoft's connection to the research groups, and that Oracle
has no plans to investigate other firms.

ITworld.com