Oracle's Ellison Touts Added Database Capabilities

"We want to get the greatest automation, we will take more responsibility for volume management, storage management, auto back-up," into the database, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison told Oracle World attendees Thursday afternoon.

"We're trying to get all that storage management... blackboxed and isolated" to boost reliability. That will eliminate opportunities for cockpit error in such tasks as disk space allocation, he said, speaking via satellite from Auckland, New Zealand.

"We will continue to work with Veritas but make more of this stuff as blackboxed as possible," he said. "You won't need Veritas or others; Oracle will automatically back itself up."

No doubt Veritas, a long-time Oracle partner, will be interested to hear that. Over time, Oracle is integrating more functionality,middleware, analytics,into its core product, putting itself into contention with ISV partners. In this, it ripped a page out of the playbook written by Microsoft, which has long sucked utilities formerly offered by smaller companies into its operating systems.

As he said last year, Ellison reiterated Thursday that the days of best-of-breed applications are fading. IT buyers want integrated, easy to support and install software, he noted. The Internet boom is over, and many tech companies who had soared with them, fly no more, he said.

"Some companies may never come back. At one time Ariba was worth more than Daimler Chrysler, and all it had was an itty-bitty software product that let you type a purchase request into a browser. Two cats could have written that application," he said.

He repeated a litany of companies he considers to be in jeopardy, including Commerce One and i2. "Specialist companies with one or two products will have a difficult time coming back. Low-volume, high-priced companies [are in danger and Siebel falls into that category," he said.

Siebel Systems, the CRM market leader, is led by Tom Siebel, a former Oracle executive. Oracle offers its own CRM applications.

Ellison ducked the question of the day, why he had opted to race his sailboat in New Zealand rather than attend his company's annual conference. Even many of the Oracle faithful said they thought that, with the company stock languishing at just over $10 per share, his place was at Oracle World.