Larry Ellison slaps down SAP in his maiden tweet
WHEN Larry Ellison, the world’s sixth richest man and chief executive of software giant Oracle, appeared on Twitter earlier this week, addicts of the bird-branded social network waited with bated breath for the tech guru’s first 140-character proclamation.
And while his debut tweet – sent moments before the stroke of midnight on Tuesday – was not earth-shattering, the billionaire did not disappoint.
Knowing that well over 20,000 followers had already flocked to his Twitter account, Ellison took the opportunity to slate his company’s arch nemesis, SAP.
He boasted: “Oracle’s got 100+ enterprise applications live in the #cloud today, SAP’s got nothin’ but SuccessFactors until 2020.”
The Capitalist was impressed to see Ellison knew how to use a hashtag, despite being six years late to the microblogging site.
But it seems neither the wording nor the timing of the Oracle boss’s tweet was coincidental.
The Nasdaq-listed software company had just unveiled its first step into the cloud market, with a suite of new products that means companies are no longer required to install Oracle’s software on their own data systems.
Much like his first tweet, Oracle’s move to cloud “has been a long time coming”, Ellison said.
In its reluctance to enter the cloud market, Oracle has lagged behind smaller rivals such as SalesForce and Workday.
So Ellison decided to sling the mud at SAP, which has been the snail to Oracle’s tortoise in the cloud game.
The Frankfurt-listed software group bought cloud expert SuccessFactors in December for $3.4bn – but Ellison seems to think SAP will not have a real cloud presence until next decade.
The third wealthiest American, with a fortune worth $36bn according to Forbes, owns almost a quarter of Oracle’s stock – so it’s in his interest to keep his enemies down.
We can’t wait for the next instalments.