Oracle Co-founder Larry Ellison, left, and Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates watch a match between Gael Monfils of France and Alexander Zverev of Germany through the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., on Oct. 13, 2021.
Sean M. Haffey | Getty Images
Larry Ellison, the co-founder, chairman and chief know-how officer of Oracle, has been going up in opposition to Microsoft to in database software program for greater than 30 years. He has additionally needed to cope with purchasers seeking to join their Oracle and Microsoft merchandise. But till this week, he had by no means made the journey to Microsoft’s headquarters exterior Seattle.
He was on the town to seem alongside Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to announce an growth of the collaboration between the 2 firms. Oracle is putting its Exadata {hardware}, which comprises servers for databases and storage, inside the information facilities that Microsoft makes use of to run its Azure public-cloud service for internet hosting functions.
Organizations will be capable of retailer knowledge with Oracle’s database software program by utilizing Azure, moderately than having to put in Oracle {hardware} in their very own knowledge facilities or use Oracle’s public cloud. Putting the Oracle tools in Azure knowledge facilities implies that functions will be capable of shortly entry knowledge from the databases.
“It was lovely to come up here, said Ellison in a virtual presentation on the announcement, which he teased on Oracle’s earnings call with analysts on Monday. “It’s truly my first time in Redmond. It’s exhausting to imagine. I waited until very late in my profession to make this journey.”
Nadella conveyed the significance of Microsoft and Oracle working together by bringing up a memory from his early years, before he managed teams building Azure, the Bing search engine and Dynamics sales software. He joined Microsoft from Sun Microsystems in 1992, taking a position as a program manager in the Windows developer relations group.
“When I first got here to Microsoft, the primary week, they requested me to type of get ISVs onto Windows NT at the moment,” Nadella said. “I mentioned, ‘There’s no method we are able to get ISVs onto Windows NT first with out getting Oracle onto Windows NT.'”
Nadella said the new collaboration might help companies more quickly move their workloads from their existing data centers to the public cloud.
The two companies haven’t completely given up their rivalry, though. Oracle and Microsoft will still compete to sell cloud-based infrastructure, but Azure is larger and more mature, and Oracle wants to have customers keep using its products even as they adopt other clouds. And there’s nothing stopping longtime Oracle customers from considering Microsoft’s databases in Azure.
The tension between the two companies reached a high point in 2000, as Microsoft was in the middle of its hallmark antitrust case against the U.S. Justice Department. Oracle told media outlets that it had hired a detective firm that tried to buy trash from a Microsoft-backed trade group by offering money to janitors working at the group’s office in Washington.
Ellison co-founded Oracle in 1977 and is the world’s fifth richest person in the world, while Bill Gates, who co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975, ranks fourth, according to Bloomberg. But Ellison controls 42% of Oracle’s outstanding shares, while Gates owns just over 1% of Microsoft stock, according to FactSet.
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Source: www.cnbc.com