SAN FRANCISCO — Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is convinced that had the
intelligence community used a unified database from Oracle, the
terrorist attacks on 9/11 would never have happened.
“As it was, Mohamed Atta passed through international customs saying
he was visiting on a holiday, while the police in Broward County,
Florida had an outstanding warrant for his arrest,” Ellison said during
his keynote at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference here.
Ellison’s comments were part of the CEO’s advertisement for Oracle’s
new vision of topically focused databases, or data hubs. The
repositories of information are part of Oracle’s approach to a broader
market movement toward Service Oriented Architectures
use the modular hubs. Oracle is touting the hubs in concert with its
next generation of grid infrastructure software.
The personalized systems based on Oracle’s E-Business Suite could
include specialized repositories like a “citizen” data hub for
security purposes, a financial consolidation hub for credit card
companies, a financial services accounting data hub for banks, and a
product data hub for manufacturers and supply chain companies.
By sharing critical product information such as engineering,
manufacturing, marketing/sales, profit/loss, and regulatory compliance,
Oracle said, users could make better decisions and cut down on errors.
“A 360-degree vision of your company could never come from a single
CRM system,” Ellison said pointing out flaws in software from rival vendors
like SAP, Seibel and PeopleSoft.
Ellison repeated his company’s pledge to support PeopleSoft
if it were to merge. The executive said Oracle would
finish production of PeopleSoft 9 and then “over support” the PeopleSoft
customers for the next ten years.
“After PeopleSoft 9 and the next generation of Oracle software, we
will build a successor product to both PeopleSoft and Oracle, so that
when people do their upgrade that they will have the best of both
companies,” he said.
Ellison pointed out that the goal was to combine resources
between the two companies and build a functionally merged product that
would serve as an easy and graceful upgrade.
Oracle is offering $24 per-share for its Pleasanton, Calif.-based
rival. PeopleSoft’s board of directors continues to hold out for more
money, even though 61 percent of shareholders sided with Oracle in last
month’s straw poll.
