Oracle and Salesforce, two of the most powerful enterprise companies at present have come forward work together through a truce that would see the tech giants integrate their cloud infrastructure. The feud between Oracle and Salesforce has been going on for a few years now. The companies pitted against each other in every possible way. They made similar acquisitions and strategies just to prove their dominance in front of each other.
The rivalry between the two enterprise service providers have been so intense that it took a turn toward a personal sparring between the CEOs of both the companies. This personal duel began when Oracle cancelled Marc Benioff’s talk at the OpenWorld Conference two years ago at the last moment. This led too a public exchange of words between the two stalwarts.
Today, the rivalry between the two companies can be summed up as a conflict or rather a race to lead with the cloud technology. This can be translated as a race to win over enterprises for cloud based services in the present, and the ability to sustain this in the future. In fact both the CEOs of Oracle as well as Salesforce have been quite vocal of how their rival counterparts have been failing with the cloud infrastructure. In such a scenario, the news that the two tech giants have now embraced a 9 year partnership has come as a great shock to the IT industry.
The connection between Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce has been closer than many would think of. Ellison had been mentoring Benioff for over 13 years at Oracle and went on to become one of the youngest VPs at Oracle before founding Salesforce. The relationship between the two CEOs was not always as bitter as it is now. In fact, Ellison had helped Salesforce with early investments. Also, Salesforce has been one of the biggest customers to Oracle. It is not known as to when exactly the duo broke out. Many suggest that this might have taken place when cloud computing emerged. Both the CEOs have a different take on the technology and naturally they might have drifted apart in different directions.
The cloud computing debate
The very definition of cloud services according to Oracle and Salesforce differs vastly. According to Salesforce, cloud technology cannot be owned as it is a fundamental part of the internet. Consumers do not directly interact with the cloud on a daily basis. Salesforce aims at providing cloud computing services to users based on their browsers. All that is required to access the cloud services is the web browser and internet connectivity. The consumers need not install any additional software or add any hardware to their existing infrastructure.
Oracle, on the other hand, believes that cloud computing is more like a hybrid technology that ensures no third party is associated with handling any form of data, operations, or other assets that make up a part of the cloud. This would mean that the enterprises would have to maintain their own data centers and other infrastructure that is necessary for cloud computing.
Change of heart
As much as it may seem like Oracle and Salesforce have had a change of heart to embrace each other in the race for absolute dominance in cloud computing, the reality however is quite different. The reality at present is that both Oracle and Salesforce need each other more than anything else at this point of time. While Salesforce has got everything right when it comes to the idea and definition of cloud services, the main focus of Salesforce continues to remain on the sales teams and mobilizing them. The technology that Salesforce has is far from being suitable for large enterprises. Oracle, on the other hand, has enough resources and technology to cater to large enterprises. However, their ideas and approach toward cloud computing has been somewhat faulty when compared to Salesforce.
As a result, the two companies have reached a sort of symbiosis where Salesforce will benefit from the internal applications developed by Oracle, and Oracle in turn can benefit from the knowledge transfer to integrate Oracle’s acquisitions into the cloud environment. Also, the cloud technology at this point of time is dominated by a large number of startups. In fact, some of the major competitors to Oracle and Salesforce have been several smaller startups. As a result, the partnership surely provides them with a greater leverage to remain competitive in the industry.
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