Speaking to a fairly sizable crowd (despite the Moscone Center bomb threat that caused thousands of conference attendees to evacuate), Fiorina followed the theme set by previous speakers Michael Dell and Scott McNealy--tell the people why "you're" the best Oracle partner and launch a few jabs at the others whenever possible.
All this is kind of funny because Oracle's focus of the event--the launch of the Grid--was really about everyone getting along.
Dell was first to give his version of the grid message on Monday. Sporting crutches and a broken ankle he suffered when a horse fell on him over the weekend, Dell was happy enough to explain how enterprise grid computing would facilitate fantastic cost savings because it could be created and expanded using inexpensive, industry-standard components--"just like the kind Dell sells".
He went on to say, however, that customers should wait to include blade servers to this mix of components--they still needed standardisation and they ran "too hot". (Benny Souder, an Oracle vice president, said in a subsequent presentation that we should run out and buy blades right now, and that they were "very cool". Hmmm.)
Dell also made the observation that R&D was overrated--words the other speakers would have a field day with.
The first to have a go at Dell was Sun's Scott McNealy who also happened to notice that Sun computers were shown in the background in one scene from Dell's promotional video. "Oops!" he commiserated. (It should be noted that the LCD display on Sun's demo rack featured a piece of black duct tape over the brand name. Doh!)
McNealy also struck back at Dell's claim of selling more affordable servers. McNealy compared similarly configured blade server components, noting that the Sun model was slightly cheaper. "If you want a 'piston ring', we'll ship you one," he said. But the message McNealy was pushing was that it was better and more economic in the long run to buy an entire configured system from Sun than it was to buy individual components.
HP's Carly Fiorina didn't take long to get her barbs sharpened. "Those who say that IT or R&D doesn't matter [wink] don't want to keep up or 'can't' keep up," she said. And when it came to discussing "next-generation" grid computing, Fiorina couldn't help taking another swipe at Dell: "Some people may be trying to ride this horse before they're ready...and we all know that's a good way to hurt your foot!"
Verbal sparring aside, Fiorina hammered on the fact that HP was the "best" partner for Oracle's grid computing--in fact, they were practically "joined at the hip". She even went so far as to say that HP had "grid-enabled its entire product line."
"Grid enabled"? Isn't the point of true grid computing that vendor doesn't matter?
There's no doubt that the sarcastic salvos are one of the reasons the OracleWorld keynotes are so well attended (yes, Larry Ellison managed to get the obligatory jabs at Microsoft into his keynote). But at an event where the abililty to employ "industry-standard" hardware is such an important part of the grid philosophy, is the promoting of mixed messages really in Oracle's best interest?
I don't think "the point" of grid computing is that "vendor doesn't matter." It's that any one particular server doesn't matter -- that computing power can be reprovisioned on-the-fly when needed (like when a server goes down). When an IT buyer looks for the one vendor to buy lots of server hardware from -- to get volume discounts and simplify administration -- each hardware vendor wants to be that one.