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Oracle Declares War with HP By Hiring Hurd
By Dian L. Chu, Economic Forecasts & Opinions
In response to HP's suit against its former CEO Mark Hurd to block him from working at Oracle, Larry Ellison stated that
"Oracle has long viewed HP as an important partner...By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees....The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace."
However, when you add in Larry Ellison`s commentary blasting HP for the decision to let Mark Hurd go, one could make an argument that Larry Ellison has crossed the line with regard to appropriate conduct for a CEO, especially one who claims to hold the HP-Oracle partnership so dear.
Once the decision has been made by HP, and this is an internal decision for what HP feels is right for their company going forward, and HP has more information regarding the actions that Mark Hurd took that led up to his removal. The public negative statements by Ellison serve no purpose other than to weaken the partnership going forward.
This is HP`s business, they made a decision, Larry Ellison`s vitriolic statements were not going to change HP`s decision, it was final, so who is damaging the partnership relationship here? It is obvious that Larry Ellison doesn`t care about HP`s partnership, or joint customers. This is pure propaganda on behalf of Larry Ellison. The only reason he can get away with these type of over the top statements is because he owns his company and not accountable the way most CEO`s are with regard to professional conduct, and public statements.
In fact, Larry Ellison, if truly cared about the HP relationship, could have asked HP if they had any issues with him hiring Mark Hurd. Larry Ellison knew there would be considerable fallout from hiring Mark Hurd so soon after his leaving HP.
If anything he was trying to instigate a fued with HP, it’s like he was going out of his way to rile HP. This behavior is not exactly consistent with someone interested in maintaining a future cooperating partnership. Rather it is reminiscent of a direct competitor with a strategic move and an aim at taking market share in key categories and causing as much damage to HP in the process.
Ultimately, Oracle wants HP`s top talent, key customers, and even their shareholders as their predatory history suggests. So Oracle and Larry Ellison is no Saint in all of this, and their overt, explicit actions have formally declared war with HP.
But this is just the beginning of the major war within the big players in technology landscape, as there are not enough high margin areas for all to survive. So not only are the large firms going to gobble up the smaller firms, but the competition for top talent, key market segments, and future viability also means we will see further consolidation of the big players.
It is evident that there are now at least two major players too many to peacefully coexist in the technology space--too little high margin to go around. In the end, some large player will have to take over another large player. So the current firestorm is really just a smokescreen. The real question is who is going to buy who in regards to the inevitable Mega Mergers that need to occur in the technology sector.
Dian L. Chu, Sep. 07, 2010
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First off, kudo's to Larry and Mark for throwing down the gauntlet on the femi-nazi's. Now what they need to do is go find all the man hating fat chicks working in Oracle and fire them. That's right, Oracle is a world beating software and hardware company that has no place for lefty-agenda-business. Obama your next.
That being said, the real issue here is Sun. Oracle bought Sun, for those of you that don't have a clue to the mid-size enterprise server market, this market used to support DEC, Sperry, Silicon Graphics, IBM AIX, SUN, Wang, DG and many more. The water hole has dried up to Sun, HP and IBM. IBM lives by it's mainframe connections, so what the remaining market is being fought over by Oracle(Sun) and HP.
So many enterprise Unix based server customers have put hardware purchases on hold for the last 2 years, and now they have to start replacing or up-sizing hardware. Larry desperately needs to convince these customers that Sun will be around for another decade. Mark Hurd is his ace in the hole. That the feminazi's tried to destroy him and failed is the icing on the cake.
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Great article, Dian. This ties your coverage of the HP situation together perfectly. I think HP has a case and I think you are correct about Oracle. Poor Mr. Hurd will just have to get by over the next couple of years on $33 million plus what he pocketed before. No tag days for Mr. Hurd.
If I were a shareholder of Oracle I'd want the Board to do some investigating of Larry and his expense account. What he seems to think is respectable behavior is pretty lame.
Get'em Larry! After you hold their head in the toilet they will talk about how they feel in therapy.
There has been a corporate culture swap at HP... HP is now a politically correct woman’s work place... The change did not happen overnight… But the fact of the matter is (and this is true for a lot of corporations) that appearance / politeness / political correctness all come before profits any more. The job is to make money, there is no other directive that should over ride making money.
HP will suffer, Hurd will flourish… and polite people will be proven wrong once again. Business is fucking Business and over achievers that like to collect pretty things… are just part of the game.
Love him or hate him, I applaud Larry for calling out the biggest bunch of pencil-necked, cowardly sycophants in the Valley. My money's on the sailor!
In his new memoir, Tony supports Bill in a very similar manner,
' Tony Blair thinks it was partly Bill Clinton’s “inordinate interest in and curiosity about people” that led to his sexual dalliance with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. ' http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/41756.htmlCourts can not mandate where someone works nor can they prevent an individual from making a living.
Any non-compete must provide reasonable compensation.
This is what he gets from HP as severance... Not good enough?
Are you responding to my post?
MarkH is going to be LarryE's wingman.
[popcorn]
These two operations thrive on chaos. Let the chips fall where they may. Of course the stockholders will take it up the a** as they waste millions on lawyers and settlements but whats new?
War between big "swinging dicks" to see who has the bigger one! As far as i am concerned they both have mini-sausages!