Oracle vs Salesforce.com: Who has the cloud right?

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For anyone still confused, Salesforce.com believes it knows what cloud computing really is and Oracle has missed the point, according to the former’s chief executive (CEO).

Marc Benioff took a number of little swipes at his old employer during the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, telling delegates they should “beware of the false cloud.”

Running behind Benioff were some images of Oracle’s Exadata server as the CEO stressed “the cloud is not in a box.”

Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO, believes the cloud in the box is the right model and said in September Salesforce.com was pushing the “wrong” cloud model, whilst the multi-tenancy system used by Benioff’s firm was 15 years out of date.

Following Benioff’s comments at Dreamforce, IT PRO caught up with Salesforce.com’s director for product marketing Robin Daniels, who said he was in complete agreement with his boss about what the cloud was.

“I've been to a lot of trade shows recently and everyone is advertising the cloud because it’s the hot thing to do. Everyone wants to be in cloud,” Daniels said.

“Every single company is like ‘we’re cloud.’ You know what, no you’re not cloud.”

He said if a user needed to have their own software and servers, and have to worry about maintenance and updates, then it was not “true cloud.”

Despite the various claims, the fact “cloud computing” was essentially created as a marketing term means vendors are the ones who will ultimately decide what the cloud is.

In turn, this means anyone wanting a definitive definition of the cloud would need to pick a side and stick to it, whether it be Salesforce.com, Oracle or any other provider who wants to stake their claim on the technology.

It may also be worth mentioning the whole of Salesforce.com is based on an Oracle database, probably one of the biggest in the world. So it may be wise to take any cloud-based baiting with a pinch of salt.

For further coverage of cloud computing visit our sister site Cloud Pro.

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