Hey there it’s me, First Liberated, aka Bob Doyle and affectionately called BFD (a story for another day) by some old colleagues at Oracle and some who have sold to me as a customer of Oracle. You’ve got to love Larry. I always thought he was a pretty amazing guy with a great story and an incredible knack for messaging. During my days at Oracle I had a great respect for Ken Jacobs who is a pretty bright guy and I think he still holds the role of vice president of product strategy in Oracle’s server technologies division. I remember doing benchmarks and having opportunities to have direct conversations with Ken. I think I might have installed the first ALPHA code version for OPS on AIX in maybe 1989-1990 at a company in Rochester NY—telecommunications. I am really trying my memory on this one as it was a long time ago. There was also a time when I was involved in the initial testing of Oracle on DEC Unix with Scott and Steve Foote, brothers who were a pleasure to work with and in the minority as far as contacts I have stayed in touch with over my 30 years in this business and not sure where they ended up. Maybe they will see this and we can reconnect, that would be great.

So I need to be very clear and let you all know that I always did and always will believe that Oracle has produced a great database that was built and optimized for years based on OLTP. And, this was where the real business needs were until technology advanced to where data could be collected and the need for analytics began to grow beyond the capabilities of a shared everything architecture. Even Larry and Ken could not predict this change and re-architecting was not in the cards. Oracle tried to adjust but at the expense of complexity and added functionality that required understanding of how to use the same product for two totally different purposes when its core design was around transaction processing. If you have learned anything about me I am very much in favor of picking the right tool for the right job and with that said it really turns out that Oracle and Netezza could be an ideal solution for providing an Information Factory.
 
If Oracle is serious about being a hardware vendor and an appliance vendor then the perfect partner is Netezza to strengthen the Oracle position with a relationship that provides customers with a reference architecture for information management and delivery that services end-to-end seamless almost real time integration of corporate wide information into the appropriate environments for servicing the needs of the end user.  Recognizing what you do well and using partners to augment your weaknesses is what enforces your position with clients and establishes you as the thought leader in solving real world challenges. There is a real powerhouse here that just needs cooperation and recognition of the individual strengths by two very different architectures built for two very different types of processing. The truth be told, Oracle with its wide variety of software able to provide in-the-box core transactional processing needs for everyone and ability to integrate that data near real time into the Netezza appliance for servicing complex analytics would establish a kick-ass foundation for the Enterprise Information Factory. But in order for this to succeed, Oracle must to admit that inherently it is not built for Business Intelligence and analytics.

As for IBM, they make some damn good hardware, after all Netezza chose it. Recent press shows that Oracle has an eye on IBM and has issued a challenge. With this challenge issued by Larry I do have to wonder why Oracle included in its  rules this statement “Hardware associated with companies acquired by IBM after October 7, 2009 shall not be considered IBM hardware.” Is there something out there they are really worried about? I tend to read too much into stuff sometimes but it seems a little bit of an odd statement to make for a test that will be completed by January. How many acquisitions are finalized in 2 months?

Larry, you just need to pick your partners before what seems to be a fear becomes reality. We all want to win and compatibility with competition could change our world once again.
 
First Liberated