Love and hate in the house of cyberspace

It may be a bit unfair to describe Oracle's huge annual tradeshow, OpenWorld, as a public orgy of IT execs who openly hate each other.

A bit unfair, because OpenWorld involves a few more public displays of corporate affection than it does vicious tongue lashings and threats of competitor annihilation.

Spreading that love-in feeling to customers and partners is why Oracle holds the event, attended by 35,000 in San Francisco last week.

Ongoing engagement and reassurance is an important part of maintaining customer loyalty when you're in the global enterprise software business, and this is particularly so for Oracle as it beds down a flurry of recent acquisitions.

Clients who have found themselves dealing with Oracle not through choice but because of its takeovers of rivals PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, and the pending takeover of Siebel, are desperate to hear a vision of the future that includes support for the technology they use.

Oracle was keen to offer that vision, promising to deliver lifetime support on the non-Oracle software it has inherited.

The desire to send a message of industry-wide collaboration and unity is also why Oracle invites players such as Sun and Intel to share the stage with it at OpenWorld.

But of course the mutual admiration component of these presentations isn't as enthralling as the barb-throwing.

The prize for best grenade lobber at this year's event went to Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun Microsystems. McNealy's gag this year revolved around his apocryphal list of tunes key industry personalities had on their iPods.

He said Mark Hurd, the boss of Sun archrival Hewlett-Packard, would have Breaking Up Is Hard To Do on his iPod, a reference to rumours that cumbersome HP is considering spinning off some of its many businesses.

More cutting was the inclusion on Hurd's playlist of Ding-Dong, the Witch is Dead, a reference to former hard-nosed HP chief executive Carly Fiorina, whom Hurd replaced when she was fired.

For flamboyant 61-year-old Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, Hurd's playlist included: Hey, Big Spender, I Like Big, Come Sail Away and I'm Too Sexy.

IBM chief Sam Palmisano also found himself in the firing line with a playlist including I Can't Make You Love Me and Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.

But competitive tension between McNealy's company and sometimes-friends, sometimes-rivals including Oracle was also expressed in a more serious way via the different industry visions he and Ellison articulate.

A key Sun marketing message centres around the energy efficiency of its systems, giving McNealy the opportunity to take a swipe at rival Dell.

"Imagine if everyone on the planet got up in the morning and turned on their Xeon Dell PCs," he said. "You think we have a global warming problem now? Move away from the shores!"

When Ellison addressed the faithful the next day, however, his future vision was contradictory, featuring a world dominated by less energy efficient grid computers.

OpenWorld also highlights that it's a small industry out there - players who are friends one day can become enemies the next, and vice versa.

Oracle is increasingly focused on touting customer relationship management software, putting it at war with businesses such Salesforce.com, founded by former Ellison protege Mark Benioff.

Benioff convinced Ellison to invest in Salesforce and take a seat on the company's board. Now Ellison's stance is: "We're going to go after Salesforce as best we can I'm an investor in Salesforce. I'd like to see that investment go to zero."

Almost in the same breath Ellison found himself assuring clients he had no issue with Siebel founder Tom Siebel, with whom he has sniped in the past, but whose company he is taking over.

"All of Tom's experience will be very valuable to Oracle for the next couple of years," Ellison said. "I have no problem with him saying not-nice things about me in the past. I might have said some things about him. I forget. That's all water under the bridge. We're on the same team again."