Oracle CEO touts rough and ready ware

He also said that systems integration is a waste of time and money when it comes to embracing the net. He thinks users ought to opt for software which enables them to get their business processes online quickly - even if that means their systems aren't perfect.

Oracle now claims to sell all the software you'd need to do this in one handy suite of applications. In fact, it's been touting its e-Business Suite 11i for eight months, and Larry was keen to stress that Oracle itself has shaved $1bn off its own IT budget last year by using this stuff, and expects a similar amount to be saved before the end of this.

(Let's ignore the fact that the e-Business Suite 11i wasn't made publicly available until eight months ago, so Larry may have been massaging the figures slightly. We seem to remember that a year or so ago Larry was saying the company had saved £1bn simply by centralising its databases.)

But he was very keen to point to real-life examples which show how good this all-in-one 'solution' really is. GE is one notable customer.

"We signed a contract for the e-Business Suite with General Electric Power in November," explained Ellison. "They will have completely re-engineered all of their business processes and moved those processes to the internet when they bring a new plant live in March."

According to Ellison, the re-engineering of the remaining 20 plants, located throughout the world, will be completed in just 18 months.

He claims GE didn't have to make one change to the software - nor has GE put any business the way of Oracle's competition. This is an Oracle-only zone.

So far so good (unless the phrase 'vendor lock-in' sends shivers down your spine, in which case the alarm bells might well be ringing already).

Ellison says you wouldn't want to reconfigure the e-Business Suite software. Maybe that should be 'couldn't', even if you wanted to.

Take this quotation from the same speech: "We admit the e-Business Suite does not have everything our customers want. But we have 80 per cent, or 85 per cent, or 86 per cent. And an 85 per cent solution in five months is better than a 100 per cent solution that you dream about happening in two years, or three years."

He must be hoping that there are enough businesses out there which have yet to get the 'e' message. Many companies did in fact start their projects two or three years ago, so may not need a whole new suite of software.

Larry almost sounded like he'd discovered something revolutionary when he said: "The whole world is about to change because of this thing called the internet."

Weren't people saying that back in the last millennium?

He continued: "We're becoming vastly more productive, vastly more efficient, and my industry is going to have to change along with it. We have to stop treating our customers like they're hobbyists, like you love buying these parts and hiring people to glue them together. We have to deliver complete running systems."

Blimey: buy Oracle and sack half your IT department.

Anyway, some of this talk smacks of our old friend ERP. Hasn't SAP been trying this sort of trick for some time now? And didn't ERP go out of fashion when it proved more complex to implement than anyone imagined?

And there's the nub, really. Ignoring Larry's showmanship and slick presentation, his claim about the lack of 'configurability' inherent in the e-Business Suite does sound like a weakness. But it may prove to be its biggest strength.

Rough and ready wins the race in Larry's world. How about yours?