Ellison's stage presence fails to hit usual high note

Once upon a time Oracle's chief executive was a sure bet for a couple of laughs and nasty asides about competitors. However, this year's performance was as muted as the software sector is, writes Karlin Lillington in Copenhagen

When one of the best stage acts in the technology industry offers only a muted performance, you know things still ain't what they used to be in the software sector.

Keynotes by Mr Larry Ellison, the in-your-face and wickedly funny chief executive of database giant Oracle, are usually well worth going to.

Most chief executives get up and deliver the same old, same old. But Mr Ellison comes virtually with an iron-clad guarantee that he will fire from the hip, get some big laughs, and say at least one deliciously nasty thing about a rival company. Oh, and tell you a bit about what Oracle is doing and industry trends in general.

But last week, at Oracle's annual European conference in Copenhagen, Mr Ellison didn't have much to say. He arrived more than 20 minutes late to give his keynote address to an audience that had been asked to arrive early and had been treated for nearly an hour to loud rock music from the Chemical Brothers to U2.

When he finally took the stage, he was clearly peeved, snapping repeatedly at the person in charge of the slide presentation. He offered a speech that was much shorter than scheduled and petered out into repetitive detail.

When he finished, the conclusion was so indistinguishable from what had already been said that the audience sat in silence for several moments before waking up and applauding. During the bland question-and-answer period that followed, audience members were noticeably beginning to tiptoe out to watch the Germany-South Korea World Cup match on the giant screens in the hall.

"I don't think he's used to people walking out," whispered one bemused American Oracle employee.

Perhaps part of the problem is that Oracle, like all post-boom companies, is still adjusting to the fact that technology is no longer the new rock and roll, and no one believes these days that chief executives are the computer industry equivalent of Mick Jagger - even if Mr Ellison can rightfully lay claim more than most to such an image. His fast cars, planes, yachts and women are well-known accoutrements. He is certainly one of the first and only tech industry leaders one could describe as having sex appeal.

But Mr Ellison has always been more solidly interesting than such cosmetic details imply. He has a track record dating well back before the boom, having more or less made databases part of the everyday corporate world since the 1980s. Along with Sun's chief executive, Mr Scott McNealy, he has kept Microsoft on its toes, constantly challenging the company by relentlessly offering alternatives to its products and vision.

Thus, any Ellison keynote tends to be interesting, presenting the chinks in Microsoft's armour and suggesting opportunities not being seized by other prime competitors such as Siebel Systems or SAP.

But Oracle is rather vulnerable to attack at the moment. It is mired in controversy in California, after state auditors claimed a $95 million (€96.7 million), no-bid contract signed with Oracle for as-yet unused software would produce no savings and cost taxpayers millions more.

Within weeks of the deal being signed a year ago, Oracle made a $25,000 donation towards the California governor's re-election campaign, handing it directly to the state employee who concluded the deal. The governor has since returned the cash.

Speaking to journalists at the conference last week, Oracle vice-president Mr Sergio Giacoletto was adamant that nothing untoward had happened. "We stand by our official position that it was a good deal [for the state]," he said.

The company was eager to focus on its business message instead. This was simple enough and, mostly, rather dull: businesses want to get value out of the hardware and software they already own. They want more computing power but cheaper alternatives (read: clusters of inexpensive Intel-based servers running the operating system Linux), and they should consider running Oracle's new 9i version of its database software, which has plenty of speed and power, and integration with the Web.

Mr Ellison was particularly compelling in the argument he made for choosing clustered servers and "Lintel" (Linux on Intel) as opposed to Wintel (Microsoft's Windows on Intel). Rather than replacing older computers, cost-conscious companies still feeling the downturn's bite can cluster them with Linux for greater computing power. Until recently, such clustered systems were more likely to be found in universities and research institutions, not the corporate environment.

"If you're willing to spend less, your applications will run more reliably," he quipped.

His cost arguments were dramatic. At a few hundred thousand euro, clustered Linux servers will give the power and reliability of a multimillion euro IBM mainframe system, he said.

Mr Ellison said Oracle worked with Linux supplier Red Hat, refining the operating system's core structure so that it will work well with databases, and have greater speed and stability. Oracle wanted to be "a good member of the open-source community", he said, and, in line with good practice in the Linux world, had made all its modified computer code publicly available to other developers.

The Linux strategy "is as big a deal as anything we've ever done in our history", he said.

It certainly is a dramatic and interesting move for the company. The strategy is a splash of colour in a sombre market where, for now, customers seem content to lie low and conserve energy.

So it was a bit of a shame that Mr Ellison seemed eager to simply move as fast as possible through his slides rather than play to his strengths by tackling the many intriguing issues around this move.