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By Matthew Quinn
Larry Ellison, Oracle's brash co-founder and CEO, doesn't care that you think he is better off unloading Sun Microsystems' hardware business once their $7.4 billion merger is completed.
"No, we are definitely not going to exit the hardware business," Ellison told Reuters in an email interview (link to transcript).
His reason? If Apple and Cisco can turn typically low-margin hardware into high-margin products by designing it to work specifically with proprietary software, so can Oracle.
"If a company designs both hardware and software, it can build much better systems than if they only design the software," Ellison argued. "That's why Apple's iPhone is so much better than Microsoft phones."
Ellison pointed to Oracle's experience with its Exadata database machine as proof his company has the chops to design hardware and software that work in tandem, claiming Oracle software runs "at least ten-times faster than Oracle software running on conventional hardware."
Indeed, the 64-year-old CEO rejected all notions that the Sun acquisition was a pure software play, insisting Oracle would keep Sun's disk storage and tape backup businesses, as well as its SPARC chip business.
Even though his Exadata machines run on Intel chips, Ellison said Oracle's increasing the investment in SPARC. And again, possibly as a plea to the investor community to more fully appreciate the merits of the deal, he invoked the move as akin to Apple's business model.
"We think designing our own chips is very, very important," he said. "Even Apple is designing its own chips these days."
Ellison did admit, however, that Oracle will not be making a SPARC Solaris version of Exadata, which is currently built by HP using Intel microprocessors, throwing a bit of cold water on notions of endless synergies.
Of course, Ellison could be partaking in a bit of gamesmanship by not making it look like he is an overeager seller and holding his hand until an acceptable price can be fetched for some properties.
After swooping in to snag Sun following IBM's attempt to acquire it, who would put such a thing past him?
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