 SiliconANGLE.tv's exclusive coverage of HP Discover 2012. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. I'm with Dave Vellante, the co-founder of wikibon.org. And we're going to do some analysis here of HP Discover. Normally what we do is we do the interviews. We do the breakdown. We share the data from the guests. We just had HP Labs on, phenomenal interview. But we also want to do our analysis of the event. Dave, one of the statements came up. And we had people from the Mission Critical BCS Group on our interview this morning. They mentioned the Oracle lawsuit. It brings me up to this segment, which I want to do some analysis on Oracle. Oracle versus HP, Oracle versus the world. Obviously, HP Discover cannot embed with Oracle right now. But the customers have Oracle. So we heard from the customer user group, Nina, that customers are waiting to find out what happens. Because obviously, even though HP's got a little war with Oracle going on right now, they still have their customers use Oracle. What's your take on Oracle right now, relative to this lawsuit particular and in general Oracle? Well, Oracle is at war with the world, as you know. We're here at HP Discover. We come down the escalator at the airport, Las Vegas Airport, McCarran Airport. And there's this big red sign, Oracle. All the cabs have Oracle logos on them. And actually, in your face, Oracle. Oracle better than HP storage, right? Go to Oracle's website. Five reasons why Oracle's better than EMC. So Oracle is really very aggressive in its marketing. What Oracle tends to do, John, as you know, is it'll make comparisons with generations of competitors' products that are one generation behind, sometimes two generations behind, literally. But they're factual that our system of 2012 runs faster than the competitor's system of 2009. Five times faster. Well, that's no surprise. So that's what Oracle's all about. Oracle's about in your face, guerrilla marketing. And Oracle is relevant because Oracle owns the database and has great application business. Specifically as it relates to HP, I think HP has really, in my opinion, blown the marketing of that whole rift. Okay, so there's a lawsuit. Fine, HP will take care of that. But the problem that I have with HP is, the way HP should have responded when Oracle said, well, we're not going to support Itanium, the fact is Oracle is supporting Itanium for the next seven years. And HP didn't focus on that. Rather, HP focused on the bad behavior of Oracle. And that just fueled Larry Ellison's fire. When an Oracle sales rep gets a phone call from a customer saying, what do you mean you're not supporting Itanium? What do you think the Oracle sales rep says? The Oracle sales rep says, no, no, calm down. We're supporting Itanium for the next seven years. You have nothing to worry about. And the customer says, oh, cool. HP, instead of taking that tact, really got defensive. And I think that really hurt its image in the marketplace. So what about the approach of Oracle? I mean, we've talked about exadata in the past versus other solutions. They got the Purpose Build, they got Sun Microsystems, actually, Larry Ellison comment that's already profitable. Yeah, they got some swagger, which I think will backfire with them in the age of social media and customers getting social information from other customers. So I think that might backfire, but just more on the product side, Dave, what's your take on the solution architectures? Yeah, I think exadata, when it first came out, it was alluring, right? Because it's a single block of infrastructure, much like a V block. And the difference, of course, is it's very focused on a specific application or a database, exadata or exologic or exolytics. And the reality is, John, that it's based upon, so it used to be based upon HP hardware and then Oracle buys Sun, and now it's based on Sun hardware. And the fact of the matter is, in particular, as it relates to storage, Sun hardware has always been deficient, it's always been behind. Sun never really could compete in storage. But now, what Oracle's done with great marketing is put exadata out there. The customers that you talk to about exadata are realizing, well, it's very narrow in its application. It can't support multiple applications across the portfolio. Exadata is hugely expensive. Why? Largely because of Oracle licenses and Oracle maintenance. But also because the storage is not the greatest storage. It's not the most efficient, it's not the leading edge. And of course, Ellison will make it sound like it's the greatest thing from sliced bread that they'll make it sound like he invented, you know, columnar storage. So hats off to Oracle again for its marketing, but I think customers are really starting to find that the allure of exadata is somewhat illusory. And I think there are better alternatives out there. Customers that actually architect, you know, for the application portfolio more broadly are going to actually save a lot of money. Let's talk about the comment that Scott McNeely made at EMC World. He sat inside the cube with us. We had a great conversation with him. It's on YouTube. If anyone wants to watch that, sell it at www.youtube.com slash sell it at www.angle. But Scott McNeely was commenting about anecdotally how the network is the computer was his phrase. And, you know, you can see in his eyes he coined that term and he predicted that Sun was based upon the whole cloud concept. And now we have cloud computing, and his joke was, I should just call it cloud, one word marketing. So in a way he was kind of being cheeky about the fact that he had cloud and he just was bad marketing. Larry Ellison is now putting cloud on everything. So the question I want to ask you is, is that an arrogant move in the sense of having, hey, I'm the old guys, he's been the long standing CEO in the tech business in the 70s. He's been the CEO of Oracle. He's been in the valley. He's like, I think he's the longest standing current CEO of any tech company in Silicon Valley. So is it like, he's just being, hey boys, I invented cloud, we've done this before. Because that's basically what he's saying. In your mind, Juan, do you think that's too arrogant? And is cloud different than what he thinks it is? I want to, yes, I think it's arrogant too. Is it too arrogant? No, I think it's smart. I think that denying that the trend exists when you don't have it, and then once you do have it, announcing it as the most open cloud on the planet is again, great marketing. And my message to customers is beware. Because you have to squint through everything that Oracle says. And frankly, everything every vendor says. Then take it with a grain of salt, but especially Oracle. The other thing about Oracle is you got to read the fine print. Oracle contract negotiations should be treated like a project. They're one of the most important things that you can do. Because Oracle will lock you in more so than any other company. As I said exadata before, our data, John shows that exadata relative to a single skew appliance in broad application workloads is twice as expensive. So I think from that standpoint, it's great marketing. Now, is a cloud, I mean cloud essentially is access to public infrastructure over IP networks in a rental model. And Oracle has that. So yes, it's Oracle's version of a cloud. And I think it's perfectly legitimate to call it cloud. But it's an Oracle cloud. It's a red cloud. And so from that standpoint, customers have to be very, very careful. Final wrap-up question for you here, Dave, on Oracle is, what do you think about HP Discover's vibe relative to Oracle? You mentioned Oracle's slapping up their locals everywhere in the airport, taxi cabs. Basically it's an in-your-face with Mark Hurt over there now. What do you, what's the take here from HP? Do you see HP getting a little bit antsy? Or are they just like typical HP? I think as it relates to Oracle now, it's typical HP. And probably a lot of that's due to the lawsuit. But nonetheless, I think that, I love the fact that HP's going after EMC and making these really broad sweeping claims, which are really nuanced. I talked to David Floyer about some of those claims and it's like, well, if this, then that. And so there's a lot of nuance there. But at the marketing level, it makes great headlines. I'd love to see HP, you know, be much more aggressive relative to Oracle. I think people are afraid of Oracle for some reason, because Oracle has so much power. But frankly, I think HP's got to take the gloves off there and it hasn't. And I think, again, part of that is because of the lawsuit. Everybody's afraid to talk about it. But they got to get the facts out. For instance, that Oracle is supporting Itanian for the next seven years. I mean, why isn't HP marketing that? That has nothing to do with the lawsuit. Okay, Oracle's position in the marketplace. We'll go down or maintain, grow next five years. I think that Oracle's position in the marketplace will certainly be maintained and I think its influence will grow because it's really good at acquiring companies. I mean, I agree with what you're saying that there could be a backlash in this world of social. But I think Oracle is the one company because they spend a lot on R&D because they're really smart about acquisitions that is going to maintain its relevance, certainly for the next five years. Okay, that's the analysis here from HP Discover. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We'll be right back with more analysis from HP Discover right after this short break.