Larry Ellison Smack Talks SAP And SAP Smacks Back
Business Insider/Julie Bort
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison
Although Oracle's overall business grew, investors saw a lot to concern them in Oracle's earnings released yesterday. The stock is down about 8% today.
In talking to Wall Street analysts on a conference call Thursday, Larry Ellison went on the offensive, saying that Oracle is doing way better than competitors SAP and Workday.
The thing that's worrying investors the most is that new software licenses and cloud software subscriptions grew by a meager 1%, even though Oracle said it added 500 new cloud customers last quarter.
That could mean that the software vendor is having trouble getting into the cloud computing game.
It's hardware business is still shrinking, too, down 13% from the year-ago quarter.
Oracle executives blamed a poor economy in Asia and unfavorable currency conversions and insisted it wasn't a lack of interest in Oracle products.
Then Larry Ellison smack-talked about his competitors SAP and Workday. He said that Oracle's cloud is on a "$1 billion run rate" which makes it "bigger than SAP and Workday combined."
He also took a shot at SAP's database, HANA. SAP wants its customers to yank out their Oracle databases and use HANA instead.
"We virtually never see HANA in the market and SAP's HANA numbers simply don't add up," Ellison said. He was referring to the report by Peter Goldmacher of Cowen and Co. that questioned HANA's growth numbers.
A SAP spokesperson had a harsh response to Ellison's claims:
"These boasts are about as credible as Oracle promises about its hardware business over the past years. It’s a weak attempt to distract from the ongoing lack of growth. These numbers may speak for themselves, but other numbers, such as SAP’s 21 percent growth in software + cloud revenues in our most recent calendar year vs. Oracle's 4 percent growth, speak louder and with greater relevance."
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