Did you notice or hear about the insightful conversation between Larry Ellison and Ed Zander on Monday, September 21 2009, at the Churchill Club forum? No? Well here are a few of the insightful answers that Larry provided to Ed's questions:

1. Larry implies the combined company or Oracle and Sun will be voraciously competitive against IBM. Some vendors have been creating tremendous FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) among some of you and your companies regarding the future of the combined Oracle / Sun company: "We've already beaten IBM in software, now, if everyone will let us, we will beat IBM in hardware," Ellison said. "That is our goal." According to InformationWeek

2. From the conversation you can sense the conviction of Larry Ellison to become a market leading "Systems" vendor and a company that is superior to the current IBM. In fact he wants to be the IBM from yester-year when IBM was the market leading solutions vendor:

“But we want to be T. J. Watson’s IBM,” he said, referring to the CEO who led the company in the 1950s and 1960s.

He continued: “T.J. Watson’s IBM was the greatest company in the history of enterprise in America because its combination of hardware and software was running most of the enterprises on the planet. We think with the combination of Sun technology and Oracle technology we can succeed and beat IBM. That’s our goal."

Refer to the WSJ Blog for additional information.

3. Also, there are a tremendous number of other quotes from various sources. For example, the eChannelLine with the following quotes are extracted:

   "Oracle will become a storage, software and systems company," Ellison said, specifically mentioning "storage" first.

   "Sun has great open storage systems. It has the best archival tape systems around [in the StorageTek product line]," Ellison said. "The amount of the world's data continues to grow and isn't going to slow down anytime soon. We see great opportunities in that sector, and we certainly will have the technology to sell into it with Sun.

   "We have no interest in the hardware business," Ellison said. "We have a deep interest in the systems business. Great systems vendors ship a hardware-software combination that allows them to be instrumental in the acceleration of the Internet.

   "We think that by providing our software with hardware ... we can deliver systems that can be the backbone of most enterprises around the world. It's really a combination of the two."

The message I want to leave you with today is simple: Trust us. Sun has superior products and solutions. Some vendors are creating tremendous FUD because they see our current transition period as one where they may try to take advantage of you. I do not believe these vendors have your best business interest at heart. They seemingly want to create FUD and try to take advantage of your company. The conversation between Larry Ellison with Ed Zander is an excellent example of what Larry expects from the combined Oracle / Sun company. The bottomline from my perspective is as follows:

1. The combine organization will be a fantastic Systems company.
2. Oracle, via Larry Ellison, intends to keep the tape portfolio.
3. Sun has tremendous roadmaps that are being followed.
4. I expect Oracle to be a company you can trust without FUD.

If you don't agree with my opinions expressed above, the entire conversation is available via the web where you can listen to it or watch it on YouTube.