Larry Ellison’s Rant on Cloud Computing

Published on September 30th, 2009

Posted by John C Dvorak in General

Key term to listen for: “Nitwits on Sand Hill Road”

35 users responded in " Larry Ellison’s Rant on Cloud Computing "

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# 1 Joe Dirt said, on September 30th, 2009 at 3:53 pm

Larry hates everything though…except himself.

However, he does raise good points.

# 2 Jägermeister said, on September 30th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

Larry Ellison sound just as arrogant as Steve Ballmer. Ridiculing the competition, because he knows that if this takes off, his little Oracle empire is going to crumble. Here’s a dry but informative presentation about cloud computing.

# 3 ECA said, on September 30th, 2009 at 4:08 pm

WHO remembers NOT long ago, the IDEA/thought..
That you dont OWN a computer, you RENT it??
Take a net book, and THINK.. Every thing you do is ON THE INTERNET.
YOU PAY A FEE for it.
YOU ARE RENTING..

1. DATA on the net is like ASKING someone to look at it.
2. do you want to DEPEND on some OTHER GROUP to control and be RESPONSIBLE(LOL) for your data? look up DDOS.
3. you are asking SOMEONE ELSE, to maintain something. IF its LOST (read the EULA) they are not responsible. IF you LOST it, you LEARN SOMETHING. BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP. The more you pay, the BETTER they MIGHT protect your data..
4. $20 per month is $240 per year, and a 1 TB HD is <$100… GET 2.

# 4 Jägermeister said, on September 30th, 2009 at 4:21 pm

#3 – ECA

Well, you can store all your torrent downloads in the cloud and watch/listen to them from wherever you are.

I fully agree on putting valuable data on-line… it’s a disaster in the making.

# 5 Floyd said, on September 30th, 2009 at 4:34 pm

ECA is exactly RIGHT (had to DO that). Seriously though, if a business has data that is critical to the business, the owner would be out of his/her/their minds to put it in a cloud external to the business’s IT system.

Now a “cloud” within a company’s firewall might be reasonably secure. but you still need to BACKUP.

# 6 Jägermeister said, on September 30th, 2009 at 4:38 pm

#5 – Floyd – …but you still need to BACKUP.

Well, duh…

# 7 Hugh Ripper said, on September 30th, 2009 at 5:02 pm

He might be an arrogant twit but he’s absolutely right.

# 8 Carcarius said, on September 30th, 2009 at 5:52 pm

It’s called marketing, Larry. How much is this guy worth? Third richest or some craziness like that, and this is what we hear? What a boring rant. Nothing he said wasn’t already known by anyone in the tech industry. Who’s in the audience, the San Francisco Sacred Home for Seniors?

What Amazon is doing with EC2 is interesting since we may see a return to thin client computing, which would be a boon for small businesses that can’t afford the IT infrastructure. Since data is gold in this techno-economy, security and availability are going to be monumental concerns for people / businesses who use these services. I think the technology / topology has promise, but the legal and tech issues are going to be serious issues moving forward.

# 9 t0llyb0ng said, on September 30th, 2009 at 6:03 pm

The cloud is just fine until it goes down for an hour & then everybody freaks out. That is because sync doesn’t work. One should be able to keep doing what one was doing for that hour or three that the Web is down, then when it comes back online, hit the netsync button & everything gets updated—”just like it never even happened.”

There are folks who knew how to make netsync work 10, 12 years ago. The reason YOU don’t know about it is because they’ve been keeping it a “trade secret” & making money off it. They don’t care if you never get it.

# 10 Rick Cain said, on September 30th, 2009 at 6:17 pm

Cloud computing makes data breaches all that much more fun.

# 11 jpfitz said, on September 30th, 2009 at 6:17 pm

The other day after a martini my wife said to me “you are my god”. I replied “why cause I can find answers for you on the internet?” So if the cloud has all the answers, and there is a man in the cloud the internet is god.

# 12 tdmoose said, on September 30th, 2009 at 6:29 pm

The only thing I can’t understand is why people are clapping. Who are these udder lickers that adore this IT dinosaur?

Can I have that 5:06 of my life back? No, Ellison doesn’t not make any good points, because he doesn’t make ANY points.

The real nitwit here is Ellison. It’s not the technical innovation that is at issue. It is the ever-increasing availability and affordability of computing resources over the network. That is new. OK, it’s not technological innovation. But, it is a trend that frees me from having to rely on behind-the-times, “we’ll get it done sometime next year” IT nitwits like Ellison and his ilk.

# 13 Father said, on September 30th, 2009 at 6:40 pm

Tdmoose, how much do you pay per month for Internet access?

Exactly.

# 14 Phydeau said, on September 30th, 2009 at 6:49 pm

CLOUD = Complete Loss Of User Data

# 15 Ralph, the Bus Driver said, on September 30th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

Shortly after I got my first PC in ‘93 all I heard was how programs were going to passe. Everything would be done over the internet, and yes that was dial-up. The term was “toasters” for computers with minimal equipment on them.

It didn’t work then and I see no reason for it to work now.

QUESTION: Was the audience laughing with him or at him?

# 16 Troublemaker said, on September 30th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

Cloud computing won’t be viable until Internet connections will be 100% reliable… WHICH WILL BE NEVER!

# 17 tdmoose said, on September 30th, 2009 at 7:13 pm

Sorry folks, but I’ve lost more data and suffered more downtime from our internal IT resources than our cloud resources.

Don’t tell me it won’t ever work, because it does work for me and has for over 8 years.

# 18 Gary said, on September 30th, 2009 at 8:00 pm

I saw Larry Ellison give a presentation when he launched the Oracle browser. Yes, Oracle had a browser.

Trust nothing he says.

# 19 sargasso said, on September 30th, 2009 at 8:22 pm

Larry, is a truly great American business man, with keen fighting instincts, who prefers being underestimated. Oracle sells the databases, that serve the back-end of the cloud. Which ever side of the debate wins, Oracle makes money out of it. While the debate rages, it removes the focus from the competitors.

# 20 Phydeau said, on September 30th, 2009 at 9:19 pm

Cloud computing works great… until it doesn’t. That’s like saying that driving without a seatbelt works great. Which it does, until you get in an accident. Then you’re f*cked.

# 21 qb said, on September 30th, 2009 at 10:08 pm

Larry Ellison personally makes billions from large data centers running Oracle software. Remember Oracle has made about 35 billion in acquisitions in the last 5 years. That means every bank, every pizza parlour, every school system, and every medical center you deal with is using Cloud computing (an external data center) which is running Oracle software. Even if it doesn’t look like it on the surface.

This is big software’s bread and butter. IBM, Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft make their core income there. What is the difference between Amazon or Google hosting an application (mail, calendaring, custom apps, etc) on the “Cloud” and IBM or EDS hosting them in their large data centers? Zero.

For enterprise customers Google goes through the exact same stringent SAS 70 type audits that everyone else jumps through. Google’s uptime is as the same as everyone else, or better (you’re looking at the 4th decimal place). So what’s the difference? Price.

You’ll pay significantly less from “Cloud” providers and get better service. You want to host somewhere, and most large and many small companies do, check out the price difference between the big boys and Google, Amazon, Rackspace, Squarespace, and others. Oh, and you get to talk to real people, not an account manager hiding behind an SLA. So when Larry Ellison is complaining about Cloud computing, he’s complaining about not getting a 28% yearly maintenance fee on a locked in system sitting in an IBM or EDS data center in Poughkeepsie.

It’s time that people woke up. You’re already on the cloud. The question is: how much do you want to pay?

# 22 Jim said, on September 30th, 2009 at 10:20 pm

Ellison, whether you like him or not, makes lots of cash for his company and makes lots of excellent decisions that work into his strategy.

Which, for all those who seem to have no idea at all, is to push the database as the back end for everything.

He isn’t against cloud computing, he is saying that “cloud” computing is applications and database rental and timeshare. Which is what we’ve had all along and thus “cloud computing” is just like taking last years’ fashion disasters and printing them with different fabrics and calling them “next season.”

What people don’t understand about the rental model for applications is that you, as the renter, have no underlying ownership of the application. You own the data (depending on where it is, of course.) As a consequence, unless those cloud applications are explicitly owned by you you have no ALTERNATIVES if the vendor goes belly up. Or if the vendor’s ISP shuts down for two weeks. Or if their servers all melt down.

Cloud computing can NEVER work for realtime mission critical applications until there is complete, 100% guaranteed uptime (that means, you pay ME if I can’t use YOUR apps) and 100% guaranteed access to my data 100% of the time.

NO COMPANY WILL EVER DO THIS, they would open themselves up to lawsuits that would dwarf AIG.

No company that has a responsible senior management team would EVER use “the cloud” for its financial and company private data, EVER. It’s insanity to do so.

But you naysayers go right ahead, tell your clients to “trust the cloud”. See how long you stay in business after the first major data and systems downtime.

Idiots.

# 23 ECA said, on September 30th, 2009 at 10:24 pm

FOR THOSE THAT AINT GOT IT YET..
I will use SMALL txt.

Do you think that it will be free?
Nope. nada..
It will cost you as much if not more then your iphone on the net.
You will be given a Wimp of a computer, and all your programs/data/gates will not reside on your machine.
Services will be sold, as they are now, so that If you wish to play games, More money(think Xbox live).
How long has it taken to Display a spread sheet 258xZZ on a computer full of data. Now you want to go back to something like a 486/Pentium and start over?
The only chance to have better would be a laptop, but even at that level the programs will be made in the Middle ground to work Well, with all the machines. Then they will raise prices on Better machines.
They want you to think that a Small little under powered machine is the best idea. Hand held mini laptop.
I dont want to Squint to see my info or data/game or what ever.

# 24 Awake said, on October 1st, 2009 at 1:25 am

Who are these people laughing hysterically at every utterance that Ellison makes? What he is saying is about as funny as a bad Jerry Seinfeld routine, presented in the same style. That laughter was just weird, specially when what the guy was saying was so self evident and utterly unoriginal.

There are nitwits responding to this blog posting that do not believe in ‘cloud computing’… I guess that those people would rather have ‘Google maps’ run from a regularly updated DVD received in the mail. There are people that have never cooperated on a document via ‘Google Docs’ yet they say cloud computing has no benefits. These people might as well be doing their online shopping via a paper catalog and snail mail, since ecommerce is all ‘in the cloud’.

# 25 Hugh Ripper said, on October 1st, 2009 at 2:09 am

What he’s saying is that there is no mystery or magic about cloud computing. It just computers connected via networks. Its renting someone else’s hardware and/or apps instead of using your own gear. Its nothing new.

Cloud computing does have benefits but it also has risks. IMHO at present, the risks often outweigh the benefits. Especially in Australia where proper broadband access (say 5-10mbit or more) is either unavailable, too expensive and not reliable enough.

# 26 tomdennis said, on October 1st, 2009 at 3:12 am

Use Oracle instead of a cloud? OOOPS!
A cloud is just another database.

# 27 Benjamin said, on October 1st, 2009 at 5:48 am

I thought Larry Ellison was the guy who came up with the idea of the network computer. Isn’t that the cloud? People made fun of him when he suggested it, but the cloud and the network computer are one in the same.

#5 Floyd said, on September 30th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
“ECA is exactly RIGHT (had to DO that). Seriously though, if a business has data that is critical to the business, the owner would be out of his/her/their minds to put it in a cloud external to the business’s IT system.”

Actually, you would be better off using the cloud to back-up your computers. If your computers get stolen, then you can get new machines and transfer you data to the new machines from the online back-up.I had some customers who got robbed and the thieves even stole their fire safe which contained their back-ups. They were out of luck as they didn’t trust anyone to take home a off-site backup. I remember Leo Laporte mentioning his online backup, but I cannot think of the name of it.

Slightly off topic and might be invoking Godwin’s law, but does anyone think Larry Ellison looks like Hitler with that mustache?

# 28 trip1ex said, on October 1st, 2009 at 5:53 am

Ellison is so right.

btw, I seem to remember Oracle coming out with a network computer (thin-client) 5-10 years ago. I don’t think it worked out, but …

# 29 Glass Half Full said, on October 1st, 2009 at 11:54 am

THANK YOU. Cloud Computing is a marketing term for business analysts, it’s NOT a technical meaningful term. Any time you access a web page you’re essentially using a ‘dumb terminal’ and hitting a ‘central’ computer (might be ONE IIS server or a farm), that’s client-server computing, created 50 years ago. None of this is new. You have do the calculations and store the data on YOUR machine locally, or access a remote screen/HTML/service and do the calculations and store the data remotely. Both of these setups have been used for decades. Whether you use SNA, TCP/IP to communicate…whether you view with ASCII terminals or HTML web browser on your iPhone…whether your data is proprietary format or open XML…doesn’t really matter. That’s not changing the technically anymore than using C instead of Cobol is really changing anything. You’re just using new tools, but the concepts are nothing new.

# 30 ECA said, on October 1st, 2009 at 12:52 pm

24,
the realization that “CLOUD computing” has been here for over 15-20 years?? and this is just a NAME to make things easier for the Uneducated, UNGEEK??

The only difference is that:
1. wireless access..
2. you will be charged for it.
3. you only need a Cheap A$$ little subcompact NOTHING computer to do it.

In the original format, you need little or nothing to do ‘cloud computing’ as the OTHER computer does the work, and only displays the OUTPUT on your computer. you dont need power on a hand held for this..BUT yuo will probably buy a $400 Net computer, JUST for the IDEA of it.
What they are GIVING you is ONLY remote storage. Having MILLIONS of persons running Software on THEIR systems and outputting the DATA to yours, would require TONS of power and Wireless OUTPUT. Running video games REMOTELY with video and audio OUTPUT displayed ONLY would require even MORE power.
The CLOUD isnt going to do the computing.. its ONLY STORAGE..

# 31 t0llyb0ng said, on October 1st, 2009 at 1:42 pm

Howz ’bout when the cloud goes down?
If you don’t have netsync
you’ll look like a clown

Netsync ain’t some add-on
you can just tack on
Google got it wrong

Larry he a cool dude
but as far as what netsync do
he don’t have a clue

# 32 dholle said, on October 1st, 2009 at 8:41 pm

I’m surprised no one in the comments had mentioned LAMP. Which Sir Larry apparently almost owns.

# 33 GetSmart said, on October 2nd, 2009 at 7:23 am

Cloud or not, Google will still mine your data better than anyone else.

# 34 ECA said, on October 2nd, 2009 at 8:22 am

There is 1 MAJOR problem with this idea, as it has ALWAYS been a problem.
Wireless access IS the problem.
snooping your data while you are accessing it is Soo simple.
PRIVATE data?? there is no such thing.
Go ask Home DEPOT, who had there system hacked from OUTSIDE the premises.
from RFID to Wireless NET, its all hackable.
Hackable in a simple way. your data is going back and forth. its easy to hack SIGNALS. they are being broadcast ALL OVER the airwaves, all you need is a small code and the frequency.

# 35 somaie said, on December 18th, 2009 at 11:16 pm

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