Ellison and Benioff: best of frenemies

From SAN FRANCISCO:  In the modern technology world of open standards and interoperability, where vendors have to make their own stuff work with competitors’ stuff, the concept of the ‘frenemy’ thrives. A portmanteau blend of ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’, frenemies are typically the outspoken silverback chief executives of aggressive, large tech firms. One week, at one conference, they will be touting their close relationship. The next week they will be dissing each other’s products. Even better if they once worked with or for each other, or sat on each other’s boards.

Ticking all these boxes in a deeply satisfying way are Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff. They were initially the best of friends, with Ellison providing financial then board-level advisory support to fledgling Software.com. Then, when it became clear the two companies were directly vying for customers, they became the best of enemies.

But all seems forgiven. In a surprise move, Oracle invited Benioff to make a presentation at its massive annual OpenWorld conference this week in San Francisco. Benioff was still held at arm’s length and kept in decontamination at an adjacent theatre, safely away from the main stages in the Moscone Convention Centre, but along with his guest Michael Dell (see what we mean about silverbacks?) he drew a packed crowd willing to queue outside in an unseasonable downpour for a seat (I’m sure it had nothing to do with giving away Flip HD video cameras to 500 lucky attendees).

On stage, an ebullient Benioff was beyond polite in magnanimous praise for Oracle, his career there and Larry’s early support for Salesforce. com. He gave an excellent keynote that outshone the dry and somewhat dull presentations on Monday and Tuesday from Oracle executives, HP’s Ann Livermore and Michael Dell. And he was clear about why he was there: both Oracle and Salesforce.com have realised that customers like to run Oracle and use Salesforce.com’s cloud computing apps. Why not cross-promote?

Did he win any new customers? Probably: in particular, the demo of a customer service application that allows an agent to pull in content from Twitter, Google and Facebook was well received and very impressive (rightly, Salesforce recognises that this is how customers look for help with a product; they don’t necessarily call customer support anymore). But there were clearly many there just to see how in the world Benioff would manage an Oracle gig (though Oracle employees were not allowed in, to their annoyance). And of course, there were some there for a Flip HD.