ORACLE CEO WANTS TO CRUSH SALESFORCE.COM

This is so Oracle. I hope Mark Benioff kicks their ass, and his platform strategy seems to be taking off.

Oracle's president said on Friday his company would rather beat Salesforce.com than buy the much smaller provider of customer management software.

Oracle has been scooping up software companies to diversify its slow-growing database business. Most recently Oracle said it would buy Siebel Systems for nearly $6 billion, raising the specter that it might try to acquire Salesforce.com as well.

"In this case I think it would be much more fun to crush them," Oracle President Charles Phillips said of Salesforce.com at a press briefing in New York. "We see a lot of ways to compete with them. We will try that for a while."

Salesforce.com, whose software tracks company sales, customer service and marketing, was founded by Mark Benioff, a former protege of Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison, who invested in the San Francisco-based company before it went public. (full article)