Ellison guns for Microsoft, throw out Exchange

At a press conference on Monday at Comdex Fall 2001, Larry Ellison derided Microsoft's Exchange e-mail servers as unreliable and insecure. He said Oracle is offering an e-mail server option for its 9i database management software along with a migration program to move companies from Exchange to Oracle's database.

With the new e-mail software, Oracle executives say they are not interested in competing with Microsoft's Outlook e-mail client software. Instead, the company is targeting Microsoft's Exchange server software that manages e-mail messages.

"We don't want people to migrate from Microsoft e-mail. We want people to throw out Microsoft Exchange for a server that works," Ellison said.

Jeremy Burton, Oracle's senior vice president of marketing, claimed Oracle's e-mail software is more secure and more reliable than Microsoft Exchange, because it rides atop Oracle's database software, which contains technology to make it more fault-tolerant. Oracle executives said a single Oracle e-mail server can support 10,000 users, allowing companies to replace multiple Exchange servers with a single Oracle server. The company can use one Oracle database server--equipped with the application-server software--to store all of its e-mail.

News source: CNet News