A surprise conversation with Larry Ellison

Late last evening I received an invitation to attend Oracle's Collaborate08 conference in Denver. I had to decline, living some 5,144 miles away from this year's venue and, being a blogger, barely have two red cents to rub together. Imagine my surprise when I got a return call from Oracle's PR offering me a 15 minute conversation with Larry Ellison provided I could do the call pretty much immediately. As someone who has developed a reputation for keeping hours not dissimilar to Mike Arrington, it would have been rude to refuse even if I did think it was some sort of prank. This is the transcript of what followed:

Larry: Hello there, what do you want to know? (Side note - anyone who has seen Larry Ellison appear in front of a crowd of journalists knows this is his usual opening line)

Qu: Tell me, why have you entitled this year's event Collaborate08?

Larry: You'd have to ask Chuck (Charles) Philips that one. As you know I prefer to go all out to win so collaboration isn't really on my radar.

Qu: Last quarter's earnings were a bit shabby on the license growth side, care to add some color?

Larry: We don't think the Street yet understands we're in the annuity business and that new licenses are not really the growth engine around here. Of course it's always good to note when we're taking deals off SAPs table and I think you'll find they've had a pretty tough time when they report.

Qu: Would you care to elaborate on the 'annuity' thing?

Larry: Well, we had a bit of a change in direction and decided that we'd test the waters for on-demand CRM. That's an annuity business.

Qu: Does that mean rumors Marc Benioff has been coming around offering Salesforce.com at $75 a share is something you might consider?

Larry: Our track record speaks for itself in these matters. That's where Chuck's done a great job.

Qu: Even so, your last couple of quarters show a very healthy bottom line. Doesn't it worry you that customers might think those profits are a bit excessive and demand a refund?

Larry: You remember when I said way back when that as an industry we'd been selling customers the wrong stuff in the client/server age and that I was really sorry about that?

Qu: Yes, I seem to recall...

Larry: And I said at the time I have shareholders to satisfy. Nothing much has changed in that policy but in any event, we can always justify our charges. They're all in the contracts and as you can see from the service revenues, customers keep coming back for more so I'd say we're delivering on what we said.

Qu: The recent tax adjustment on your private property caused something of a stir, would you care to comment?

Larry: My personal accountant and lawyers handle that stuff and to be honest I didn't notice until someone pointed it out. Naturally I feel uncomfortable but then as you know, I do try to put back into the community, especially in areas like medical research.

Qu: A while back I saw a video where Steve Jobs and Bill Gates sat side by side on stage exchanging jokes and pleasanteries. Is there any likelihood that you might share a stage with Henning Kagermann?

Larry: I'm not ruling anything out.

Qu: I'm noticing that Oracle Aces are creating some great content outside the main Oracle website. How do you feel about news and information on Oracle being aggregated elsewhere?

Larry: I didn't know that, but you can be sure we'll be looking into it.

[End note: it's April 1st and this is a spoof conversation that never happened...but you never know...it might, one day.]