Ellison to Gates: "We've got mail"

"... and a, er... profits warning"

Oracle boss Larry Ellison was in bullish mood yesterday afternoon launching an email server to rival Microsoft Exchange but he ended the day on a more downbeat note warning that company profits could fall as much as 15 per cent in the current quarter. Using a keynote speech at Comdex, Las Vegas for his usual attack on Microsoft Ellison this year chose to go after his rival's email business. In launching an email server option for the Oracle 9i database Ellison told the audience: "We don't want people to migrate from Microsoft email. We want people to throw out Microsoft Exchange for a server that works." Oracle claimed its server software is more fault-tolerant than alternatives because it is built for database applications. Using clustering technology, the company added, allows IT departments to support 10,000 users on a single server. Ellison also issued a profits warning yesterday telling investors that his company would miss earnings estimates by up to 15 per cent. "We will still be enormously profitable," Ellison insisted. "We went through last quarter with record profitability in difficult times. In light of 11 September it's difficult to do that again."