Oracle lashes out at Commerce One

Oracle has accused unwanted collaborator Commerce One of compromising the performance of motor industry B2B emarketplace Covisint.

Phil Wood, B2B marketing manager at Oracle, said the exchange would be better off if it was solely powered by Oracle software. He said: "As it is we will provide 95 per cent of the technology for the exchange. Commerce One is really a one-product company." He also said the main reason Commerce One got any of the contract at all was because it was an equity partner in the exchange. Meanwhile Commerce One says its software will provide the core technology for the exchange, which is one of the largest and most ambitious of the new wave of web-based procurement marketplaces. The exchange, which trades car parts online, is a collaboration between Daimler-Chrysler, Ford, General Motors and Renault, and predicts it will have $240bn of trade going over it annually. However, the situation is made more complex by the fact that it is a combination of two existing private exchanges, a General Motors exchange powered by Commerce One and a Ford venture using Oracle technology. The resulting exchange - Covisint - is supposed to be a partnership between the two companies, who both have an equity stake in it. However, Commerce One and Oracle issued separate press releases on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, neither of which mentioned the other company. John Sviokla, Vice Chairman of US consultancy Diamond Technology Partners, which was instrumental in bringing the companies together for Covisint said: "These two companies are as aggressive competitors with each other as any competitors could be. To put it in context, the Oracle/Commerce One relationship is at least as contentious as that between Oracle and Microsoft." Mark Hoffmann, CEO of Commerce One, was also previously CEO of Sybase, an arch rival of Oracle's in the database market. Despite the differences, Sviokla says the two companies must learn to get along. He said: "At the end of the day, neither of them will forget who signs the cheques, and they won't want the project to fail."