Why Larry Don't Get It

Once again, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, made a joke of Cloud computing, saying that "a cloud is water vapor."

Ellison made the same argument last year – Geve Perry wrote a nice piece on Ellison's Anti-Cloud Computing Rant back in September 28, 2008 (note that the timing in both cases happens to be fairly close to the Oracle World event).

Many of the arguments that Geva brought back then still apply today. Clearly, Larry has a vested interest to argue that “nothing is new under the Sun.”

I actually tend to agree with Larry – Cloud doesn’t bring any real new technology to the market.

But what Larry, and many folks that he represents, don’t get is that cloud is not about bringing a new technology to the market. Cloud is about making the the same concept that we have today much more efficient and simple so that it can be adopted by the masses. Everyone in this business knows that building technology for high-end enterprises is vastly different then building the same technology for small startups. But again, I completely understand why someone who wants to re-brand an old mainframe concept as a new “database machine,” and bought an entire hardware company to serve that purpose, would claim that there is nothing new under the “Sun” (no pun intended).

Anyway, I'll have to give Larry credit for being a real performer and hilarious in the way he articulates his arguments.

For those who missed the video here it is: