Oh, and his partner is Dave Duffield, who is a legend in the software business.
In the software business, the primary source of innovation is working with customers.
Of course, the richest man in the world certainly knows a thing or two about making money--in the software business.
Oracle mainly competes with IBM, Hewlett-Packard in the hardware business, IBM and Microsoft in database and middleware software business and SAP in the applications software business.
FORBES: Oracle Can Milk Exadata Servers And Software For Spurt Above $40
An abundance of talent all working to create a hit--in the software business, you have groups of programmers hacking together hundreds of thousands of lines of code to hit the jackpot.
Silicon Valley's venture capitalists are piling into the business, convinced that they can design revolutionary technologies, bring down prices and turf out incumbents in the energy business just as they did in the software business.
And while it may still cause wrinkled brows and sleepless nights for IT pros, those of us in the software business are hearing more and more from CIOs and tech decision-makers that they want to support user choice.
FORBES: MicrosoftDynamicsVoice: Mobile Devices at Work: You Can't Take It With You...Or Can You?
Yet Keynote still acknowledges that Powerpoint is the dominant presentation software in the business world.
Rawn Shah is a business transformation consultant in the Social Software Adoption team in IBM's software group and is the author of Social Networking for Business: Choosing the Right Tools and Resources to Fit Your Needs, newly published by Wharton School Publishing.
For the first time in the memory of most people in the enterprise computing and software business, Oracle Open World took a back seat to a whole new industry event, this one dedicated to the Cloud and to Big Data.
There are also signs that valuations, even in the business software space, have been too rich.
FORBES: What Facebook's Flop Means For Technology IPOs Later This Year
The report listed 25 leading companies in the hardware and software business.
Is it time for some consolidation in the video game software business?
FORBES: Activision-Blizzard Should Buy Take-Two, Analyst Contends
Egnyte co-founder CEO Vineet Jain read my story about how Box.net and others are gaining traction in the business software market by giving away chunks of their offerings, free.
Kaspersky has had considerable success in the retail internet security market in the US. That success has ultimately translated into growth into enterprise business software, especially in the small-to-media businesses, or SMB.
FORBES: Kaspersky's Market Share Rises as Symantec & McAfee's Falls
In a previous article I explored how the activity templates in IBM software can be used to capture business processes ( The Benefits of Enterprise Social Media) and how SAP is structuring collaboration for decision making ( Giving Shape to Collaboration Tech).
FORBES: IBM's Strategy to Manufacture Social Networking Surprises
There is an old joke in the world of business software that ERP is a roach motel where data goes to die.
For the first time in the history of business software, small businesses can use software that is as good, if not better, than the software bigger corporations use.
FORBES: Revolution: A New Era In Software For Small Businesses
The competitive intensity and stakes in the mobile device and software business are as high as any situation I can recall, however, and Apple and Microsoft are the two best digital companies in the world.
As the market leader in business intelligence software, SAP threatens to widen its lead over Oracle and IBM in the coming years.
FORBES: SAP Still Winning Business Intelligence Trench War Against Oracle, IBM
We are not in the business of selling software.
FORBES: As a Startup Social Enterprise, When is the Right Time to Invest in Technology?
He told a packed room that Microsoft is working hard on several fronts so it can become a "three- or four-trick pony, " holding onto the top spot in business software, but also becoming a force in search, advertising and entertainment.
Founded by Microsoft (MSFT) in 1995, the giant software company decided to get out of the travel business and spun off Expedia in 1999.
FORBES: Expedia:Its Pending Spinoff of TripAdvisor Seen As Bonanza For Shareholders
There has been increasing buzz on the Street lately about the possibility that HP might spin off its PC business to focus on its enterprise software and services business, in the same way that IBM once sold off its own PC and notebooks units.
Not least, Snabe says the company is in the right slice of the IT business, focused specifically on software, rather than hardware.
FORBES: SAP Sees 'In-Memory Computing' Driving Major Change In IT
On Friday, the German business-software company confirmed its full-year forecast, but business development in the first quarter fell short of analysts' expectations.
Sterling will reside in the software group under WebSphere, IBM's on-demand business software.
That's in part because the open-source software business is harder than it looks.
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