Oracle Corp intends to compete in the IBM arena with a new marketing strategy which entails getting Version 6.0 of the Oracle relational database into the AS/400 market. Oracle, which already has a hold on the 3090 market, wants to make its proprietary tool set and the SQL* Interface from Oracle Version 6 available to AS/400 users, and to make its growing roster of applications available on the new IBM machine. Indeed, marketing manager John Spiers, claims that Oracle is simply waiting for IBM to bring out its new C compiler, which is scheduled for the third quarter of 1989, in order to build applications for the AS/400 machines. Should IBM decide to give Oracle access to a pre release C compiler, the Belmont, California software company will have its products ready for sale within two months of the compiler’s official release. Spiers added that Oracle was aiming to have its tools in operation at every stage of enterprise-wide networks, so that the company would be able to say that Version 6.0 can run on all hardware platforms. Emphasising the fact that the AS/400 has no Assembler, Spiers concluded that very little third-party software would be available even by next autumn. In order to stress Oracle’s commitment to the IBM market, John Mortonson, vice president of Oracle’s IBM Independent Business Unit, and Gregory Mann, director of IBM market management for Oracle, have recently been in the UK to raise the morale of the British sales team. Mortonson left IBM five years ago, where he was a manager with the original DB2 development team, allegedly on the grounds that he was given too much administrative work to do instead of being allowed to concentrate on technical research. As for the Benchmark Wars, these were dismissed by Spiers as good controversial copy which helped to raise Oracle’s profile, and, ever the marketing man, he stated that IBM users were too intelligent to be taken in by benchmarks anyway. Over to you, the Transaction Processing Performance Council.
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