掌门人亲解甲骨文的云战略

    马克•赫德戏剧性地辞去惠普公司（Hewlett-Packard）CEO的职务之后不久，便加入了大型科技公司甲骨文（Oracle），如今他担任公司联席总裁已有三年时间。赫德现在扮演的角色是实施更为典型的营运模式：甲骨文已经意识到，它就像是一个巨人，要与身段灵活的科技界新贵进行竞争。甲骨文不仅要面临企业云计算公司Salesforce.com和人力资源软件开发商Workday等公司的竞争，还要与IBM和SAP等规模相当的公司展开激烈角逐。（甲骨文生产数据库软件，以及其他配合数据库软件使用的应用；Salesforce和Workday仅开发在线应用，其中前者专注于销售任务，后者专注于人力资源。IBM和SAP的软件产品与甲骨文类似。）

    传统软件企业竞相与云计算领域的新兴公司结盟，或者争夺作为互联网服务提供的软件，而不是安装在客户电脑上的程序。业界普遍认为，甲骨文对云技术的反应迟缓。实际上，这家公司执行了积极的收购策略，包括2010年，以超过70亿美元出人意料地收购服务器制造商太阳计算机系统公司（Sun Microsystems）。转移到云对大企业而言有些难度，就好像让航空母舰调头一样，其中很大程度上是由于互联网软件通常成本更低。这对客户是好事，但却给销售人员带来了麻烦。甲骨文的销售团队便由赫德亲自负责，他在职业早期还曾担任过销售主管。

    在甲骨文开放世界（Oracle Open World）开发者大会召开的前夜，在位于加州红木海岸的办公室里，马克•赫德接受了《财富》杂志（Fortune）的专访。预计在9月22日至26日期间，旧金山市的交通会因未这个规模庞大的会议陷入混乱。赫德提到了甲骨文的现状，包括向云技术的转变，以及为什么甲骨文能够击败竞争对手，甲骨文是否会放弃硬件等等。以下为对话摘要，为了简洁，我们对谈话内容进行了编辑，同时添加了注释。

甲骨文本届开放世界大会有哪些亮点？

    首先，大会将有60,000人参加，这是亮点之一。据我所知，这次大会能将这么多人汇集一堂，堪称业内规模最大的一次IT业盛会。借助此次盛会，我们将拥有一个非常庞大的合作伙伴生态系统。所以，大家会看到戴尔（Dell）、德勤（Deloitte）和EMC。富士通公司（Fujitsu）也会出现在大会上。大家会看到我们庞大的合作伙伴阵容。我们还有重量级的客户发言人。我会发表一个演讲，发言的还有空中客车公司（Airbus）CEO，以及纽约证交所（New York Stock Exchange）CEO等等。

你会重点介绍哪些产品？

    我们会谈到甲骨文将推出内存数据库这个事实。（它是指将数据库信息存储在内存芯片上而非磁盘驱动器上的能力，类似于数年前，苹果的iPod促成了机械驱动向更小的闪存转变。）我们发布了名为12C的新数据库产品。这是第12代甲骨文数据库。C代表云。内存数据库将是一个重要的主题。

    Mark Hurd has been co-president of mega-cap technology company Oracle for three years now, having joined shortly after his dramatic exit as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Hurd's dramas these days are the more typical business type: Oracle's coming to grips that it is a giant competing against nimbler upstarts. Oracle faces competition from the likes of Salesforce.com (CRM) and Workday (WDAY) as well as more size-appropriate challengers IBM and SAP. (Oracle makes database software and many applications that run with it; Salesforce and Workday are online-only application makers, with the former focused on sales tasks and the latter on human resources. IBM and SAP have software offerings similar to Oracle's.)

    The incumbents have been scrambling to match the newbies in "cloud" computing, or software that is offered as an Internet service rather than as programs installed on a customer's computers. Oracle (ORCL) is generally perceived to have been slow to respond to the cloud, having instead pursued an aggressive acquisition strategy that included the unlikely 2010 purchase of server maker Sun Microsystems for more than $7 billion. Moving to the cloud is tough all around for big companies -- like turning the proverbial aircraft carrier -- in part because Internet software generally costs less. That's great for customers, but tough for salespeople, and Hurd, a sales executive earlier in his career, oversees Oracle's sales force.

    In an interview in his Redwood Shores, Calif., office, Hurd spoke with Fortune on the eve of Oracle's massive Oracle Open World developers' conference, which promises to snarl traffic throughout San Francisco from Sept. 22 to 26. Hurd addressed the state of Oracle, including the shift to the cloud, why Oracle will beat its competitors, and whether or not Oracle will abandon hardware. Edited for concision and annotated for explanation, a transcript of the conversation follows.

What will be the highlights at Oracle Open World?

    First of all, it'll be a highlight that we have 60,000 people. It'll be the biggest IT event that I'm aware of ever in the industry to have that many people in one location. We'll have a very large partner ecosystem there. So you'll see Dell (DELL), Deloitte, and EMC (EMC) there. Fujitsu will be there. You'll see a very large cast of partners that will participate. We have a huge list of customer speakers. I'll be doing a speech, and I'll have the CEO of Airbus with me. And the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange too.

And products will you be focusing on?

    We're going to go talk about the fact that we're going to now have in-memory options for our database. [This refers to the ability to store database information on memory chips rather than on disc drives, analogous to the why Apple's iPods shifted years ago from bigger mechanical drives to smaller flash-memory.] We have released a new database called 12C. It is the 12th generation of the Oracle database. The C is for cloud. In-memory will be a big theme.