Oracle To IBM: Your 'Customers Are Being Wildly Overcharged'

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Larry Ellison

AP

Larry Ellison

Oracle has fired its next shot in its epic battle with IBM.

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The company is standing by its claims that Oracle's brand new servers are both faster and cheaper than IBM's.

"IBM customers are being wildly over-charged for the performance they're getting," said John Fowler, Oracle's executive vice president of systems, in a statement emailed to Business Insider.

Oracle announced two new servers this week, its biggest, fastest computer, the M5, and a new mid-range server, the T5. During the presentation, Ellison made a lot of comparisons between these new servers and IBM's products.

At one point, he quipped: "You can go faster, but only if you are willing to pay 80% less" than what IBM charges.

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IBM responded yesterday, hotly refuting Oracle's claims. It pointed out that IBM has successfully forced Oracle to stop making similar claims about IBM products in Oracle's ads.

It didn't take long for Oracle to shoot back. Here's the full statement Oracle sent us, from Fowler.

“Oracle’s SPARC T5’s are the world’s fastest servers for Database, Java and multi-tier apps. Against IBM’s best published results, using independently confirmed industry-standard public benchmarks, Oracle delivered 5x, 7x, even 12x better cost performance. Oracle’s SPARC T5 performance and cost performance advantages are so huge that subtle changes in IBM configuration specifics don’t make up that gap. IBM customers are being wildly over-charged for the performance they're getting."