Citing a recent Goldman Sachs survey of 400 users, Ellison said 60 percent of respondents plan to build new applications on Oracle, while only 3 percent chose IBM DB2. 'If IBM is eating (into our market share), then it's on a starvation diet. IBM has to do the arithmetic to explain why 3 percent is bigger than 60 percent," Ellison said. However, according to Goldman Sachs, 13 percent of the respondents chose IBM and not 3 percent as stated by Ellison. IBM did not comment on the Goldman Sachs study but said that in the most recent quarter, DB2 grew by 12 percent, marking a total of 20 consecutive quarters of growth. "This is in sharp contrast to Oracle which reported a 26 percent decline in its database business," IBM's Koerner said. On the performance of DB2, Ellison said: "IBM chose Oracle database to demonstrate how fast their fastest computers are. If IBM picks Oracle over DB2, who will pick DB2? IBM hardware is good, but their software is not so good." IBM's reply? Industry-wide benchmark results doesn't correspond with Ellison's remarks. Furthermore, 60 million users and some 450,000 companies worldwide rely on IBM data management solutions, Koerner said. Koerner believes Oracle's "go it alone" approach has caused leading application developers such as SAP, Siebel, PeopleSoft, Retek and Vignette to abandon Oracle and form strategic alliances with IBM. "These companies, who were once responsible for Oracle's thriving database business, have replaced Oracle with IBM DB2 as their standard software development platform for both internal and external applications," he added. CNET Asia's Fran Foo reported from Singapore and Irene Tham from Beijing.
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