Fiorina also highlighted her company's 20-year partnership with Oracle, with whom HP shares some 80,000 customers. The two companies discussed plans this week to bundle Oracle middleware software on HP servers. Both companies, she said, share a common commitment to designing products for the Linux operating system and Intel's new Itanium 2 chip. Oracle, a leading maker of database and other business software, said it drew a crowd of 23,000 IT specialists to its annual OracleWorld convention in San Francisco this week. Fiorina's keynote was one of a number of speeches delivered by some of the IT industry's top guns. Michael Dell, chief executive of Dell Computer, Paul Otellini, president of Intel, and Michael Ruettger, chairman of EMC, also made appearances earlier in the week. Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison later Thursday plans to address the audience via satellite from New Zealand, where he's competing for the America's Cup. Ellison's team, Oracle BMW Racing, has won each of its last nine races in the premier international sailing competition, placing the team in the Louis Vuitton Cup quarter-finals, Fiorina announced during her keynote. HP provided the team with much of its computer equipment for the competition, including laptop computers, Fiorina said. "HP puts the wind in Larry's sails," Fiorina quipped. "If Larry Ellison and his team don't win, it's not because of the technology, it's because of the captain." Fiorina has her own leadership issues to grapple with. This week Capellas vacated the No. 2 spot at HP, and the company has no plans to hire a new president. Analysts expressed concern that Fiorina may be taking on too much. Fiorina didn't mention Capellas' departure or whether it would impact HP during her speech.
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