I was pretty sure he was right when he pushed the “network appliance” (sorry, but terminology for this concept is all over the map) PC back in the late 90s.

Problem was the makers of these things were trying to recoup their product development costs on day one and the things, which were essentially PCs without a disk (or with a disk that was only used as a scratchpad) were too expensive and Microsoft, by doing deals with Citrix, ensured that the software side of it would be prohibitive too.

Predicting future events is a lot easier than predicting when they will occur and Ellison seems to be pretending that his former predictions have long ago come true.

Don’t forget a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Yes cloud computing is a buzz word but it is so much more than what he tries to dumb it down to. And he is not funny, rather he just looks like a fool.

The most ridiculous part of this is that without Oracle many SAAS/Cloud Computing would not exist. So in many ways he is putting down his own customers.

I am not sure what the context of this rant really was about, my assumption is that he is intimidated by competing software like Sales Force, regardless his statement that cloud computing is not innovative or doesn’t offer anything for innovation is completely wrong.

The biggest benefit of cloud computing is that applications and application settings are no longer tied to your computer, rather they can travel with you and can used from any computer (or device) with Internet access.

His rant shows how little he respects actual innovation, and how his ego is bigger than his own technology. A dangerous combination that will eventually catch up with him if he is not careful.