Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp, received flack from the Vatican as he announced the company's new strategy meant to leverage their Sun Microsystems purchase made back in 2010 that will introduce considerable changes to their Oracle, Solaris, and SPARC product lines, dubbed “Oracle XII” The Vatican has demanded an apology for some imagery Ellison used during the announcement.
Despite subsequent comments denying his intent to offend, Ellison remains the center of scandal as the Church wages a public campaign to disassociate itself from the database giant. Cardinals in the Vatican's office of public affairs have also suggested a censure for Ellison.
Despite the controversy, Oracle has something hot on its hands. It may have taken a couple of years, but a pervasive, top-to-bottom platform for Oracle database products has emerged and it looks like it might have a chance of unseating IBM's Power7-based offerings from being the top database platform out there. The announcement came in three parts, discussing hardware and software improvements all focused on making Oracle's database products more powerful.
What remains to be seen is when exactly Oracle Corp's new platform will debut, and whether it will be hotter than the heat Catholic officials are turning up against Ellison.
