We’ve received several calls recently from Oracle that sound like something from an episode of The Sopranos—all in jest I should add—the gist of which is that Oracle don’t like us poking fun at Exadata and we had better watch it! It’s hard to imagine that Oracle can bring any more attention to this issue than having Larry Ellison declare premature victory against Netezza during his keynote at Oracle OpenWorld last year.

The irony for me personally of all this, is that I cracked my marketing teeth at Oracle in the late eighties when Oracle was the upstart with the cool technology fighting the big ugly incumbents against all the odds. How the tables have turned! Oracle has grown all big and ugly, lost their innovative flair, rely on corporate muscle to get the job done and throw a tantrum when they don’t get their way.

Personally, I doubt whether Exadata will be ready for prime time for another 18 months yet. In the meantime, we have a phoney war on our hands: all talk and no action. I predict Oracle is trying hard to find an opportunity to announce that someone, somewhere is using this thing. At least that’s what the Dummies’ Guide to Blasé Big-Company Corporate Marketing advocates. The HP Neoview team—having been clearly sidelined from this arrangement with Oracle—is also yet to buck up the courage and admit there is no synergy with Oracle here.

In the meantime, while Oracle and Netezza throw their handbags at each other, innovative companies looking to solve today’s analytic problems will continue to buy from Netezza (and sometimes from our competitors!) leaving laggards, already bogged down in the recessionary mire, to worry about Exadata in the name of their corporate standardization initiatives and performance "incrementalism".