Let's face it: Making business software exciting can be tough. Databases. Human resource management. Customer relationship management. Oy.
But still, these are billion-dollar markets with giant personalities and egos involved. And every once in a while, this buttoned-down corner of technology lets the smack talk fly. Or something resembling it.
It will be no surprise that in this case Larry Ellison, chief executive of Oracle, is involved. Early last year, Ellison sounded off about rival's SAP plans to build technology to compete with Oracle's bread-and-butter database product.
"When SAP and, specifically Hasso Plattner, said they're going to build this in-memory database and compete with Oracle, I said, 'God, get me the name of that pharmacist, they must be on drugs,'" Ellison said.