Oracle's Ellison anticipates the death of Windows

He told a gathering of Oracle ISVs yesterday that Microsoft had already been "killed" by Apache Web server where it sought to rule the roost with its Internet Information Services technology. He said Microsoft's Web server offering had been, "slaughtered, wiped out, taken from market dominance to irrelevance,"

"They had a virtual monopoly on Web servers, and then they were wiped off the face of the earth. And it's going to happen to them again on Linux," he said.

Ellison a well-know swaggerer, had been hyping the benefits of running Oracle software on Linux platforms when he turned his ire on Microsoft - one of his favourite targets. He told his New York audience:"Apache destroyed them there and that will happen again with Linux which is faster and more reliable than Windows on standard Intel hardware."

By then he was up and running, suggesting that once there was an alternative to the combination of Microsoft Office running on versions of Windows, "all hell will break loose." He said Sun's Star Office was "almost usable", and once the combination of Star Office running on Linux gained acceptance it would be snapped up first in the huge but somewhat more price sensitive markets of China and India.

By then, said Ellison, it'll be a "whole new world" for Microsoft. "And I'm looking forward to it," he added. µ