Larry Ellison Declared War On IBM With Oracle's Fastest Ever Computer

Larry Ellison threw his barbs at IBM today when announcing Oracle's first "mainframe" class computer server, called the M5.

This is the fastest computer Oracle has ever produced. Oracle also introduced a new mid-range computer, the T5.

Both of these products are built with a new Oracle-designed microprocessor, the SPARC T5.

Ellison had IBM in his sights as he talked about the M5 and T5. Ellison said that in some of its tests, the M5 was 8-times faster than IBM's 795 and cost 80 percent less.

"You can go faster, but only if you are willing to pay 80% less," he joked.

He also said that Oracle's new mid-range server, the T5, is 9 times faster than IBM's P780. Oracle published these statistics on its website and showed this slide during today's press conference:

Oracle

We'll see how well these claims sit with IBM.

In 2012, IBM forced Oracle to pull ads that claimed Oracle's Exadata computers were 20x faster than IBM's products.

Even if IBM doesn't buy the claims, Oracle needs its customers to believe them.

For months, Ellison promised that the hardware business would stop shrinking by February and start growing by May.

But when Oracle announced its latest quarter last week that didn't happen. It had another big year-over-year decline in revenue for the hardware business, down by 23 percent.

One reason for the decline was that Oracle's customers were waiting for the new products announced today, Ellison told Wall Street analysts on a conference call.

Now the products are out and we'll see if Oracle can make them – and its whole hardware business – a success.