SAP's Apotheker trying to out-Ellison Ellison

What is it about software executives that encourages verbal abuse of competitors? Oracle's CEO, Larry Ellison, has always been known for his outspokedness. Not far behind are Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff, and former PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway. Scott McNealy at Sun is also be a contender. The list goes on.

Lately SAP's COO, Leo Apotheker has entered the ring. At the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit, he was asked whether SAP might try to acquire Salesforce.com.

According to Line56,

Apotheker specifically denied any rumor that SAP might acquire Salesforce.com. "If the question is are we going to buy someone that begins with 'S' and has a big mouth...the answer is no," was his comment.

It wasn't clear whether, in referring to Salesforce.com's "big mouth," Apotheker was referring to the CRM company's ongoing "No Software" marketing push or, more personally, to outspoken CEO Marc Benioff, who has never been shy about criticizing the licensed model that is SAP's bread and butter.

Apotheker also dismissed Oracle's propects for overtaking SAP in the enterprise software market.

When asked to weigh the competitive prospects against Oracle, Apotheker said that "I believe China has more potent competitive potential than Oracle." Despite the admitted fact that there is currently no e-business software company of truly global scope to come from China, Apotheker gave that country more of a chance to incubate and field such a company ("in five years") than he did to Oracle.

Read more at Line56.

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