Carly joined at the hip with Oracle

Oracle and HP remain entrenched together within the grid for leadership, according to HP CEO Carly Fiorina.
 
Fiorina extolled the virtues of grid computing and HP's partnership with Oracle during her wrap-up address at OracleWorld 2003.
 
Fiorina also took the opportunity to have a jab at Dell, with a thinly-veiled reference to Michael Dell's bandaged foot. 'We believe grid is the next architectural movement in IT. But some people are trying to ride the horse before they're ready. And, as we saw earlier this week, that is a good way to hurt a foot,' said Fiorina.
 
'I can understand why you would talk about standardisation if that is all you can deliver, but grid computing require a whole lot more,' she continued, in response to Dell's call for standardisation earlier this week.
 
While Dell claimed technology players must embrace industry standards, not proprietary systems and that R&D is overrated, Fiorina argued that true grid benefits from collaboration and innovation and should be heterogeneous.

'The only people I hear say Moore's Law or R&D is overrated are those that don't want to keep up or can't keep up,' she said. 'A nice rack will only get you so far.'
 
Fiorina said HP's journey towards enterprise grid computing could be a three to five year undertaking that required technical innovation, a commitment to engineering, and R&D to commercialise the promise of grid.

She also claimed that, unlike other technology companies, HP was 'joined at the hip' with Oracle on developing a standardised version that will link enterprise grids together.
 
In fact, HP is so upbeat on grid computing it is willing to 'grid enable' everything it sells, including consumer products, Fiorina told conference attendees. 'We think it is a natural evolution for us to become [the] natural leader of grid computing,' she said.
 
Siobhan Chapman travelled to OracleWorld 2003 in San Francisco as a guest of Oracle.