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Delphic pronouncements or is Oracle's Ellison really after taking a bite at HP?

The spat between Oracle's Larry Ellison and Autonomy's Mike Lynch just gets better and better. At the latest tally, it's our very own Cambridge mathematician Lynch who has got the upper hand over his US billion-dollar rival, Ellison, who accused him of lying, with this latest dig. Lynch has put out a statement which reads: "Oracle seems a little confused about the sequence of events and origins of the data it has received, something that would suggest it needs better management of, and insight, into the unstructured data on its internal systems." He adds: "We would be delighted to help."

It's a nice touch of irony: Autonomy's speciality is technology which understands unstructured information – whether text, voice or video – and based on understanding that information, it performs automatic operations using the data. In other words, Autonomy is an intelligent Big Brother sieve: it reads, analyses and works out what to do with what it finds.

About 20,000 of the world's biggest companies such as BAE Systems and Ford use the system, which dates back top Lynch's Phd thesis based on an obscure 18th century mathematician.

You can see why computer giant Hewlett-Packard is buying Autonomy, and why it is paying top dollar – around $11bn (£7bn) – for the company. You can also bet that Ellison's anger has been triggered as he knows how brilliant a deal this is for HP, albeit pricey.

Some even suggest Ellison may have helped stir much of the market unrest over the price HP was paying for Autonomy – twice what Oracle was willing to pay – that led to HP's boss, Leo Apotheker, getting the heave-ho.

By all accounts, Ellison, worth a cool $33bn, is still obsessive about his business and about beating his competitors, someone who flies decommissioned fighter jets and sails around the world for light relief.

What's he up to? Is he planning a revenge bid for HP? He's got his best friend, Mark Hurd, HP's ex-boss who left last year over sexual harassment claims, on his board so has all the ammunition he could need. Whatever the plan, the plot is ripe for a Hollywood blockbuster

via independent.co.uk