Tech company Oracle has named Vishal Sikka to its board of directors. Sikka, 52, is counted as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) expert and Oracle, led by Larry Ellison, thinks he will help in business value and adapt to change, according to a company statement.

A perfect fit, one would think, right? But long-time tech watchers would not miss the irony.

For Sikka, the former Infosys CEO, the entry in Oracle’s board is a “switching loyalties” moment though he had long ended his association with SAP.

But the rivalry between SAP and Oracle is still legendary in tech circles. SAP is one company that Oracle's senior management regularly beats up on and brags about stealing customers from, according to the New York Times. As chief technology officer, Sikka often spearheaded SAP’s pushback against Oracle. SAP was a leader in developing enterprise resource planning, or ERP, software, which is used by companies to streamline complex manufacturing operations, manage day-to-day corporate functions such as financials and run systems of supply.

When SAP moved into cloud computing in 2013, it was viewed in terms of competition with Oracle, which is operating its own cloud services. Sikka was the SAP executive who led the company’s push into cloud computing and he never missed an opportunity to take a dig at Oracle.

“Oracle – what can I say?” Sikka told The New York Times. “The future is in open clouds, not proprietary hardware.”

When Oracle was about to take control of Sun Microsystems, Sikka launched a broadside against Java Community Process (JCP) for being "heavily dominated" by Sun.

JCP was a group that drove the Java software.

Sikka then said Oracle now has a "unique opportunity" to turn the JCP in to an independent body. Sikka has also called on Oracle to open source the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and put it under an independent board with a licence that's friendly to closed-source companies like SAP.

First Published:Dec 10, 2019 2:21 PM IST