<|endoftext|>, to $US2.8430 a gallon.
Setting the agenda for Australia's $150BN agribusiness sector The program for Australia's premier agribusiness conference - The Global Food Forum - is set. Hear from more than 30 industry leaders including PepsiCo's CEO, Danny Celoni, Jayne Hrdlicka, CEO of A2 Milk Company, Barry Irvin, Executive Chairman, Bega Cheese and Costco's Managing Director, Patrick Noone. Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park Book Now<|endoftext|>HP and Oracle have been trading barbs in recent months following a spat over HP's ousting of former CEO Mark Hurd, who is now working for Oracle. Outspoken Oracle CEO Larry Ellison resumed hostilities last week when lobbed a bombshell at HP during a press briefing about his company's new record-setting SPARC Supercluster. HP isn't going to take the abuse lying down and has issued a sharply-worded response, which they sent us today.
During the Supercluster briefing, Oracle compared HP's servers to a turtle and described the company as being "vulnerable" in the market. Citing his company's internal benchmarks, Ellison contended that the new Supercluster offers a 66 percent better price/performance ratio than HP's comparable offering.
HP touts its number one status, highlights the continuing growth of its server business, and characterizes Oracle's acquisition of Sun as a costly dead-end. HP also dismisses Oracle's benchmarks, contending that marketshare is the measure that really matters.
"Our Enterprise Storage and Servers segment saw 25% revenue growth year over year during Q4 FY2010, and HP was the only major UNIX vendor that reported server growth," an HP spokesperson told us. "Larry Ellison bought a money-losing business that had steady market share declines for years, and which still ranks at the bottom of the market. Customers aren't fooled by outdated benchmarks, no matter what Oracle says. HP's market share results prove it. Sun customers are running to HP in droves because they recognize we deliver superior technology, performance and pricing."
Them's fighting words. Even though Oracle and HP publicly made nice in September and prevented their dispute over Hurd from escalating to litigation, it looks like there is still some serious tension on both sides. As we said in our coverage of the Supercluster launch, it's hard to evaluate the sweeping performance claims of enterprise hardware vendors without independent benchmarks. We are waiting to see some third-party validation of Ellison's big talk.
In terms of enterprise computing marketshare ranking, IDC's numbers have HP in the top spot with around a third of the market, followed closely by IBM. Oracle comes in fourth, lagging behind Dell.<|endoftext|>Share the News
This is the third interview in a series with Baltimore change makers, old and new, working in the trenches and behind the scenes for a better Baltimore. By talking to baby boomers who have been fighting for social change since the 60s and millennials working to improve lives now, we hope to understand more about the big challenges in Baltimore, and how best to address them, from different perspectives. – The Eds.
Adam Jackson��s ambitions for Baltimore were shaped by his years as a top debater at Towson University. As he researched, analyzed and argued about how to best serve economically challenged neighborhoods, he discovered something he found troubling: None of his fellow debaters had firsthand experience with the problems they were trying to solve.
It was that schism that inspired him to start Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, a think tank grappling with issues associated with urban Baltimore. Growing up in West Baltimore, the Digital Harbor High School grad saw the havoc poverty, lack of opportunity, racism and more wreaked on lives. His exposure gave him a perspective he found lacking in the larger public policy arena.With peers from the nationally-renowned Towson University debate team, Jackson formed LBS, where he now serves as CEO, and set about approaching social change in a new way, combining research and debate with community organizing.
Adam and his colleagues are well-practiced at public speaking and research, and use both skills to reach a new audience. They are policy wonks in tune with a younger generation. All of the board members of LBS are under 40. Every one of the board members graduated from Baltimore City Public Schools. LBS takes no foundation, government or political party money. He rejects the established positions of the left and the right, looking to set a new path for thinking about poverty and race. He and the other leaders want to ��radically change the discourse around local and regional politics,�� according to the LBS website.
We asked him what he thinks of the issues Baltimore faces and what he thinks we need to do to make lasting change.
Many have been fighting the problems associated with urban America for decades. Why do you think we are still getting it