[Two months later Oracle nemesis Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft, was asked to respond to Ellison's comments.] I think he is right, ... We don't agree on much, but I think on that we would agree.

We [Microsoft] don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.

I don't think Oracle and IBM want another Microsoft in Red Hat.

All of our major businesses can have a short-twitch capability every six to nine months to a long-twitch capability. We can't make customers wait three to four years for things they need every few months,

From a client perspective, I really think the work Microsoft's doing with Surface, with HoloLens, with Xbox, that stuff's absolutely essential to the company's future. Because innovation in the future will either be from the cloud out to all devices, or from devices as supported by software in the cloud.

What we've gone through in the last several years has caused some people to question 'Can we trust Microsoft?'