Oracle cancels Marc Benioff's keynote

Benioff invited people to hear his speech on Wednesday at a San Francisco restaurant

Salesforce.com chairman and CEO, Marc Benioff will on Wednesday speak at a local restaurant in San Francisco, after his keynote at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 was cancelled by Oracle.

"Larry just cancelled my keynote tomorrow !" Benioff said in a Twitter message, inviting people to join him at a local restaurant instead. "Beware of the false cloud," he added. In another message on Twitter, Benioff said "The show must go on ! Sorry Larry !"

Benioff also sent a message to Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, saying that he looked forward to seeing him and hearing him talk at Dell World. " OK, please don't cancel me like #oow11." The Dell event is scheduled for Oct. 12 in Austin, Texas.

"Due to the overwhelming attendance at Oracle OpenWorld we had to make several session changes," an Oracle spokeswoman said.  The Salesforce.com Executive Solution Session was moved to Thursday at 8:00 a.m. in the Novellus Theatre.

Benioff was scheduled to speak on the topic "Welcome to the Social Enterprise" at 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday, in the Novellus theater near the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, according to an earlier statement from Salesforce. He will now speak at 10:30 a.m. at Ame Restaurant in the St. Regis Hotel, San Francisco.

Benioff had earlier re-tweeted a number of comments critical of Oracle and the speech on Sunday by its CEO, Larry Ellison. He also holds that Salesforce is a real "cloud" company while Oracle isn't.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

More about: Dell, Dell Computer, IDG, Oracle, Regis, Salesforce.com
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