Oracle rallies its developer army

A developer's conference is just one of the firm's many anti-MStactics

Oracle revealed new tactics in its battle for software supremacy by hosting its first ever worldwide conference for developers in Paris later this year.

The company has also moved closer to appointing an additional distributor to Sphinx Level V and is about to sign a deal to license Netscape.

Tony Rose, head of marketing alliances at Oracle UK, said: 'We've never done a worldwide programme for developers, but they have told us Microsoft has offered this sort of thing.'

He said Oracle will send out more than a quarter of a million mailers in the coming week, enticing developers to spend $395 to get a yearly bonanza of upgrades, newsletters and diskettes.

The conference will run in December. Apple founder Steve Jobs and Sun CEO Scott McNealy are being lined up to speak at the conference, said Rose, and Larry Ellison may also attend.

Oracle said it will make a major announcement in the US on July 16 which is expected to be a strategic alliance with Netscape.

The company has already licensed 12,000 copies of Navigator for use by its own staff and that is the precursor for a bigger deal, said a US source. But he added that this did not mean the end of Oracle's own Power Browser.

The appointment of a second distributor to Sphinx Level V is imminent.

Rose refused to be drawn on which company it will be, but other sources at Oracle told PC Dealer that it would appoint a non-conflicting distributor in the coming two weeks.

The appointment will segment the market so Sphinx does not lose out on either its porting or logistics business. Sphinx MD Terry MacDonald is on record as saying that the appointment of a second distributor would not upset him.

The move is an extension of Oracle's emulation of Microsoft's solution provider programme that began earlier this year. It will counter MS' efforts to attack the enterprise market.