IBM has published a page on their commercial website that questions why a customer would pay more for less, taking direct aim at Oracle and specifically Oracle Middleware offerings surrounding SOA and WebLogic.

Like other competitive material published by software vendors, highlighted areas will tend to focus on one-sided statistics. Consumers today expect valid information that is easily accessible/verifiable, so — not surprisingly — this page has a references section at the bottom as well. The thing that does surprise me with these claims is the important information that is left out.

When we pick solutions for a customer, we are generally considering variables that are *far* more important than software costs. For example, the existing technology infrastructure and internal resource skills-sets generally weigh heavily into software decisions. Cost is usually the last component of the selection that is considered. I can appreciate the competition, and I believe it will be healthy for consumers in the end, but want people to take a step back when they see generic claims like “why pay more for less?” as a suggestive summary for some very specific statistics collected by any vendor, weather it be IBM, Oracle, or anyone else.

More subjectively, I found the page to be unique in its directness as well as the fact that it was published on the internet, giving me the sense that IBM is concerned about Oracle prominence and growth in Middleware market share.