Larry Ellison, the co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle , has been going up against Microsoft to in database software for more than 30 years. He has also had to deal with clients looking to connect their Oracle and Microsoft products. Putting the Oracle equipment in Azure data centers means that applications will be able to quickly access data from the databases. Nadella said the new collaboration might help companies more quickly move their workloads from their existing data centers to the public cloud. But Ellison controls 42% of Oracle's outstanding shares, while Gates owns just over 1% of Microsoft stock, according to FactSet.

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Persons: Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Monfils of, Alexander Zverev of, Satya Nadella, Ellison, It's, Nadella, haven't, Paul Allen, Gates, McNamee Organizations: Oracle, Microsoft Co, BNP, Microsoft, Bing, Sun Microsystems, Windows, U.S . Justice Department, Bloomberg, Partners Locations: Alexander Zverev of Germany, Indian Wells, Calif, Seattle, Redmond, Washington