Ernest.. I was using earnings data to make the comparison on size..
and your right its closer to 4 times bigger not 5.
In terms of competition.. I think that MSFT is already competing with Oracle. I agree not yet realistically, but it wants to move its dbms offerings up the value chain into the enterprise market. One day it might get it right..It is a threat..
ORCL is attacking MSFT through the NC. Its retaliating.. I also think its going to succeed. The NC will appeal to the masses, every household has a VCR, why not an NC. The masses, I believe, do not want to purchase expensive PC's that are out of date 6 mths after buying them. They do not, I believe, want the hassle of upgrading operating systems, whenever MSFT decides it needs a new cash injection. They do not, I believe, want the hassle of buying and installing expensive software products, which again are continually being updated etc etc...
They will want it simple, they will want it quick, they will want it cheap..(probably transaction based). Now Oracle gets to benefit.. cos it has the best large DBMS Server in the market.. all this access to the Net will spawn a huge increase in DBMS opportunity.. I think/hope.
In fact I know it is .. my consulting business is doing very nicely helping organizations to position themselves to do business through this medium..
On the stock price question... I dont really see a huge drop anywhere over the last 6 months.. in fact its gone up 25-30%.. (thank you Larry/Ray). Its gone up more or less in line with earnings over the last 2 years. I see the normal jitters.. (and we are now going through one on Q2 coupled with the normal tech stock problems..)
The NC argument is a marketeers dream. I read an article somewhere that quoted that through the NC, Oracle had increased its exposure to CEO's etc by a huge factor. This only increases its chances of winning the enterprise database decision over Sybase and Informix, making the prospects of healthy growth, even better in the short term.
In the end only time will tell, but I know one thing... I aint moving out of ORCL yet..
Good Luck..
Brendan |
