Fred, Oracle being hurt by the Asian economy makes sense. Oracle's business would be influenced primarly by the sectors that have been hurt the most over there, too - banking, etc.
I'm pondering the notion of a spread between Oracle and some company that specializes in NT-based (rather than Unix-based) databse software. My theory is that NT-based servers would be relatively more popular in the U.S. than in Asia, and also relatively less popular in Asia and so less likely to be affected, and that, overall, they are probably robbing market share from Unix-based servers anyway.
I do think there is room for both, and I am a big advocate of Unix as a basis for mission-critical software. And, in fact, I own some SUNW for just that reason. I don't think Unix is going away, but there are certainly going to be challenges for those who hook their star to it.
So, perhaps buy Sybase, short Oracle? This is off the top of my head and may actually be a horrible idea, (haven't even looked at the SYBS chart) so do your own research! |
