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Technology Stocks : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (12681)	12/10/1999 3:39:00 PM
From: WTSherman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19080

Probably speculation regarding next weeks earnings.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (12681)	12/10/1999 3:59:00 PM
From: Still Rolling	Respond to of 19080

I suspect it's related to the following article, reinforcing ORCL's exchange concept: Oracle's URL Buying Spree Updated 6:51 AM ET December 10, 1999 By Ben Elgin, Sm@rt Reseller Oracle Corp. went on a shopping spree this week, ringing up a sizable swath of Internet real estate. Gearing up for its pending foray into the business-to-business vertical portal market, Oracle on Monday purchased some 25 Internet domain names, Sm@rt Reseller has learned. Snaring Web addresses like petrol-exchange.com, airplane-xchange.org and bank-exchange.net, the software titan is fleshing out its URL (universal resource locator) portfolio as it readies its b-to-b trading communities for launch. Oracle's vertical portal initiative, dubbed Oracle Exchange, was publicly announced last month. According to company officials, Oracle Exchange is slated to be an e-business community, where companies can trade, buy and sell goods and services. But the newly-purchased URLs are still dormant and Oracle Exchange isn't expected to be fully operational for several months, says a company official. The push into b-to-b exchanges is a shot directly across the bow of enterprise software competitor SAP and its heavily-advertised mySAP.com business hub. The New Hubs Essentially, both companies are trying to develop the de facto b-to-b trading hubs for numerous vertical markets, while offering hooks into legacy systems for buyers who use their back-end software. Companies that don't boast SAP or Oracle software can still use either service, just without some of the back-end integration features. But vertical portals are no undiscovered Eden. Major players, like VerticalNet, are already operating in numerous niche industries, from waste disposal to pulp and paper to dairy. VerticalNet, for one, doesn't see Oracle and SAP as true competitors. "They're out there to help the buyers... We're more of a supplier's friend," says VerticalNet senior VP of strategy Blair LaCorte. "They could link into VerticalNet," if the buyer wanted more options, he says.