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

To: lml who wrote (14229)	7/24/2000 11:08:18 PM
From: alydar	Respond to of 19080

<<I found this over on the Motley Fool message board. Pretty good input over there.>> First of all, I am a long time Oracle employee. And despite what some may think, Oracle's legal department has forbidden employees from talking about Oracle products on message boards – something about comments being legally binding. So while I can't discuss specific features, I can assist in helping you judge Oracle and its competitors by describing a software product model that has helped my customers understand how Oracle is positioned in the market. The model has three dimensions. The Y-axis is the software stack. The X-axis is the type of solution (OLTP, DSS, EIS). The Z-axis is the type of platforms/technologies supported. Now to define each axis. Y-axis – the software stack. Each computer has multiple layers of software that work together. On the very bottom of the stack is the operating system. Next comes the communication layer, the data management layer (database), the application server layer (such as web servers) and the application development tools layer. All of these layers are there to support the top layer, the application layer, which is the layer that solves business problems. (Some layers, such as system management, were left out for the sake of simplicity). An operating system by itself does not solve any business problems, but an accounts payable application does. On your Y-axis, start on the bottom with the operating system layer and work your way up to the application layer. X-axis – the type of solution. First of all, each business makes three general types of decisions - operational, tactical and strategic. Operational decisions are the day-to-day business rules, i.e. if an invoice is over $40,000 it must be approved by a manager. OnLine Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems support these types of decisions. ERP and HR/Payroll are examples of OLTP systems. Tactical decisions are the type of decisions made by managers that generally cover a short period of time i.e. what was my headcount for the last 3 months so I can predict my headcount requirements for the next 3 months. Decision Support Systems (DSS) and Relational OnLine Analytical Processing (ROLAP) systems support tactical decisions. Strategic decisions are those made by the leaders of a business and usually cover long-term forecasting and budgeting decisions i.e. what were my total costs of materials and personnel by month for the last three years and what will they be for the next two years given a 10% growth in sales. Executive Information Systems (EIS) and Multi-dimensional OnLine Analytical Processing (MOLAP) support strategic decisions. On your X-axis, start with OLTP on the left and move to the right for DSS and then EIS. X-axis – the type of platform/technologies supported. This dimension can be several different things, depending on what you think is most important in your analysis. If building software that runs on multiple vendor's hardware is important, use this. Another category might be the type of technologies supported (web, JAVA, XML, etc.). Now, when researching a software company, do your homework and find how much of this model the vendor has products for and then find out the products market share. Then try to find out how integrated the products are (hint – if a company has recently purchased another company to increase its presence in a new area of the model, chances are the new products not integrated with the old products). As an Oracle employee and stock holder, I of course have a motive for presenting this software product model. Too much time is spent on Ariba/B2B vs Oracle, SAP/ERP vs Oracle, MSFT/SQL*Server vs Oracle. If you use this software product model and gain an understanding of the big picture, you will no doubt find out why Oracle is winning. Doublehaul