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


To: Adam Nash who wrote (15282)2/13/2001 9:45:42 AM
From: Adam Nash  Respond to of 19079
 
Article on ORCL stock weakness:
fool.com

Blames dot-com exposure, NOT manufacturing exposure.



To: Adam Nash who wrote (15282)2/13/2001 12:39:03 PM
From: lml  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 19079
 
Adam:

I disagree with you on that "[t]he logic connecting CSCO to ORCL is actually pretty strong." Actually beyond the fact they "both sell to the Fortune 500," the comparisons between the two companies are quite limited. While ORCL does in-fact provide software to the Fortune 500, I believe its initial push of its application products, where the growth is going to come from going forward, were geared toward the younger companies engaged in e-commerce and not necessarily the Fortune 500. So, to begin with even your "fact" connecting the two companies is somewhat limited in comparing the two companies.

What comes to mind is an article by Jim Jabak a year or so ago, when he was with MSN Investor, that focused on the comparison of ORCL and CSCO principally with respect to stock price, P/E ratio, and the rationale to attach a price to historic growth. The principal distinction Jabak pointed out between CSCO and ORCL was the nature of their growth and the cohesiveness of their technology. CSCO had achieved exceptional growth not only because of its core technology and competent execution by its management of its fundamental strategy, but also because of its acquisitive nature and strategy to purchase good, synergistic technology from other competing or potentially competitive companies that IMHO "threatened" CSCO's growth.

In contrast, ORCL rarely if ever acquired or bought technology. Instead, ORCL has truly built upon its own core technology from within. Its historic growth, which is obviously different than CSCO's, might be viewed has a more accurate picture of true growth, reflective of not only of ORCL's market share position in many sub-markets, but also the ability of its home-grown products to compete against competitors within each sub-market, namely its competitive position in each of this markets.

Can the same be said to hold true for CSCO? How has it stacked up against JNPR? Against RBAK? Hopefully, you can see my point, and perhaps realize the "connection" you see is simply not that "strong." JMO.



To: Adam Nash who wrote (15282)2/13/2001 4:22:08 PM
From: tech101  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 19079
 
The similarity between Oracle and Cisco (may be Microsoft in that matter, too) is the nature of one-stop shopping for the Internet (for software).

Oracle is fighting with all the vendors in:

Database -- Microsoft
Marketing -- Epiphany
Sales -- Siebel
Support -- Clarify
Webstore -- IBM
Procurement -- Commerce One
Manufacturing -- SAP
Supply Chain -- i2
Financials -- SAP
Human Resources -- PeopleSoft

based Oracle's advertisment.

While the Internet software gets more and more complicated and powerful, if you were a IT director for a Fortune 500 company with a couple of million dollar budget in hand, do you prefer to deal with the overlapping and conflicting software from ten different vendors -- Siebel, Portal, Remedy, SAP, PeopleSoft, I2, CommerceOne ... or just work with one single vendor for (potentially) seamless workflow?

Who has the potential to provide the one-stop shopping services -- Oracle with its more than 40,000 programmers/employees and several decades of experiences/history, or Siebel, Remedy, ...?