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

To: Bipin Prasad who wrote (15290)	2/13/2001 6:02:30 PM
From: alydar	Respond to of 19079

Hi Bipin, I think that going forward software will drive hardware sales. Just as MSFT applications drove the PC industry, I think that ORCL and other enterprise application vendors will drive hardware sales. IMO, I think that ORCL will dominate enterprise software and SUNW and CSCO will dominate enterprise hardware. Rocky.

To: Bipin Prasad who wrote (15290)	2/19/2001 10:30:33 PM
From: tech101	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19079

L. E. Q&A with Business Week (Feb. 26, 2001 Issue) ... Q:There's a process of reinvention going on now at Oracle. Tell us a little bit about that. A: I never exactly ran the company. I was only interested in engineering. I was interested in creating these really cool programs that did these cool things. And other people could worry about selling them and servicing them and counting the money. I've always run engineering at Oracle (ORCL) and left the rest of the stuff to others. A few years ago, it dawned on me that the Internet was this extraordinary global network where all of our employees were suddenly accessible, attached to the same network. Everyone we were trying to sell to, everyone we were trying to service, everyone that worked for us. All of a sudden, 60 seconds after we set a price, we publish that price on our global Web store, and all of our salespeople in every country see it. In fact, all of our customers see it instantaneously. Suddenly, we can make decisions and communicate them to everybody. We can create policies and procedures and implement them and voice them all over the world. Q:So, it's a little bit about centralizing authority, but it's also about saving money. Is there a huge cost savings? A: Oh, yeah. All those people who used to set price, we don't need them anymore. But it's not just pricing. They'd invent their own way of invoicing customers, filing expense reports. They would reinvent every business process we had. There was such a duplication of effort. It was costing us a fortune. We decided to do it once, to do it globally, to do it on the Internet. It saved us $1 billion last year. It will save us $2 billion this year. Q:You've been saying lately that software is dead, which is an odd thing for a software guy to say. What do you mean by that? A: Well, a couple of things. Look at the way our industry works. If you're running a fairly large company, this is what you do: Your sales department goes out, and they buy software to help them run the sales department. Then your accounting department does the same thing, and they buy software for accounting. They're buying all these different software components. And then someone has to assemble these little components together to run your business. There's a whole other industry--Andersen, IBM (IBM), 300,000 consultants--eager to help. And they show up with glue guns, and their job is to make the E.piphany (EPNY) marketing system talk to the Siebel (SEBL) sales system, talk to the BroadVision (BVSN) Web store, talk to the the SAP (SAP) accounting system, and the PeopleSoft (PSFT)HR system. In fact, if the software entrepreneurs left the software industry and reinvented the automobile industry, this is the way we'd work. There would be no Ford (F). We're much too smart for that. There would be Larry's Windshield Corp. And we would make the most magnificent windshields in the world. You could buy the Honda transmission, and the BMW engine block, and the Corvette front bumper, and the Lexus chassis. You would have the deep satisfaction of knowing that you had bought the best components in every single area. Unfortunately, these parts were never intended to fit together. Q:So you think corporations need to tie themselves together with an Internet-based technology, rather than software pieces? A: What we're selling is cars. We have a marketing system that talks to the sales system, that talks to the service system, that talks to the accounting system. All the pieces fit together. Our critics say: ''But you haven't got the best windshield in the world.'' Yeah, that may be true, but our windshield fits in our car. That's the reason there's no air blowing on your face when you're driving. ...