Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: tech101 who wrote (15328)	2/20/2001 4:23:05 PM
From: Bipin Prasad	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 19079

Slow economy no brake to e-business spending-Oracle NEW ORLEANS, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Software giant Oracle Corp. does not expect a slower U.S. economy to curb spending on "e-business" because use of the Internet helps firms reduce costs, Oracle Chief Financial Officer Jeff Henley said on Tuesday. He said Oracle had saved $1 billion last year and expects to save another $1 billion this year by increasing its use of the Internet to conduct business and urged other companies to do the same. "The Internet is about a lot of things. It's certainly about convenience and speed...but it also can allow you to save a lot of money," Henley said in a speech at the Oracle Appsworld conference in New Orleans. "That's one of the reasons why people are really enthusiastic and why we don't think spending, even in the slower economy, is really going to change much for e-business," he said. The company has previously said it expected database license revenues to rise 15 to 20 percent in the third quarter, despite a slowing national economy. He said Oracle had been able to cut costs by consolidating its Internet infrastructure and making employees more productive, thus decreasing the need to add more workers. As an example, he said Oracle once had 97 e-mail servers in 60 countries, but had reduced that to two in California to serve all the e-mail needs of its 43,000 employees. "We are basically cutting our global IT (information technology) spending in half," he said. The result was that "year-over-year margins expressed as a percentage of revenue have shown double digit growth the last four fiscal quarters...by the end of May, over the two-year fiscal period, we expect to double operating margins," Henley said. Oracle also said on Tuesday that it was beefing up its Oracle.com Website to become a kind of all-purpose site for the business world where people can read business news, check on flights and weather, follow the stock market and do business with Oracle. "The Yahoo of business, that's what Oracle.com is," said chief marketing officer Mark Jarvis. "This is the launch of Oracle's second brand."