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To: Jon Koplik who wrote (100447)	6/14/2001 8:20:36 PM
From: Cooters	Respond to of 152472

Jon, <<Ed Hart>> Those were the days. Ed Hart at FNN. "There's tension on the tape". "We'll know in the fullness of time". BTW, Here's some inflation comin at ya: --------- Oracle Cuts Database Price in Half By MICHAEL LIEDTKE .c The Associated Press REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. (AP) - Oracle Corp. slashed the price on its database software by nearly 50 percent Thursday in an effort to thwart recent advances by rivals IBM and Microsoft Corp. The price cut comes amid growing concern that Oracle has been losing business in its biggest market under a 1 1/2-year-old pricing formula that charged customers more for database software as their computer processors became more powerful. With Thursday's switch, a customer that paid $326,000 for Oracle's main database product a month ago would pay $160,000 under the new plan, said industry analyst Betsy Burton of the Gartner Group. ``This is the right thing for Oracle to do. It moves Oracle into a better position with its customers,'' she said. In recent months, both IBM and Microsoft have been emphasizing the lower prices of their database products, and industry analysts said the message seemed to be resonating with increasingly budget-conscious corporate customers. Redwood Shores-based Oracle consistently argued that the superior technology of its database made it cheaper to run in the long run, but the company decided to put its lower prices in more straightforward terms, chief executive Larry Ellison said Thursday. ``We think IBM and Microsoft will cease to be important components in the marketplace,'' Ellison told a crowd of analysts, media and Oracle employees. At the end of 2000, Oracle held a 33.8 percent share of the database market, followed by IBM at 30.8 percent and Microsoft at 14.9 percent, according to the Gartner Group. Under an example presented by Ellison, IBM's database will cost 65 percent more than Oracle's competing product under the new pricing formula. IBM, which has been saying Oracle's database is three to five times more expensive than its competing product, disputed Ellison's math. Under Oracle's new pricing system, customers will pay $40,000 per processor to license the company's latest database upgrade, called ``9i.'' IBM says it will charge $22,500 per processor for the comparable product. ``This stuff about having lower prices is all wishful thinking on Larry's part,'' said Jeff Jones, director of marketing for IBM's database division. Even after Thursday's price cuts, Oracle will still cost as much as three times more than Microsoft's database, said Jeff Ressler, lead product manager for Microsoft's database product. Oracle is preparing a marketing blitz to illustrate the economic advantages of its product, with most of its barbs aimed at IBM. Oracle's dramatic price cuts represent a gamble for the company. About 70 percent of its revenue comes from database software, so the lower prices threaten to erode Oracle's already crumbling revenue growth. Ellison is counting on the price reduction to stimulate more sales and increase profits. Oracle's badly slumping stock is in need of a boost. In trading Thursday on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, Oracle shares fell 65 cents to close at $14.85, well off its high of $46.47 reached last summer. On the Net: oracle.com ibm.com microsoft.com AP-NY-06-14-01 1958EDT