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

To: Altaf Amin Jadavji who wrote (4978)	1/9/1998 9:20:00 PM
From: Maverick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19080

Ellison To Let Up On NCs (01/09/98; 9:42 a.m. EST) By Shawn Willett, Computer Reseller News Oracle chairman Larry Ellison has been a tireless crusader for the network computer, using every public event he appears at to hawk the new devices. Now, however, according to sources close to the company, the mercurial CEO plans to de-emphasize the NC and focus his efforts on selling Oracle's bread and butter databases and applications. Oracle's recent earnings "disappointment" are the main reason for Ellison's change in tactics. But industry observers say the slowdown in database sales may be too deep-rooted for even Ellison to turn around. Oracle reported an anemic 3 percent increase in database sales for the quarter ending in November, and the quarter before that, the company's database sales grew by just 6 percent. Oracle is not alone. Sybase, the second-largest open systems database vendor said it would be reporting a decline in its revenues for the quarter ending in December, and analysts said they do not expect much growth from financially troubled Informix Software in the near future. through a slow period," said Mitchell Kertzman, chairman of Emeryville, Calif.-based Sybase. He blamed year 2000 issues and new technology. "I think customers are taking a pause, and it's hard to predict when that lifts," Kertzman said. But others said overselling of site licenses and "maintenance contracts" from Oracle is also to blame for that database slowdown, especially in the Oracle market. Under Oracle's maintenance contracts, customers buy a subscription for two or more years, and all upgrades are free. This limits the revenue generating capability of a new database version such as Oracle8. According to VARs, overaggressive Oracle salespeople have sold so many site licenses that some companies are, in effect, stocked up for years on Oracle seats. "The good news is nobody will displace Oracle in those accounts, they've already bought their database," said Karl Wilhelm, vice president at SRA, a Vienna, Va.-based integrator. "Nobody makes much on selling database licenses anyway."

To: Altaf Amin Jadavji who wrote (4978)	1/9/1998 9:21:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 19080

Sybase officials said the practice is nonetheless an opportunity for them. "Once you lock them in, there is no next trick. I always have a reason to come back to customers. I'm selling our replication products between two Oracle databases," said Alan Parks, vice president of North American Sales at Sybase. According to Ken Jacobs, Oracle's vice president of server marketing at Oracle, the market is far from saturated. "That's been true in some vertical industries like telecom, but not the broad sense," said Jacobs. "We are still selling a lot of databases. Remember, we are starting from a large base." Analysts also said NT databases take up an ever-increasing share of the database market. And while Jacobs and executives from other database companies deny that NT is exerting pricing pressure, analysts said it can't help but to bring down prices. That's because lower-cost "workgroup" versions of NT databases are popular and vendors want to match Microsoft's pricing to win individual deals. Although hard to quantify, that brings down overall revenue numbers.

To: Altaf Amin Jadavji who wrote (4978)	1/11/1998 8:58:00 PM
From: DanZ	Respond to of 19080

Altaf, Give this site a try for insider trades. insidertrader.com BTW, ORCL has support on the daily chart at 18 to 18 1/2. Let's hope it holds. The weekly chart looks like the pits and the monthly chart has support at 17 1/2. I just started buying..in at 21 1/4 and 19 3/16. My upside target is 23 to 24. Altaf, Give this site a try for insider trades. insidertrader.com BTW, ORCL has support on the daily chart at 18 to 18 1/2. Let's hope it holds. The weekly chart looks like the pits and the monthly chart has support at 17 1/2. I just started buying..in at 21 1/4 and 19 3/16. My upside target is 23 to 24. If you like fundamental analysis better, here's some. Historical PE ratios for ORCL 1994: high 48 low 27 1995: high 48 low 27 1996: high 48 low 26 1997: high 48 low 27 Current forward looking PE for this year: 23 Dan Dan