What are your thoughts from this press release? Is Larry sending smoke signals up to see who might want to join his effort?
Oracle Corp. to Increase Investment in Applications Business, Target New Markets
REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., July 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) today announced that it is increasing its already large investment in its enterprise business applications business to further its mission to challenge SAP as the market leader. The company plans to double the size of its applications sales force; expand its sales efforts and offerings targeted at the middle market; increase its presence in industries such as retail, utilities, health care and select other markets, as well as expand its coverage in the telecommunications market; and expand its presence in international markets.
These actions complement other recent moves Oracle has made to accelerate its applications business, including the hiring of former SAP Executive VP Peter Dunning to head the company's Industrials vertical and major account application sales, as well as the selection of Grant Thornton LLP as the first consulting firm in the new Oracle Service Provider (OSP) program, which certifies services organizations as official implementers of Oracle Applications.
In January of this year, Oracle became the only ERP vendor to ship a version of its applications that can be deployed entirely on corporate intranets, giving it a significant technical advantage over SAP and PeopleSoft, whose product lines are still tied to outmoded client/server architectures. Since January, more than 300 companies have been shipped Oracle Applications running on the company's Network Computing Architecture (NCA), Oracle's branding of Internet standards-based computing that offers greater scalability and lower cost of deployment and management than client/server computing.
With NCA, the Oracle Applications suite allows customers with hundreds or thousands of users to reduce the traditionally high costs and complexity of implementing, maintaining and upgrading desktops running enterprise software. Beyond realizing dramatic cost savings, by shifting the complexity of administering software from the desktop to professionally managed servers, companies can provide higher reliability and service levels to their user communities. In addition, Oracle Applications on NCA offer much higher performance on Wide Area Networks than is possible with client/server architectures.
Among the companies that have chosen Oracle Applications on NCA are: Boral, Burlington Coat, Dell Computer, Gear for Sports, Honeywell Space & Aviation, Impac Hotel Group, Knouse Foods, Inc., LEESON Electric, Millipore, Michelin, Nextel Communications, Rockford, Sequent Computer, Sheldahl, Siemens Solar, Skidmore College, Sulzer Orthopedics, Veritas and Xylan. Since January, companies that have already gone live on Oracle Applications on NCA include: Fisher Scientific, Impac Hotel Group, Knouse Foods, LEESON Electric, Nextel Communications, Sequent Computers, Sheldahl and Skidmore College, among others.
"We believe that the Internet-based model of computing is truly the future, providing lower cost of deployment and maintenance for both the near and long term. Oracle Applications on NCA provides us the functionality and flexibility to run and grow our business for now and in the future," said Mary Fonder, CIO, LEESON Electric. "Oracle Applications will also allow us to improve our customer service and virtual supply chain by allowing customers and suppliers direct access to information thereby streamlining operational efficiency."
"With nearly $2 billion of Oracle's revenues derived from the applications business, Oracle maintains its lead over all applications companies except one," said Ray Lane, Oracle President and COO. "With the recent shipping of Oracle Applications Release 11 NCA, we have technology, products and services that SAP can't match. Today's announcement shows that we're committed to building up our business to become number one."
Oracle Corporation is the world's leading supplier of software for information management, and the world's second largest software company. With annual revenues of $7.1 billion, the company offers its database, application server, tools and application products along with related consulting, education and support services, in more than 140 countries around the world.
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