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: Michael Olin who wrote (10580)	4/28/1999 12:36:00 PM
From: WTSherman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19080

<As far as business savvy, what do you call taking an IBM research paper on relational database and using it as the basis for building the first commercial RDBMS, even before IBM had a product to sell? Or growing that company into the second largest software company in the world? Or moving effortlessly into position as the back-end of choice for the explosive e-commerce market? Just lucky I guess. Or maybe it's really all Ray Lane's doing, and Larry is holding the company back.< I think you are confusing business savvy with vision. I would never dispute that LE has lots of vision and some of it has been terrific. He has taken that vision and turned it into a major company, no doubt about it. But, the fact is this company has, yet, to become a particularly profitable one. That's where the business savvy part comes from. You may think that NC wasn't an idiotic diversion, I do. I think it wasn't just part of a vision(which wasn't LE's, by the way) for three tier C/S. It was a dream to get MSFT off the desktop... I do think ORCL is a potentially great company. But, you just can't rank it up there with the real consistent winners. The big difference hasn't been vision, its been consistent growth and consistently increasing profits. I think this chart shows what the market thinks of LE's business operations in comparison with the other mega-tech's.. techstocks.com As you will see, over the past four years ORCL's share price has appreciated at a 17% compounded rate. That's not bad, but, its far from "great". Maybe a little less time on the boat and a little more time on the job would make a difference.