Oracle wants to sell you cars, not bits of cars. That was the
theme of a remarkably low-key presentation by Oracle presidents
Safra Catz and Charles Phillips on day two of the San Francisco
Oracle OpenWorld conference.
Phillips and Catz gave a rundown of the products - complete with
sales pitches and demos from product managers - that have ended up
in Oracle's portfolio, either through internal development or as a
result of Oracle's acquisitive spending spree of recent years. That
buying splurge has seen 59 takeovers adding 3,000 products to the
Oracle family.
The reason for this portfolio expansion is a desire to ship
customers 'the whole car', not parts of a car that they then had to
assemble in their garage, said Catz. "We can't send a complete car
unless we have all the pieces," she said. "We are making sure we
have the parts to send you a complete solution so you don't have to
do it on site. The pieces matter, but fitting it together is where
all the value is.
"If consumers bought cars like most enterprise users have bought
technology, they would have to order thousands of little pieces,
have them shipped individually to their garages, then have to hire
a mechanic and welder to assemble it," she said. "Then, just as you
are ready to pull out of the driveway, a warning light would go on
for a patch or an upgrade. The only good thing would be that it
would be green, because you would never get it out of the
garage."
But changing this state of affairs meant changing the mindset of
vendors such as Oracle, she said.
"We realised most of the hard work is with you, the customer. Us
and all the other software vendors were sending you little pieces
of technology all these years, and it was at your site that you had
to make it all work together," she said. "What we thought was this
didn't make sense. Long-term, companies like us had to take more
responsibility to make it work together. We want to make sure that
for those of you who want software already integrated, we provide
that for you."
As part of this integration theme, the firm also announced
Application Integration Architecture 2.5, a new release of its
integration technology for linking Oracle applications with other
Oracle software and with applications from other vendors, most
notably arch rival SAP.
Oracle AIA is made up of process integration packs (PIPs),
essentially adapters for connecting operational applications. AIA
now supports applications in the utilities, retail, health sciences
and manufacturing industries.
Phillips added that the pursuit of the complete 'car' was
driving the firm's acquisition strategy.
"That is what all those acquisitions have been about - so we can
send you a complete car," he said. "We have 20,000 developers
working year round to integrate acquired products. We do what we
have always done: make the products better. After 59 acquisitions,
we think we have a track record of doing this."
But he insisted that the firm did not simply buy its way to
greater market share, noting that Oracle has an annual R&D
budget of $3bn and more than 20,000 developers, a figure that will
be increased assuming the firm's takoever of Sun Microsystems is
approved. According to Phillips, much of that R&D budget goes
on providing enhancements requested by customers.