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2008-12-20T23:40:00.000-08:00

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Strong dollar hurts Oracle earnings

2008-12-19T09:57:00.000-08:00

Software vendor Oracle blamed the currency impact of a strengthening U.S. dollar for a decline in its second-quarter earnings, reported Thursday. While sales rose against the year-ago quarter, they came up short of analysts' expectations.

Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) reported net income of $1.3 billion or 25 cents per share, down 1% from one year ago. Adjusted for select expenses, the Redwood Shores, Calif. company reported earnings of 34 cents per share, which met analysts' consensus expectation, according to Thomson Financial.

Oracle's sales rose 6% from a year ago to $5.6 billion, below analysts' expectations of $5.84 billion.

Oracle depends on international sales for about half of its revenue.

In a conference call following the earnings report, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Epstein said he expects both non-GAAP and GAAP total revenues to grow 8% to 11% in constant currency and 1% to 4% in today's rates. He expects non-GAAP earnings per share to be 34 cents to 36 cents a share in constant currency and 31 cents to 33 cents a share assuming today's rates.

"We signed our largest on-demand sales force automation contract this quarter," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said in a statement. "This was just one of several recent wins over Salesforce.com. We also sold our first database machine, launching an all-new and important business for Oracle."

Oracle has acquired 11 companies in 2008 in order to successfully compete with other large players in the software arena including Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) and SAP (SAP).

But the acquisitions haven't given their clients reason to buy. "The selling environment is terrible," said JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens, in a client note released before the earnings report.

Walravens also pointed out that weak IT spending could slow sales cycles going forward. Epstein addressed that projection in the call, stating that renewal rates have continued to increased despite the sour economy because customers value the benefits they receive from updates and support. To top of page

Oracle software sales fall on economy

2008-12-19T09:54:00.000-08:00

Business software maker Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) reported quarterly profit in line with expectations but posted a drop in new software sales as the global economic slowdown hurt demand and a stronger dollar hit non-U.S. sales.

"They are managing through this downturn relatively well, but they're not immune for a slowdown," said Jeff Gaggin, an analyst with Avian Securities.

Net income fell to $1.296 billion, or 25 cents a share, from $1.303 billion, or 25 cents, a year earlier.

Oracle, the world's No. 3 software maker, reported per-share profit, excluding special items, of 34 cents, in line with the average forecast of analysts polled by Reuters Estimates.

"These guys have very good control on their spending," said Cowen & Co analyst Peter Goldmacher.

Analysts said that the market would likely react more strongly after Oracle issues its forecasts for the current quarter during a conference call due to begin at 5 p.m. ET.

New software sales, known as license revenue, fell 3 percent from a year earlier to $1.6 billion during Oracle's second quarter ended Nov 30.

Wall Street was expecting new software sales to fall 0.38 percent from a year ago to $1.66 billion, according to a Reuters poll of 12 analysts conducted earlier this week.

Oracle said that the stronger dollar hurt its profit excluding special items by 3 cents per share.

In September, Oracle told investors that it expected second-quarter new software sales to rise between 2 percent and 12 percent, assuming a negative currency impact of 3 percentage points.

During the course of the quarter, the euro fell 13.4 percent versus the dollar and the British pound dropped 15.4 percent against the U.S. currency.

Oracle shares rose 8 cents, or 0.5 percent to $16.69 in extended trade.

(Additional reporting by Jennifer Martinez; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Oracle net profit dips slightly

2008-12-19T09:52:00.000-08:00

US business software giant Oracle reported a quarterly net profit that was slightly lower than a year ago but largely in line with the expectations of analysts.

Oracle said Thursday net profit in the second quarter of its fiscal year fell by one percent to 1.3 billion dollars.

The Redwood Shores, California, company said revenue rose by six percent to 5.6 billion dollars, less than analysts' forecast of 5.84 billion dollars.

Oracle said software revenues rose eight percent to 4.5 billion dollars in the quarter while new software license revenues were down three percent to 1.6 billion dollars.

Software license updates and product support revenues were up 14 percent to 2.9 billion dollars while services revenues fell two percent to 1.1 billion dollars.

Earnings per share, excluding extraordinary charges, were 34 cents, exactly in line with analysts' forecasts and up nine percent from the 31 cents a year ago.

In after-hours trading, Oracle gained 2.47 percent to 17.02 dollars.

Oracle still looks strong despite 2Q earnings dip

2008-12-19T09:49:00.000-08:00

Oracle Corp.'s earnings are weakening for the first time in years, but the business software maker still may be in reasonably good shape despite the economy's terrible condition.

After buying dozens of smaller rivals since 2004, Oracle has assembled a lucrative line of recurring revenue from product updates to help tide it over even if its sales of new software licenses deteriorate in the deepening recession.

Oracle's maintenance contracts account for about half of its business, generating more than $11 billion in annual revenue — a cushion that so for has enabled Oracle to avoid the mass layoffs and other austerity measures being imposed at many other technology companies.

"From an investment perspective, I can't think of a better place to be hiding out than Oracle in this uncertain technology environment," said Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brendan Barnicle.

Some investors seemed to agree late Thursday after Oracle's second quarter earnings mirrored analyst estimates and management felt confident enough about the next few months to provide guidance in line with Wall Street's projections. Oracle shares gained 49 cents, or nearly 3 percent, in extended trading after finishing the regular session at $16.61, down 13 cents.

The Redwood Shores-based company said it earned $1.3 billion, or 25 cents per share in the three months ended in November. The net income dipped by $7 million from the same time last year while the earnings per share remained the same.

Although it was negligible, the erosion marked Oracle's first quarterly profit decline in three years.

But Oracle's profit in the latest quarter would have risen by 10 percent, if not for wild currency swings driven by the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Investors focus on another number anyway — Oracle's earnings after subtracting expenses for employee stock compensation and its acquisition spree.

Excluding those factors, Oracle said it would made 34 cents per share, matching the average estimate among analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

Oracle's revenue of $5.61 billion, up 6 percent from last year, didn't live up to analyst expectations. On average, analysts had projected revenue of $5.84 billion.

Oracle's sales of new product licenses — a key measure of a software maker's health — also slipped. Software sales totaled $1.63 billion, down 3 percent from last year.

In September, management had predicted that its software license would rise anywhere from 2 percent to 12 percent.

But that forecast didn't envision the dollar rising as rapidly as it did against the euro and other key currencies during October and November after a string of failures and other troubles at major banks triggered a financial panic.

Besides hurting its international sales, the stronger dollar had the effect of exposing more of Oracle's sales to higher U.S. tax rates — a factor that deflated the company's earnings.

"Now, of course, obviously currency was not the only news going on in the quarter in the outside world and yet we feel just extremely good about our results," Safra Catz, Oracle's co-president, told analysts in a Thursday conference call.

Oracle projected adjusted earnings of 34 cents to 36 cents per share in the current quarter ending in February. Analysts, on average, expect 34 cents per share. The company anticipates its revenue in the current quarter will rise 8 percent to 11 percent, also falling within the range of analyst expectations.

If currencies remain at the same level in the current quarter as they were in the prior year, Oracle believes its sales of new licenses should range anywhere from a 2 percent decrease to an 8 percent increase.

Other major technology companies have been laying off workers and trimming expenses in other areas to shore up profits, but Oracle isn't making any radical changes yet. In another bullish sign, Oracle is still expanding its payroll. The company ended November with 86,657 employees, adding about 1,500 workers since August.

Oracle and HP Deliver World Record Multi-Node Results with SPECjAppServer2004 Benchmark

2008-12-19T09:46:00.000-08:00

Oracle® Fusion Middleware on HP Integrity Server Blades Demonstrates Superior Performance and Scalability

News Facts
Today, Oracle announced world record multi-node SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark results for Oracle® Fusion Middleware1.
The combination of Oracle WebLogic Server, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, together with Oracle Database 11g on mission-critical HP Integrity server blades running HP-UX 11i v3 delivered the record-breaking results, further demonstrating Oracle Fusion Middleware's leadership in Java application server performance and scalability.
With this result, Oracle surpasses the best IBM WebSphere multi-node result with IBM DB2 by delivering more than 30 percent greater performance per core.2
Benchmark Details
Oracle WebLogic Server 10g R 3 together with Oracle Database 11g achieved 21,602.31 SPECjAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard (jAppServer Operations Per Second). Oracle WebLogic Server was running on 13 HP Integrity BL870c server blades, each with four Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® 1.6 GHz processors. The database server was running on an HP Integrity Superdome server with 64 Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® 1.6 GHz processors and HP StorageWorks 8100 Enterprise Virtual Arrays. Both application server and database tiers were running HP-UX 11i v3.
For more than five years, Oracle has submitted record-setting application server benchmarks on a broad range of hardware and software platforms. Oracle is the performance and price/performance leader in multiple SPECjAppServer 20013 and SPECjAppServer20024 benchmark categories and also holds the world records for best performance and price/performance in the Ecperf5 benchmark of J2EE application servers reported in July 2002.
SPECjAppServer2004 is a multi-tier benchmark for measuring the performance of a representative J2EE application and each of the components that make up the application environment, including hardware, application server software, JVM software, database software, JDBC drivers and the system network. For more information, visit http://www.spec.org/jAppServer2004/.
Supporting Quote
"As IT departments continue to enhance efficiencies and agility, high performance at the core application server is paramount," said Juan Loaiza, senior vice president, Systems Technology, Oracle. "Oracle Fusion Middleware, with Oracle WebLogic Server's advanced application grid capabilities, delivers a comprehensive, complete and integrated platform that helps customers exceed their performance and scalability goals with headroom for the future."

Oracle CRM On Demand Adoption Gains Global Momentum

2008-12-19T09:44:00.000-08:00

News Facts
The growth and rapid adoption of Oracle® CRM On Demand continues to increase with substantial customer traction of major enterprise and mid-size organizations worldwide in 2008.
Thousands of customers have adopted Oracle CRM On Demand, providing further testament to Oracle’s industry leadership and unparalleled choice for application deployment and integration.
Companies expanding or establishing their Oracle CRM On Demand deployments included Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, First Niagara, DPS Sporting Club Development, Experian, MoreVisibility, Siemens, Ambu, ARM, INTERSEROH, InFact Group, Travelport, SAS Cargo Group, Kodak GCG, Hotels B&B, Business & Enterprise North East, Atlantic Technologies, Holcim Lanka, The Economist, GMAC, VicUrban, AlphaWest/Optus, Artha Money, 3M Taiwan, Hitachi Consulting Co., Ltd., Quanam Mexico, Gazit Brasil Ltda, Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras, Companhia de Telecomunicações do Brasil Central, ABA Seguros and Masterlease.
Oracle CRM On Demand provides a scalable, flexible platform backed by powerful analytics that enables companies to change, analyze, and monitor their customer-facing processes and simplify their customer data management. In addition, it leverages the latest Web 2.0 capabilities for boosting collaboration and productivity through social CRM.
Only Oracle CRM On Demand provides embedded analytics and a data warehouse, and Enterprise Grade SaaS with the Single Tenant Enterprise Edition. Coupled with one-stop integrations to JD Edwards Enterprise, Oracle E-Business Suite, and Siebel CRM adopters of Oracle CRM On Demand can easily extend their existing Oracle technology investments.
Supporting Quotes
“Oracle CRM On Demand has, once again, demonstrated an incredible, upward trajectory of growth and customer success in 2008 as leading organizations around the world reaped the benefits of flexibility, power, and value for critical business applications,” said Oracle Senior Vice President of CRM Anthony Lye. “We are pleased to see the immense success from these global Oracle CRM On Demand customers, and look forward to helping them drive further value through innovation over the coming year.”
JAPAC Customer Supporting Quotes
“Within a very short span of time, we are seeing benefits from the use of Oracle CRM On Demand,” said Ameya Kapnadak, Chief Marketing Officer, Artha Money. “The tools have already helped us become a more strategic player in the highly competitive retail finance space. Our customers are experiencing greater responsiveness with our teams as we reduce costs and improve our time to reach each customer.”
“Oracle CRM On Demand substantially reduced the amount of infrastructure we needed to deploy to make it available to our staff. The speedy implementation and early delivery of business benefits was a deciding factor to go with CRM On Demand as opposed to a traditional, full service, internally run solution,” said Sam Sangster, Finance and ICT Director, VicUrban. “We’re delighted with our return on investment so far. Our marketing campaigns have been more targeted. We’ve been much more effective and are spending marketing funds in the places they need to be spent. Rather than just managing customer contacts we now have a tool that gives us confidence we are capturing all interactions and working through the sales process efficiently to qualify leads. We also have a better understanding of product demand, so we can deliver what our customers want.”
“In China our business has grown from 4000 to more than 8000 loans per month in just a short time frame and with Oracle CRM on Demand we certainly have been able to process the business faster and more efficiently,” said Lou Polite, Regional CIO, GMAC. “At GMAC, we have taken advantage of Oracle technology and Oracle CRM On Demand to actually process more loans with less resources and less burden on our resources. We are leveraging Oracle’s SaaS model to build high quality, timely and cost-effective solutions for our dealers across the Asia Pacific region.”
“Being part of a global leader in cement manufacturing, it is imperative that we facilitate and adopt the use of best practices in our operations,” said Smriti Kingsley, Marketing Head, Holcim Lanka Pvt Ltd. “Our investment in the Oracle CRM On Demand solution, especially the Oracle Mobile Sales Assistant, is expected to greatly improve field sales productivity and customer responsiveness, even in areas without network coverage. We are confident the use of Web 2.0 will foster more collaborative engagements with our customers, suppliers, employees and partners, resulting in increased profitability for our business.”
EMEA Customer Supporting Quotes
"The Oracle CRM On Demand offering is set to become a mission critical part of our business. In today's market we need to optimize every opportunity we have and we believe that in replacing the incumbent SAP solution we are providing our sales teams with a significant advantage in terms of customer visibility and intelligence, in a cost effective and agile way. In turn, we should be able to better serve our customers creating the perfect win/win situation,” said Dr. Torsten Becker, Corporate Program Director CRM, Siemens.
“The primary business drivers for adoption of Oracle CRM On Demand were sales forecasting and management of the sales pipeline,” said Alex Nancekievill, VP Operations, ARM. “The ability for sales people to share information in a common place was an immediate win and we now have a level of detail in our forecasts we never had before. What we have been most impressed about with Oracle CRM On Demand is how quickly we were able to pick it up and make it useful. It has almost set new standards within ARM on how business systems ought to be”
“Using Oracle CRM On Demand, InFact reduced the time it takes to close a sales opportunity by 15 percent and reduced sales training and support costs by 18 percent annually,” said Richard Napier, Director of Business Development, InFact Group.
“The collaborative Social CRM capabilities in Oracle CRM On Demand Release 15 meshes extremely well with Business Link North East’s goals to provide our customers with the services they need in a timely manner so they in turn are successful in the marketplace. We believe that the enhanced collaboration capabilities release 15 brings to the table will further unite our 140 field-based staff and their headquarters-based colleagues to create more value for all parties,” said Gary Slater, Head of Business Systems, Business & Enterprise North East.
“We implemented Oracle CRM On Demand mainly for the sales force but other functional departments will definitely follow in future. The biggest impact has been on forecast management, as it is now generated automatically and information that has not been shared before can now be seen. Because of the user-friendliness and immediate benefits gained the impact on the users was very positive and acceptance has been high. After only four months of using Oracle CRM On Demand we have been tracking over 1000 projects in system, showing further acceptance by the users,” said Elmar Junger, IT Project Manager, Steelcase.
Latin America Customer Supporting Quotes
“We chose Oracle CRM On Demand as the main tool to manage our sales processes,” said Luis Avila, Director, Quanam Mexico. “In less than 8 weeks we implemented Siebel Marketing, Siebel Sales and Siebel Analytics in 10 offices in Latin America. This solution enables us to easily access all customers’ and prospects’ information, giving us complete visibility of each sales opportunity.”
“Oracle CRM On Demand has enabled integration and transparency throughout the stages of every business opportunity at Gazit Brasil by providing detailed reports, enhancing communication between parties and helping the company meet deadlines and commitments more efficiently,” said Fábio Vernalha, Treasury Analyst, Gazit Brasil Ltda.
"In line with investment demands and implementation timeframe, Oracle CRM On Demand’s proposal has allowed for the fulfillment of our primary goals related to operational control, streamlined workflows and extraction of timely reports. In addition, the compliance with minimum requirements provided for in Law #6532/08 was crucial to this decision. Oracle’s Siebel is also responsible for the integration between different processes within the company through the workflow, establishing a single point to consolidate clients’ information,” said Paulo A. Engelmann, Customer Relationship Manager, Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras.
“The reason that led CTBC to adopt Oracle CRM On Demand was for the solution’s fast implementation capabilities,” said Osvaldo Carrijo, Chief Commercial Officer, Concession Department, CTBC - Companhia de Telecomunicações do Brasil Central. “The solution minimizes investment requirements as it allows for prior demand monitoring and sales management, also enabling the adoption of best practices.”
North America Customer Supporting Quotes
“As a leader in luxury real estate marketing and development, DPS Sporting Club Development must be on the cutting-edge to maintain and grow personal customer relationships and provide the highest service for our elite clientele,” said Robert Rippee, Chief Marketing Officer, DPS Sporting Club Development. “Oracle CRM On Demand has enabled DPS to see our customers with a 360-degree holistic view, while providing increased sales and revenue, contact and campaign management, better reporting and lead tracking and fast ROI.”
“As one of the world’s leading search engine marketing, optimization and design firms, MoreVisibility required a new, reliable and seamless system to benefit both our marketing and sales organizations for a variety of critical business applications,” said Dennis Pushkin, Chief Executive Officer, MoreVisibility. “The choice of Oracle CRM On Demand has proven to be of tremendous strategic value with an extremely easy migration of more than 8 years of data from our old system to the new Oracle CRM On Demand. Additionally, we now benefit from an exciting array of reporting, tracking and management tools that provide utmost value to our teams, our clients and the bottom line.”

Oracle E-Business Suite

2008-12-19T09:40:00.000-08:00

Within the overall rubric of Oracle Applications,[1] Oracle Corporation's E-Business Suite ("EB-Suite" or "EBS") consists of a collection of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply-chain management (SCM) computer applications either developed by or acquired by Oracle. The software utilizes Oracle's core Oracle relational database management system technology. The E-Business Suite (current[update] version: 12, released January 31, 2007), contains several product lines, including:

* Oracle CRM
* Oracle Financials
* Oracle HRMS
* Oracle Logistics
* Oracle Mobile Supply chain Applications
* Oracle Order Management
* Oracle Transportation Management
* Oracle Warehouse Management Systems

Each product comprises several modules, each separately licensed.

Significant technologies incorporated into the applications include the Oracle database technologies, (engines for RDBMS, PL/SQL, Java, HTML and XML), the "technology stack" (Oracle Forms Server, Oracle Reports Server, Apache Web Server, Oracle Discoverer, Jinitiator and Sun's Java).