Oracle’s $25-billion strategy of acquisition and Fusion is starting to pay off.
Last year April, Forrester gave the edge to SAP. At that time SAP led the enterprise application marketplace with $10 billion in sales, compared to second place Oracle at $5 billion, with Sage Software at $1.3 billion. Back then Oracle Fusion was just getting under way. Oracle’s Charles Phillips boasted that their Fusion software strategy of integrating Oracle homegrown, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Retek and other software acquisitions using SOA technology would grow them into a powerhouse business application business. But Forrester commented that the Fusion project was too aggressive and not likely to come together until sometime closer to 2010. Other analysts worried that the Fusion project had the potential to spin out of control into a ‘Frankenstein monster‘.
One year later things are moving smoothly for Oracle. Gartner announced that they positioned Oracle Fusion in the Leaders Quadrant of four Application Infrastructure Markets: Application Infrastructure; Application Infrastructure for New Service-Oriented Business Application Projects; Application Infrastructure for Composite-Application Projects; and Application Infrastructure for Back-End Application Integration Projects.
Oracle’s just-completed fiscal fourth-quarter profit climbed 23 percent to $1.6 billion, or 31 cents per share, on revenues of $5.83 billion — more than $200 million above the average analyst’s estimates. Oracle’s growth has exceeded 20 percent in the last six consecutive quarters. And in the first five months of 2007, Oracle signed up 300 new Oracle E-Business Suite customers. Oracle already has more than 35,000 customers. Oracle’s net value has grown nearly $30 billion since 2004 and Ellison began his acquisition spree.
The new numbers push Oracle to 5.8 percent of the $81 billion business application market from 4 percent while SAP held onto their share of the market at 9.4 percent. Sandra Catz, Oracle’s co-President, said that “we are going on all cylinders”.
