Mark Hurd, Oracle’s CEO (or co-Chief Executive, considering the structure Oracle has regarding authorities) participated in a controversial press conference during the Oracle OpenWorld, an event that took place Monday at Moscone Center. Hurd has been Oracle’s CEO for four years now and has a complicated background. He came from HP and was chosen to be CEO by former Oracle’s major figure, Larry Ellison.
According to Hurd, Oracle is on the right track of rewriting every product they have, offering a complete portfolio of modern systems and stated that the company is the fastest growing scaled cloud company in the industry. However, the income Oracle is receiving solely in cloud computing functions is lower than expected.
Fewer consumers and more companies
In the event, Hurd stated that Oracle’s new target audience are mostly companies, so all its products are being thought to fulfill both small and big business’ needs. In this sense, Oracle would stop competing with other companies such as Amazon or IBM in the last consumer industry.
One of the main products Oracle Corporation offers is the Oracle Database; that works as an Object-Relational Data Base Managment System. It is, in fact, one of complete database services in the market, offering stability and multi platforms technical support.
Oracle’s technology is present in almost 90 out of the 100 companies featured in the Fortune top 100. All Oracle’s products are delivered through the Internet and do not require additional efforts to subscribe to their systems.
A verbal battle of giants
Oracle’s CEO has been particularly controversial during the Q&A section of the press conference since he said some rough statements against other giant companies in the industry, such as Amazon and SAP.
Hurd considered that Amazon is way behind Oracle’s technology and criticized their database systems by qualifying them as stuck in a gap. He also stated that Aurora, Amazon’s product, is the ultimate lock-in strategy to final customers that works with a low-quality IP.
“Amazon’s got a lot of catching up to do to with us in the applications market. I’d say it would be impossible – but they can try. They’ve got a long way to try to catch up in the PaaS market. They don’t have native database technology. They take on other open source tools, they make them lock-ins by extending them, and only allow you to use them on their cloud,” said Hurd when asked about Amazon’s database technology.
Oracle’s revenue
Hurd said in the press conference that all that must be done in a company, at least to fulfill WallStreet demands, is grow. So Oracle is trying to move that way by creating a portfolio that responds better to customers’ needs around the world.
So far, this year Oracle earned about $970 million, a much significant income compared to the $611 million the company made last year. But the global economy affects Oracle as it affects everyone else, and the overall revenue of the tech-giant has not been growing as expected.
The move Oracle, led by Hurd, has decided to make is investing in new technology. Last year, more than $5 billion were spent on research and development, almost two more billion than the amount paid in 2011.
Hurd is convinced that keeping the technology current is an incredible and challenging process, so the strategy is to lease, buy and build with significant investments in cloud computing and non-traditional products. To Oracle, in 2025, 80 percent of the budget in all tech companies will be spent on that kind of products and research.
Source: Computing