Posts Tagged ‘Oracle’

Business Analysts See Hardware and Car Retailing to Improve with the Prevalence of Online Marketing

May 8th, 2012

Oracle Digital, Australia’s premier SEO provider, has expressed its support to local retailers by offering its most aggressive social marketing techniques and ethical SEO strategies that would eventually help businesses lead and dominate their niches. The company believes that this approach will help them address the specific needs of their current and prospective clients.

IBISWorld Australia has lately released its business forecasts showing a promising year for businesses that cater to hardware supplies, cars, and liquors. As shown in their report, the hardware sector seemed to project the strongest sales growth with 2.2% increase as the fiscal year for 2012 ends. They said that this is likely influenced by the growing popularity of Do-it-Yourself products and home renovations. The car retailing sector follows suit with an expected growth of 4.6% by 2013. Not far along is the liquor sector and supermarkets which also seem to show a brighter future with 3% increase.

This is, of course, in spite of the challenging times that most traditional retailing has suffered over the past year. The said report have also indicated that some sectors may continue to decline like those in the stationery, newspapers, books, and department stores.

Recent statistics has indicated that the sales growth of department stores will most likely stay flat by the end of the year – while other sectors selling books, newspapers and stationery will probably have a 2% decline in its growth rate by the end of the year, correlated with a 0.8% growth rate for the year 2012-2013. With the on-going popularity of E-readers, the IPad and computer tablets, these sectors may be affected even further.

However, according to Karen Dobie, the General Manager of IBISWorld Australia, these forecasts do not pose a hopeless situation. Instead, she believes that a business may opt to engage in newer strategies and invest in cutting-edge technologies that will effectively help them compete in the market.

Experts and analysts strongly suggest that small businesses should engage in online marketing techniques, such as social marketing and ethical SEO. This approach will give them more visibility online, not just on search results but also to a wider audience as can be achieved through the prevalence of social networking and thereby resulting to a wider market reach and substantial gains in profits.

James Corby, the Business Development Director of Oracle Digital, affirms this valuation. He says, “Social marketing is one of the most effective business tools that one can actually use in this day and age. After all, not only does it provide you with a more updated approach for your business, but it will likewise help you reach a market that you simply cannot do when using traditional methods.”

Corby further adds that, “But you must remember that regardless of how good your website may look, or how excellent your products may be, if you do not have the web visibility to speak of, then your efforts will be futile. Fortunately, social marketing will help solve this for you.”

Oracle Digital has been actively marketing its awesome social marketing techniques to help its current and prospective clients to efficiently market their products online. The company diligently follows the ethical standards of good SEO practices on top of its powerful off-page SEO and rapid support system which enables them to cater to every business requirement that their clients’ need.

Source:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/05/07/prweb9481692.DTL

Oracle Q3 net income rises 18 pc to $ 2.5 billion

March 22nd, 2012

Software major Oracle Corp has reported an 18 per cent growth in net income to $ 2.5 billion in the three months period ended February 29, 2012, driven by new licence sales.

Orcale’s strong quarterly performance was driven by sales of new licence revenue, a key measure of software growth. Although, the company offset the weakness in hardware business.

“Oracle is on track to deliver the highest operating margins in our history this year. Oracle can achieve these record margins as an integrated hardware and software company because we are focusing on high margin systems where hardware and software are engineered to work together,” Oracle President and CFO Safra Catz said.

The entity had a net income of $ 2.11 billion in the year-ago period, Oracle Corp said in a statement.

The company’s total revenues were up three per cent from the corresponding period last year to $ 9 billion during the third quarter ended February 29, 2012.

Software sales rose 7 per cent from a year earlier to $ 2.4 billion, and revenues from software licence product support grew by 8 per cent to $ 4.1 billion.

In contrast, the company’s revenues from hardware business were down 16 per cent to $ 869 million.

Besides, Oracle has been trying to expand into computer hardware with its $ 7.3 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc in 2010.

Oracle sells databases and big software programs to corporations. The database software is used by firms to store information and process customer transactions.

Looking ahead, Oracle expects earnings per share in the range of 62 cents to 67 cents for the fourth quarter.

Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/oracle-q3-net-income-rises-18-pc-to-2-5-billion/articleshow/12356275.cms

Oracle quarterly profits up 18 percent

March 21st, 2012

Redwood City tech giant Oracle (ORCL) on Tuesday reported better-than-expected earnings per share for its third fiscal quarter, easing concerns on Wall Street about the tech company’s prospects.

The company said it earned $2.5 billion, a jump of 18 percent from the same period a year ago. It had sales of $9 billion, up 3 percent from the same period last year. That amounted to earnings of 49 cents a share.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters on average had expected earnings of 45 cents a share.

“As you can see, we had a very solid quarter,” Oracle Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz said during a conference call with analysts. “All we really needed to do was focus on our execution and that we did. We’re very pleased.”

Oracle announced its earning after the market closed, when its shares rose 34 cents, or a little more than 1 percent, to $30.10. In after-hours trading, the shares rose further to $30.56.

The fact that Oracle met or exceeded some analysts expectations was welcome news. The company has been a worry to investors in recent months.

Oracle is one of the world’s biggest sellers of database programs and other commercial software, along with high-end computer hardware. But in its previous quarterly earnings report in December, the company failed to meet its own forecasts and those of Wall Street. It was the first time Oracle had fallen significantly short of analysts’ expectations since the second fiscal quarter of 2009, during the midst of the recession.

One of the company’s biggest problems has been its slump in sales of the computer hardware business it acquired by buying Sun Microsystems last year in a $7.4 billion deal that the companies said was worth $5.6 billion, after accounting for Sun’s debt and nearly $2 billion in cash reserves. While Oracle’s software sales rose 8 percent for the quarter compared with a year ago, its hardware revenue declined by 11 percent.

CEO Larry Ellison has said he’s refocusing the hardware business to more profitable, high-performance systems that are engineered to get the best results from Oracle’s software.

But the company has seen its overall share of the computer server market decline in recent quarters.

The situation hasn’t been helped by Oracle’s soured relationship with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), which long had been a key business partner.

The companies have been at odds since former HP CEO Mark Hurd resigned after HP investigated him for sexual harassment. Ellison, a pal of Hurd’s, denounced HP for its treatment of Hurd and hired Hurd to become Oracle’s co-president. Moreover, the companies have been in a nasty legal tussle over Oracle’s decision to stop making software for certain HP computers.

Yet another concern has been Oracle’s software. While the company long has made money from having its software loaded onto individual computers, many businesses are embracing cloud computing, where software is kept on the Internet. Oracle has been shifting into cloud computing, but some analysts fear it hasn’t moved in that direction fast enough.

In addition, some of Oracle’s rivals — notably SAP, IBM and VMware — recently have posted strong earnings statements.

“Our concern is that Oracle’s business lacks catalysts to accelerate growth,” analysts at investment bank Jefferies & Co. concluded in a note to their clients last week. “A common complaint is that customers find Oracle’s broad (and at times duplicative) product portfolio to be confusing and aren’t clear on the company’s product roadmap or strategy.”

But while some “uncertainties” dog Oracle’s business, according to a recent note from analysts at Global Equities Research, “Oracle’s business is gradually improving” and the company’s long-term prospects appear strong.

After Oracle announced its earnings, Al Hilwa, an analyst for the IDC research firm, said he was impressed with the rate of growth of some key parts of the company’s software business. But on the hardware side, he added, “there is perhaps an expected rightsizing taking place” as Oracle refocuses its business on high-performance systems. That could cause the company to “take some lumps” in its revenue as it makes the transition, he said.

Source:http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20215553/oracle-quarterly-profits-up-18-percent

Analysts foresee a troubled future for lagging Oracle

March 19th, 2012

Oracle Corp. may soon run out of excuses to feed Wall Street.

When the world’s third-largest software maker missed earnings estimates for the first time in a decade back in December, it blamed an unpredictable global economy. That seemed plausible at the time.

But growing evidence suggests the company is suffering due to challenges that have nothing to do with the macro economy: mounting competition from traditional foe SAP AG , the loss of a key ally in Hewlett-Packard Co. , and a hardware business that is becoming a thorn in its side.

Analysts have become increasingly worried that the hardware business Oracle acquired in 2010 with its $5.6-billion (U.S.) purchase of Sun Microsystems has turned into a liability, with sales falling short of expectations.

The company’s bread-and-butter database business – Oracle is the world’s biggest maker of database software – may face off against competition from a re-energized SAP before the end of this year. And Oracle’s highly touted new generation of business management software, released in 2011 after years of delays in development, has been slow to take off.

CEO Larry Ellison will deliver his latest report card on the state of the business on Tuesday, when Oracle releases quarterly results. An increasingly skeptical crew of Wall Street analysts will be parsing his words.

“Oracle is a company with some issues right now,” said long-time Oracle watcher Rick Sherlund, a Nomura Securities analyst.

Those issues are reflected in its stock price, which has gained just 3 per cent since the company reported quarterly results in December, compared with a 17-per-cent rise in the Nasdaq composite index.

Some analysts believe buying Sun has undermined sales of Mr. Ellison’s software because it put Oracle in direct competition with hardware makers who had long been some of the biggest resellers of his database programs and other products.

“They made a mistake getting into the hardware business. How it resolves itself, I’m not really sure,” said Fred Hickey, editor of the High-Tech Strategist Newsletter for investors. While hardware makers such as Hewlett-Packard, International Business Machines Corp. and Dell Inc. continue to sell Oracle products, these days they are putting less effort into doing so, he said.

The problem may be most acute with HP, the world’s biggest computer maker. A bitter feud has erupted between Oracle and HP since Mr. Ellison’s friend, Mark Hurd, abruptly resigned as HP chief executive officer amid a sexual harassment scandal. Mr. Ellison admonished HP’s board for the way it handled the matter, calling them “cowardly,” and then hired Mr. Hurd.

The two companies have since filed lawsuits against each other over Oracle’s decision to stop producing software for high-end HP computers.

Meanwhile, Oracle’s rivals aren’t standing still. Several analysts say they are concerned about a new strategic weapon in SAP’s arsenal: a specialized database dubbed Hana that pulled in €160-million ($208-million) in sales in its first two quarters on the market, ahead of SAP’s target of €100 million.

SAP has packaged the technology with hardware from IBM as a niche product, a business intelligence tool to help companies analyze large quantities of data. The bigger threat from Hana, however, is that SAP is tweaking the technology so it can be used to hold data for business management applications that handle corporate accounting, human resources and procurement software.

The bulk of SAP applications currently run on Oracle database software, and the German company is the biggest reseller of that product. If Hana wins acceptance as an alternative to the Oracle database, that could either reduce sales of the Oracle database or force Oracle to slash prices.

Source:http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article2373021.html

Oracle lawsuit alleges ‘gray market conspiracy’ over support services

February 23rd, 2012

Oracle is alleging that two companies violated its intellectual property as part of a “gray market” conspiracy to provide support for Oracle’s Sun Solaris OS and hardware, according to a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The complaint names managed services provider ServiceKey of Norcross, Georgia, as well as DLT Federal Business Systems Corporation, a Wilmington, Delaware, company that provides IT services to government agencies.

ServiceKey and DLT-FBSC “conspired to steal and distribute copyrighted, proprietary Oracle software code, along with the login credentials necessary to download this code from Oracle’s password-protected websites,” according to the complaint.

Their goal was to “sell support on Oracle hardware to customers with no active support contract with Oracle,” it adds.

Under false pretenses as “purported Oracle customers or partners,” the companies took “vast quantities” of patches and updates for the Solaris OS as well as other support materials, it adds.

In addition, the defendants “falsely told unwitting third parties,” including the U.S. Navy and Food and Drug Administration, that they had the “authority to provide Oracle’s highly prized and proprietary intellectual property,” the complaint states.

ServiceKey owns a “small number of Oracle/Sun computers” and paid for technical support from Oracle on some of them, “which are expressly limited for ServiceKey’s own internal use,” it adds.

The company has been issued at least three Customer Support Identification numbers and has log-ins for Oracle’s support site, in order to “obtain technical support services for the specifically covered Oracle hardware,” the complaint states.

However, “it appears that ServiceKey bought support from Oracle in order to acquire [support site] access credentials to resell to third parties in violation of ServiceKey’s agreements with Oracle,” it adds.

“Many unauthorized entities,” including DLT-FBSC, have unlawfully taken advantage of ServiceKey’s log-in credentials, according to the suit.

Those parties downloaded support-related software “well in excess of the quantities typical of a normal user,” in one case over 800 pieces of software in one day, it adds. Oracle does not yet know the identities of these other parties but is hoping to obtain them through the discovery process, according to the complaint.

DLT-FBSC also had access to Oracle’s support site “for certain authorized uses” as a member of the Oracle Partner Network, it adds. However, Oracle revoked that membership in November after DLT-FBSC’s alleged misuse of the support materials, including to provide unauthorized support for third parties, according to the complaint.

The company allegedly convinced customers that were paying for Oracle support that they could cancel those contracts and lawfully get a similar level of service for less cost through DLT-FBSC.

Oracle is asking for damages and an injunction against the companies on a series of counts, including copyright infringement, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, unfair competition and fraudulent inducement.

ServiceKey and DLT-FBSC didn’t respond to requests for comment Wednesday on Oracle’s suit.

To some degree, the allegations echo those made by Oracle against former SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow, which provided lower-cost support for Oracle applications.

Oracle won a US$1.3 billion judgment against SAP, which admitted liability for illegal support-site downloads conducted by TomorrowNow. A judge overturned that jury award and Oracle is now seeking a new trial on damages.

The company has also sued third-party support provider Rimini Street, which is led by TomorrowNow co-founder Seth Ravin, claiming it had duplicated TomorrowNow’s business model. Rimini Street has maintained its innocence and countersued Oracle, saying it acts within the rights of its customers’ license agreements.

Source:http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/416255/oracle_lawsuit_alleges_gray_market_conspiracy_over_support_services/?fp=4&fpid=1398720840

Oracle Corp profit up 17 pc in Q2

December 22nd, 2011

Technology major Oracle Corp has reported a 17 per cent growth in its net income to USD 2.19 billion for the second quarter ended November 30, 2011 on account of higher sales of new software licences.

In the year-ago period, the company had a net income of USD 1.87 billion, Oracle said in a statement.

Its total revenues rose by 2 per cent to USD 8.8 billion in the second quarter of the current fiscal.

According to media reports, Oracle’s earnings fell short of market expectations for the first time in a decade due to slower demand for databases, applications and computer servers. The company’s stock dropped by more than 10 per cent on below-expected results.

During the quarter, its revenues from new software licences rose by 2 per cent to USD 2 billion, while revenues from hardware fell 14 percent to USD 953 million.

“Sales of our engineered systems accelerated in Q2,” Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said.

Oracle has expanded its worldwide sales capacity by adding over 1,700 sales professionals in the first half ended November.

“We believe that this increase in our field organisation, combined with innovative new products like Fusion Cloud ERP and Cloud CRM, will enable solid organic growth in the second half of this year,” the company’s President Mark Hurd said.

Looking ahead, Oracle expects its adjusted earnings to range from 55 cents to 58 cents a share in the third quarter.

Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/oracle-corp-profit-up-17-pc-in-q2/articleshow/11192126.cms

Oracle accuses HP of false advertising

December 5th, 2011

Oracle Corp, accussing Hewlett- Packard Co of false advertising in a revised countersuit, said HP secretly paid Intel Corp to continue producing the Itanium computer chip.

Oracle claims HP “made false and deceptive statements” to Oracle and the public regarding the future of the chip to induce Oracle to continue to build software that runs on HP servers that use the Itanium chip, according to an amended complaint provided by Deborah Hellinger, an Oracle spokeswoman. Filing of the document couldn’t be immediately confirmed through electronic state court records yesterday.

HP and Intel had an Itanium collaboration agreement under which Intel would prolong Itanium instead of discontinuing the chip, according to the complaint.

The agreement was kept secret until Oracle uncovered it in a lawsuit first filed by HP against Oracle in June. HP alleged then that Oracle used “strong arm tactics” to force customers to shift away from HP’s Itanium server hardware to Oracle’s own server.

Details of the Itanium agreement, such as the date it was signed and how much HP paid Intel, are blacked out of the document. Oracle, based in Redwood City, California, seeks to rescind an agreement that settled litigation over Oracle’s hiring of former HP chief executive officer Mark Hurd as well as unspecified damages.

“Oracle is in breach of its contractual commitments to HP, and it has failed to honor its promises to customers,” Michael Thacker, a spokesman for Palo Alto, California-based HP, said yesterday in an e-mailed statement responding to Oracle’s new claims. “Oracle should be addressing and rectifying this conduct rather than making up claims against HP.

The case is Hewlett-Packard Co v Oracle Corp, 111- cv-0203163, California Superior Court (Santa Clara County).

Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/hardware/Oracle-Accuses-HP-of-false-advertising/articleshow/10989250.cms

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