January 31, 2013
By Kelly Liyakasa,

Oracle Wants to Take Customers Out of Systems Integration

Oracle President Mark Hurd said the technology industry has always preached the value of simplicity, but "quite frankly, I'm not sure we've always lived it."

During a conference call with press and analysts earlier this week, Hurd said the enterprise software and hardware company has one objective: to simplify customers' IT needs and to empower business innovation. According to its latest numbers, Oracle recorded double-digit growth in the second quarter of fiscal year 2013, and experienced 30 percent growth in its applications and a 60 percent increase year-over-year for its vertical industry solutions business.

"The growth rates were even higher in financial services, telecommunications, and retail," Hurd maintained. "This vertical approach is a big differentiator for us because it really opens the door to larger enterprise-wide infrastructure opportunities for our stack."

The company will continue to "aggressively" push its cloud penetration, Hurd said, adding that 10,000 customers and 25 million users worldwide now rely on the Oracle cloud, which includes software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, and infrastructure-as-a-service offerings . "We are the only cloud company in the world that gives customers a choice in their deployment...the ability to move between on-premises, the public cloud, or to build a private cloud," he added.

Since the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco in October, the company has enhanced a number of its cloud offerings, including enterprise resource planning, sales and marketing, human resources, customer service, and talent management software, said Thomas Kurian, Oracle's executive vice president of product development. He said customers can also "use more of these pieces together if they choose to" as a result of enhanced integration.

Going after the platform-as-a-service market, which Gartner predicts could reach $2.9 billion by 2016, Oracle has integrated its database and Java-as-a-service products with SaaS applications Taleo and RightNow, which Kurian said customers are starting to use to extend the functionality of their SaaS applications. The company has also released new versions of its Social Relationship Management and social monitoring products.

The crux of Oracle's cloud is its engineered systems and best-of-breed technology, Hurd emphasized. "We want to help our customers get out of the systems integration business...by freeing up their dollars and resources (so they can) maintain their core businesses and drive revenue."