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January 1, 2003

The Dozen 2003

Oracle Corp.

Redwood Shores, Calif.

In 2001, like an artist admiring his work, Larry Ellison called Oracle 9i "the last database." A year later, with profits and revenues falling, he declared the end of an era. The high-tech industry's malaise was beyond cyclical. Ellison suggested that enterprise software was already going down the path trod by the once-lively PC software industry toward suites from a handful of behemoth providers. "Our model is Microsoft," he declared.

Call it wishful thinking, shrewd assessment, or mere generational gloom and doom, Oracle's cofounder, CEO, and chairman is setting course for a very different reality. Several years of internal reorganizations and the departure of high-profile executives have sharpened Ellison's aura of singular authority during a time of transition. As a sailor, he knows that when the winds change, the skipper has to adjust — or else find his ship at the mercy of an angry sea.

All In the Database

"It's time to gut it out and get to a more repeatable business model," said Jeff Henley, Oracle's executive vice president and CFO, back in June 2002. To get there, the company enumerated three "business growth opportunities" it would pursue: outsourcing, Oracle's new Collaboration Suite, and Oracle's 11i E-Business Suite for the mid-market. In other words, Ellison must steer Oracle toward a different relationship with its customers; a more expansive data universe; and a diffuse market sector that will challenge the company's ingrained behavior.

Of course, the unchanging element — and competitive differentiator — unifying Oracle's pursuit of opportunity is the database. The company's midyear Release 2 upgrade to Oracle 9i brought XML DB into the engine, with new SQL functions that let the system treat XML data as relational data — but also "let XML be XML" by storing and retrieving things in their context. Oracle integrated the database with 9i's Java-based Application Server, a multidimensional OLAP engine, data mining server, data warehousing tools, and several other technologies, including the much-ballyhooed Real Application Clusters. There might even be a kitchen sink in there somewhere.

The inclusion of Oracle's Internet File System allowed the company to put unstructured data collaboration within its sights. If Collaboration Suite succeeds in taking market share away from the current rulers of the realm, it could signify the dawning of a newly expansive era. After all, the data's out there: The database industry's conquest slowed down primarily because the technology had not evolved to capture it. Now perhaps it has. Rising demand for the application of data management principles to unstructured content could be the fresh breeze Oracle needs to fill its sails.

MAJOR MOVES IN 2002

· Introduced Oracle 9i release 2, incorporating BI, OLAP, and ETL features

· Created partnership with Red Hat and Dell Computer to deliver solution for Linux platforms

· Released Collaborative Suite, a solution designed to give database support to email and collaborative messaging

INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISES

· Best Buy uses Oracle for a 4+ terabyte data warehouse for analyzing sales and inventory data

· Texas Tech University uses Oracle 9i Real Application Clusters to support IT services

· Burlington Coat Factory uses 9i Application Server Discoverer to support enterprisewide BI