Top Ten Reasons Why Oracle is on a Roll

Oracle’s February Q3 results provided further dramatic evidence of the company’s success with impressive performance across all product lines and geographies. License growth of 27% year to year, coupled with GAAP and non-GAAP operating margins of 32% and 39% respectively are BIG numbers particulary when one considers that total quarterly revenues were almost $4.5 billion. As so much has already been written summarizing the specifics of the quarter, we thought it would be more interesting to highlight (in order of importance) the reasons behind Oracle’s strong growth.

#10 Oracle was early in its recognition of the growing maturity of the enterprise software market and the need for substantial consolidation.

#9 Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison has refocused his energies on technology and vision rather than sales.

#8 Oracle’s sales force is highly motivated by a rich compensation structure and the benefit of a substantially enhanced strategic presence in accounts.

#7 Addition of new offerings in major verticals through acquisitions such as Retek, ProfitLogix, i-Flex, Portal Software and others, have opened up vast new markets

#6 “Lifetime” support for all acquired products, reducing customer anxiety and further reinforcing a customer-centric view.

#5 High performance middleware products are virtually free – allowing Oracle to leverage its leading position in relational DBMSs with the rapid increase of breadth and depth of its applications.

#4 Competitor SAP has been slow to react and continues to be focused more on the SMB market than the bigger picture.

#3 Acquisitions of PeopleSoft/JDEdwards and Siebel in particular, combined with Oracle’s very large presence in the DBMS and applications markets, means a huge number of customers have multiple offerings from Oracle and need to re-examine their licensing profile.

#2 Fusion is a compelling open, standards based, vision of applications services that will drive a new wave of profound improvements in business productivity.

#1 Oracle’s revamped management team has proven itself remarkably adept in navigating a complex and aggressive growth strategy, with no obvious missteps.