Mideast biggest market for Oracle

The leading database and infrastructure solutions company, Oracle, said the Middle East share for its products is the highest in the world and that it has a great potential.

"The region enjoys the highest market share in the world and is therefore a strategic region for Oracle," said Charles Phillips, President of Oracle Corporation on his first trip to Dubai and the region, at a roundtable held with journalists at Gitex.

Phillips was upbeat on the region's performance and also the customers based in the region. "Over the past three days I have met customers in Dubai and also travelled to Abu Dhabi and am really impressed with the knowledge of clients based in the region. The customers are also proud of working with Oracle and have great stories to tell. The energy is good here as there is a lot of growth potential."

Oracle was an active participant at Gitex. Husam Dajani, Senior Vice President MEA, present at the event said: "We have been participating at Gitex for many years and there has been a continuity in our relationship with customers and consultants. This also shows that we understand all the verticals in the region and have covered all of them."

Though the vendor is on the top in database, middleware, applications and infrastructure solutions, Phillips said there are many customers who have not implemented all ERP modules and had not standardised all the divisions within the company. Dajani said: "Many clients don't have modern CRM systems and require different ways of communications. Therefore these customers require a common experience to grow.

"There are also specialised industries which require unique solutions and also have to move to commercial solutions like Oracle".

He cited the example of the insurance industry, which requires mission critical solutions to make quick decisions and therefore partners need to develop their skills to target these industries. "Its not database anymore but also middleware and a whole lot of applications around that.

"Even banks are looking for modern platforms especially the ones in this part of the world as they don't have legacy systems. Asia and Middle East is definitely faster in adopting technologies compared to their European counterpart," he said.

Oracle's president claimed that the company had no competition on the database front, as close competitor Microsoft was not interested. "Microsoft seems to have lost interest as they are busy chasing Google in the consumer space, while we are very clear that our focus is on enterprise," Phillips said.

On the applications front, he said, SAP was a strong competitor but Oracle was now leading in that space.

"Though IBM is present in enterprise their approach has changed as we are more of partners than competitors. They are focused more on services and loosing market share in database," said Phillips.

Author: Nancy Sudheer @ www.business24-7.ae

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