Oracle expected to post gains despite economy

Oracle Corp. is expected to report significant profit and sales gains when it posts third-quarter earnings next Wednesday, despite the difficult economic environment encountered recently by many of its corporate customers.

Analysts on average expect Oracle to post earnings excluding special items of 30 cents a share for the period ended in February, and $5.4 billion in revenue, according to FactSet Research.
That compares with earnings excluding special items of 25 cents a share and $4.41 billion in revenue in the same period a year earlier.

Software maker Oracle, which has numerous customers among the U.S. companies thought to be affected by the economic slowdown, has so far managed to turn in recent quarterly results that have met or exceeded Wall Street's expectations.

JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens wrote in a note to clients last week that he expects Oracle to again deliver a "solid" quarter Wednesday that includes earnings excluding special items of between 29 cents and 31 cents a share.
"Oracle appears to be benefiting from the consolidation of the software industry," Walravens wrote.

Oracle's ongoing acquisition spree has had it rolling up a variety of significant business software companies, most recently BEA Systems Inc., a maker of so-called "middleware" for which Oracle agreed to pay $8.5 billion in January. Middleware is software used by sprawling businesses to connect disparate networks and programs. The BEA deal "truly does open up a whole new set of enterprise license agreement opportunities," Walravens wrote.

Bear Stearns analyst John DiFucci wrote in a note to clients last week that Oracle is likely to meet expectations for its third quarter, and "likely benefited from a strong seasonal December month."

However, DiFucci noted that Oracle is unlikely to "show the magnitude of upside it has in recent quarters," and "may be experiencing effects of a deteriorating macro environment," though he doesn't expect any surprises in the company's outlook.

Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brendan Barnicle wrote in a note to clients Tuesday that checks on Oracle's business have been "a little weaker than earlier in the year." While results from Oracle's middleware business have been mixed, its applications business has been stronger than expected, Barnicle wrote.

More importantly, Barnicle wrote that its BEA acquisition will pay off well for Oracle soon.
"Oracle is likely to get a much bigger benefit from BEA than we had expected," Barnicle wrote, adding that if Oracle closes the acquisition earlier than anticipated it will likely see up to $200 million in additional revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter, rather than waiting until its fiscal first quarter.

"As a result, Oracle could grow [fourth-quarter] revenue by 17%, rather than by 14%, which is the current expectation," Barnicle wrote.

Author: John Letzing @ www.marketwatch.com

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Oracle taps into Grey Matter

Oracle has enlisted the help of VAR Grey Matter to capitalist on the growing demand for service-oriented architecture (SOA), business intelligence and security technologies.

Under the partnership, Oracle is hoping to encourage more ISVs to migrate to an Oracle technology platform, by tapping into Grey Matter's skills in the area.

Together with Oracle, Grey Matter will deliver a single access point for ISVs and developers looking to build their products on an Oracle database or using Oracle Fusion Middleware.

The partnership follows Oracle's dedicated ISV recruitment drive, which saw over 200 ISVs join its PartnerNetwork in 2007.

Alan Hartwell, vice president technology solutions and channels at Oracle UK, Ireland and Israel, said: "We are experiencing significant demand from ISVs looking to adopt Oracle. This is largely due to growing market demand for SOA, business intelligence and security. Technology like Oracle Fusion Middleware enables partners to deliver SOA for customers in heterogeneous computing environments.”

“ISVs and developers are quickly realising the value of Oracle’s technology suite and its role in allowing them to deliver more efficient standards-based solutions to their customers and the initiative with Grey Matter provides a user-friendly avenue for ISVs to become Oracle enabled,” Hartwell added.

Andrew King, managing director of Grey Matter said: "This is very much a demand driven development. We service one of the largest ISV communities in the UK and are seeing a move toward Oracle as a preferred technology and development platform. Our key driver is to ensure our ISVs have fast and concise access to information about Oracle, migration facilities and ongoing enablement and support.”

Author: Sara Yirrell @ www.vnunet.com

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Teradata and Oracle Partner for Enterprise Analytics

Partnership will result in improved integration between Teradata Warehouse and Oracle's BI assets. Ever since Teradata Corp. spun off from parent company NCR Corp. late last year, it's been a gregarious partner. In fact, post-NCR, Teradata seems to have become even more ambitious on the partnership front.

At last month's TDWI Winter World conference in Las Vegas, for example, Teradata and SAS Institute Inc. touted a new technology partnership and jointly hosted a prominent conference event (see http://www.tdwi.org/News/display.aspx?ID=8813).

Just last week, Teradata signed an agreement -- an "expanded worldwide relationship" -- with Oracle Corp. to promote enterprise-wide analytics. Both companies promise to improve integration and interoperability between Teradata's DW stack and Oracle's BI and operational stack to improve customer insight into a wealth of detail data.

Industry watchers say it makes for a compelling pitch. "Teradata's expanded partnership with Oracle … will facilitate the ability of users to integrate Oracle's business intelligence software and solutions with Teradata's data warehouse technology," says Mike Schiff, a principal with BI consultancy MAS Strategies and a contributing analyst for data management with Current Analysis.

First, some background: Teradata officially expanded its channel relationship to include Oracle's Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus and Business Intelligence Analytic Applications. This is in addition to Teradata's current channel support for Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle Essbase (nee Hyperion). The upshot (for joint or prospective customers) is that the two partners can now tout optimized versions of Oracle's BI products running on Teradata.

It used to be that when you asked Teradata about which vendors it competes with in the high-end data warehousing market, the company named Oracle and IBM Corp. -- and not data warehouse appliance specialists Netezza Inc. or DATAllegro Corp. -- as its foremost rivals. What's Teradata doing partnering with an arch-competitor?

Schiff, for his part, doesn't see a show-stopping contradiction. "While Oracle and Teradata compete with each other in the high-end data warehouse database market, Oracle's BI technology can certainly be of value in non-Oracle database environments including Teradata's installed base," he points out.

Instead, Schiff says, Teradata's accord with Oracle demonstrates a kind of limberness on the part of the high-end data warehousing powerhouse, which -- lest we forget -- was itself an independent company before NCR acquired it 17 years ago.
"Teradata … has faced increased competition from general purpose database vendors … [that are] suitable for both query-intensive data warehouse environments and transaction-oriented operational systems," he concedes, adding that Teradata also markets analytic applications (including CRM, supply chain management, and performance management) that nominally compete with Oracle, too.

"While Teradata is highlighting its expanded partnership with Oracle, it also competes with Oracle in database technology, analytic applications, and master data management."

What does Teradata get out of the deal, then? Schiff sees a number of positives.

"[D]espite the risk of providing Oracle with an entry point into its installed base, this is a good relationship," he argues. "Teradata, prior to being acquired by Oracle, partnered with the companies that provide much of Oracle's current BI portfolio [namely, Hyperion and Siebel]. [It] will be able to highlight the 'openness' of its data warehouse platform and Oracle will be able to demonstrate that its BI technology is not necessarily dependent on an underlying Oracle database," Schiff continues.

"While the competition between the two companies will certainly remain strong, the expanded partnership between them should provide immediate benefits to both."

Author: Stephen Swoyer @ www.esj.com

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