Oracle's Got What It Takes - Barron's

Barron's cover story this week takes a sensationally bullish stance on Oracle (ORCL) and its controversial CEO Larry Ellison.

Oracle bears seem to think Ellison is pre-occupied with yacht racing. It may be true that he loves boating, but with 42 acquisitions worth more than $30B in less than four years, it's hard to fault Ellison for giving Oracle less than his full attention. Coupled with its formidable $22B in annual revenue, margins have climbed to 42% from 36% five years ago.

Its aggressive buying spree has made Oracle number-one in non-mainframe databases and middleware -- leaving only enterprise applications in which it trails rival SAP (SAP). "Our goal is to be No. 1 in every segment in which we participate," Ellison says. "We are growing faster than [SAP], and I think we can catch them," which he plans to accomplish by buying smaller, industry-specific software developers.

"The name of the game is scale," Ellison says, explaining his aggressiveness. Software developers with annual sales of $250M-$1B average operating margins of 10%. $1B-5B average 16%. The four biggest -- Oracle, SAP, IBM (IBM) and Microsoft (MSFT) average 30%.

Oracle has a great record of maintaining customer bases, both organic and acquired. Maintenance revenues are growing at a 24%/year clip, and Oracle's maintenance-renewal rate is 90%, despite its refusal to reduce fees to snag customers.

Barron's says Oracle should easily maintain 20%+ annual earnings growth. Analysts think shares ($21) are worth $24-30. Ellison agrees: "I think we do deserve a premium multiple. The market gets it right over a long period."

Source: http://seekingalpha.com

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Maryland Institute deploys Oracle applications to automate administrative tasks

Oracle has announced that Maryland Institute College of Art has upgraded to Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise release 9.0. The college completed its upgrade of PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management, Campus Solutions, Contributor Relations and Enterprise Portal on time and on budget.

The college initially deployed the applications to automate manual administrative tasks. Since its initial implementation, the college has nearly doubled in size and has more than 1,800 undergraduate and graduate students and nearly 918 faculty and staff members.

Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) has utilized functionality within PeopleSoft Enterprise Release 9.0 Human Capital Management applications for HR Administration, Payroll and Base Benefits; additionally, the college has also deployed PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0 Campus Solutions for Academic Advisement, Student Records, Student Financials, Financial Aid, Recruiting and Admissions, Contributor Relations and Campus Community.

The college also leverages PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal to deliver the applications in an integrated, self-service environment to faculty, staff and students. The portal upgrade has improved the user experience for the majority of MICA's students and faculty that work on Mac computers and Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari web browsers. Since upgrading, MICA can now offer online bill/tuition payment, course registration, academic advisement, pay advices, grading and class rosters.

Source: www.cbronline.com

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Oracle To Buy Insurance Software Maker

Oracle plans to make AdminServer's software a core component of its existing insurance-related products, such as Oracle Billing, Siebel Claims, and Siebel Customer Relationship Management for Insurance.

Oracle has agreed to buy AdminServer, a maker of insurance policy administration software. Financial details were not disclosed.

Oracle plans to make AdminServer's software a core component of Oracle's existing insurance-related products, such as Oracle Billing, Siebel Claims, and Siebel Customer Relationship Management for Insurance. Oracle says more than 1,000 insurers, including the top 20 companies, use its software.

The addition of AdminServer is expected to give Oracle a more comprehensive insurance policy management system. Oracle plans to offer software for managing multiple insurance product lines, such as life, annuities and reinsurance.

AdminSever's management and employees will form a global business unit within Oracle focusing on the insurance industry. Rick Connors, chief executive of AdminServer, is expected to become general manager of the unit.

Oracle plans to market the combined insurance product line as a replacement for the legacy policy administration applications used today in the industry. Such applications are "extremely inflexible and imped enterprise agility and efficiency," Oracle President Charles Phillips said. "Together, Oracle and AdminServer plan to deliver the most modern, comprehensive, standards-based and well-integrated enterprise software suite for the insurance industry," Phillips said in a statement released Tuesday.

Oracle expects to close the transaction by the end of June.

Oracle has been on a buying spree since 2005. The business software maker acquired 13 companies in 2005 and in 2006 and 11 companies last year. So far this year, Oracle has bought BEA Systems and Captovation, and has acquired technology from Empirix.

The BEA acquisition, completed last month, is the biggest so far this year. The company's middleware technology is expected to augment Oracle's offerings in business intelligence software, particularly in the area of products and services for accessing transaction data for analysis in real time.

Author: Antone Gonsalves @ www.informationweek.com

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