Oracle Opens Its Arms at OpenWorld

Oracle OpenWorld officially kicked off in San Francisco yesterday, but Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) President Charles Phillips Q&A session today marked the real start of the event.

Phillips faced a barrage of questions from the international media, ranging (surprise, surprise) from Oracle’s long-running attempt to get its hands on PeopleSoft Inc. (Nasdaq: PSFT) to the company’s new solutions for small businesses.

The exec was quick to discuss Oracle’s new focus on small and medium-sized businesses, as opposed to its long-standing obsession with larger corporations. Phillips claims that the company has finally created simple-to-use solutions that mesh with the needs of smaller businesses.

“Historically, we’ve emphasized power and scale, but we didn’t necessarily have the packaging necessary for mid to small businesses,” he said. “We now have the components and ease-of-use technologies, such as automation, that these smaller businesses require.”

Inevitably, Phillips was hit with several questions regarding the ongoing PeopleSoft soap opera, but he promised that there will be no immediate radical changes. With regards to a possible integration of the two companies’ product lines, Phillips said that customers can initially expect the two lines to run separately, with integration occurring later in the relationship.“Down the line, the PeopleSoft product line, like E-Business Suite, will benefit from Oracle development, but right now customers can expect two separate business tracks."

Phillips scoffed at the suggestion that PeopleSoft customers may change vendors if Oracle takes control of the company. “If anything, Oracle will strengthen that relationship with their customer base. We already have a connection to their customer base, and IT managers aren’t going to spend millions of dollars to change vendors just because they don’t like Oracle.”

And finally, Phillips had a word or two on Oracle bedfellows: SAP AG (NYSE/Frankfurt: SAP) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT). Phillips described SAP’s recent gains in the U.S. market as a reflection of the company’s historically poor performance in America. “If you’re constantly down, eventually you’re going to go up,” he said of SAP, which happens to resell some of Oracle’s database solutions.

And of Microsoft, Phillips assured the audience that Oracle is happy to work with Bill Gates and company. “We have a partnership with Microsoft that’s getting better. We are not against the Windows platform. We want to make sure our products run well on that platform and have worked hard at making that happen.”

— John Papageorge, Senior Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum0