Oracle Corp. is looking at leveraging on its recent software acquisitions in order to bring a lot more products to the table for Philippine users.
Oracle’s local subsidiary is seeing, in particular, a lucrative market in small and medium-sized companies. For its recent fiscal year, Oracle reported more than 80 percent year-on-year growth in worldwide application license revenues, most of this coming from the midsized market.
In the Philippines, company officials likewise reported success in the mid-market segment for both its core database and applications offerings.
“The SME market is not as homogenous as we think it is,” said Francis Ong, Oracle Philippines’ new managing director, in a briefing Tuesday.
SMEs typically either buy software as packaged solutions or seek the help of independent software vendors (ISVs) in developing customized software. “The key to selling to the mid-market is to make it easy for them, by reducing complexity,” Ong said.
Oracle is hoping to “shield” users away from complexity even as the company works on integrating with its own products previously competing technology from companies that it acquired in the past year, most notable PeopleSoft and more recently Siebel Systems.
After completing the merger with PeopleSoft, Oracle embarked on a buying spree of smaller software companies totaling almost US$20 billion. Under a strategy dubbed Project Fusion, Oracle seeks to integrate all of its acquisitions into its own technology and strengthen its play in the applications market against chief rival SAP.
“We have clearly defines business units for all our solutions,” said Natasak Rodjanapiches, Oracle’s regional managing director for the Southeast Asia, noting product “specialization” in its channel network from pre-sales to post-sales.
“We are not just after having a wide range of products to offer the market. We are also after depth of solutions,” he added.
Asked how Oracle’s strategy will affect the local subsidiary’s channel network in the Philippines, Ong said partners will have a “fuller” offering and be able to address more markets with new products such as those from JD Edwards or PeopleSoft.
“For specialized requirements of some users, we may be able to pull in (products) from some of our acquisitions,” he said. Oracle also plans to integrate into its fold local partners carrying products of these acquired companies.
“We look at them as part of an entire community of Oracle partners,” Ong said.