Hurd: Oracle to become cloud leader

Oracle, the company that started the database software business, spent $ more than 40 billion in just a few years, acquiring more than 70 companies, from $ more than 10 billion a year to $40 billion trillion, and targeting IBM for its competition. Oracle's trajectory is one of the templates for traditional it giants to transform.

Oracle is not the most active advocate of cloud computing, but the IT industry's best companies have always emphasized "best-in-class" and are now ready to move into the cloud. Oracle has to be a leader in this area as well as in cloud computing. Oracle's joint president, Hurd, said in an interview with the China Business News reporter.

Hurd, who previously served as HP's CEO, has a strong executive and cost-control capability to help HP weather the economic crisis and to lead HP into the world's largest IT business. The "Management-controlled" Oracle, also transformed into a "passion warrior", in the interview, he always show disdain for competitors.

The road of alternative integration

Acquisition is not unique to Oracle, the traditional IT giants in recent years are busy with acquisitions, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell, Oracle, SAP, etc. are the main players. Along with the acquisition, the competition pattern of the industry is changing. The industry is more willing to call this trend "soft and hard integration" or "vertical integration", that is, an IT enterprise can provide users with a full range of software and hardware solutions.

In 2009, the problem that Oracle snapped up to sun with a higher than IBM bid for 7.4 billion dollars was that hardware was much less profitable than software, and Sun's direct revenue from Oracle's hardware was not ideal. But Oracle is more focused on the consolidation value of this combination of soft and hard integration.

Not long ago, IBM released the Puresystem system, which is the whole industry to a combination of soft and hard evidence. "Many manufacturers want to imitate the concept of Oracle, but their ability can not achieve a true sense of hardware and software integration." "Oracle, by developing hardware, operating systems, middleware and applications that are compatible with its own database, will have an advantage that no single enterprise can match," he said. We optimize and test the compatibility of hardware and software in each development phase to ensure the best performance, the best user experience, and the best possible reuse of the product. ”

Every executive in Oracle's mouth is always emphasizing "best-in-class", which of course requires a user to draw a conclusion. But through the frantic mergers and acquisitions of more than 70 companies, Oracle has indeed become the most complete product line in the industry. IBM and HP provide cloud infrastructure, but there are few applications based on this. SAP has a wealth of applications, but lacks the infrastructure.

Product line is complete, unified, is the common direction of several it giants. Oracle's path is a bit like apple in the PC industry, and Oracle is more of an Apple App store model when the industry is trumpeting the cloud.

Over the past six or seven years, Oracle has been busy buying and consolidating these acquisitions to promote the integration of applications. Oracle currently covers more than 100 integrated application modules in seven major areas. Jon Ekoniak, vice president of Oracle's application software products, reviews the features of converged applications: modularity, standardization, openness, easy configuration, easy scalability, no need for IT organizations, transparent pricing, separate or packaged, and no incompatibilities between modules within the fusion application; The converged application encourages third parties to develop together, like Android, to engage in multiple wins.

This sounds a bit difficult to understand, popular understanding is an enterprise-class app. Oracle's All-in-one machine is like an Apple phone or ipad such a terminal, enterprise users need what applications, download, pay can be applied.

Another big difference from other IT giants is that Oracle has a lower share of services. IBM, HP and Dell's biggest acquisitions are almost all acquisitions of service consultancy firms, and Oracle's acquisitions revolve around technology and products. "This is a strategy that we intend to do." "Although the profit of the service consultancy business is usually more generous, Mark believes that sharing it with the partners is more helpful to Oracle's business." "Oracle's own engineers have only 20,000 people worldwide, and our partners have 260,000 employees, and we want the ecosystem to be healthier," he said. ”

The deep understanding behind the crazy merger

It industry technology is evolving, and the boundaries of competition have been redrawn over and over again. IBM, HP, Dell, Oracle's big acquisitions, are hoping to break the decades of industrial boundaries, to comply with the trend of cloud computing, to provide enterprise customers with one-stop service.

Oracle launched its takeover strategy in 2005, either by spending money to make the competitor disappear or by making the competitor a part of the competition to challenge a bigger opponent. And when we analyze the objects that Oracle buys each time, we find the "first rule", which is to eat the top guy in every subdivision. The industry uses "demon-like intellect and madness" to describe the path of Oracle's progress. This "decapitation" type of acquisition, seemingly impulsive, no chapter, in fact, also has its deep intention.

In 2005, Oracle bought the benevolence division with 10.3 billion dollars, breaking the pattern of the three major enterprise management software (SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft), Oracle and PeopleSoft. After 2006, Oracle acquired the world's largest CRM (Customer relationship Management) software Enterprise Siebel, making its own product line in the management software improved. In 2008, Oracle bought the world's largest middleware software enterprise, BEA, with 8.5 billion dollars, not only to lead its own basic software further, but also to make a punch to IBM. Earlier, Oracle's rival was a simple management software giant, SAP, which has since become a cross-border integrated solution provider and IBM has become a competitor. A more direct confrontation with IBM and Hewlett-Packard was in 2009, after a 7.4 billion dollar takeover of Sun. On the day of Oracle's takeover, Sun CEO Jonathan Schuwarz said: Oracle's acquisition of Sun will bring the industry back to business.

"Larry has a blueprint in mind: a one-stop service for businesses." "A staff member inside Oracle told reporters. As the founder of Oracle and the most defiant person in the technology industry, Ellison's takeover was not just for offense, he was a good friend to Steve Jobs for years, they had a lot of common language and their ideas were similar.

Over the years, Oracle has adopted acquisitions in order to achieve strategic delivery as soon as possible when it comes to providing a one-stop service to the enterprise, and if it encounters a technology or product that Oracle cannot provide and relies on for its own development. "Oracle's acquisition is to make up for some of our deficiencies in a product, which is one of our strategies, but it is hard for other manufacturers to replicate our acquisition strategy," said Bob Shimp, vice president of Oracle Products Marketing, in an interview with our correspondent. ”

Mergers and acquisitions are common strategies for many companies to expand or transform, but not all can be successful. Cisco, once an IT-industry acquisition maniac, was once a success. But eventually because of blind pluralism and the grasp of the technology direction of the loss, and caused the current dilemma.

In interpreting the madness of Oracle's acquisitions, Mark highlighted two points of concern: first, rapid integration. Oracle has an integrated system architecture that runs through every branch in the world, enabling Oracle to incorporate the management and products of the acquired enterprise into Oracle within a very short time. Finance, personnel and even external customer relationship management can be quickly integrated into Oracle's system. "Almost all acquisitions take less than one months to complete integration. "In Mark's view, rapid and effective integration is one of the key factors in the success of acquisitions."

Second, the acquisition is another form of research and development input. "Oracle is a company based on intellectual property, and we value intellectual property." We don't become service companies like some companies do. Mark pointed out that Oracle and IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell to transform services to choose a completely different path. "Each of our initiatives is aimed at strengthening our technological capabilities and aiming to enhance our ability to transform technology into intellectual property, which helps customers solve problems." ”

Oracle has been competing with IBM, HP and Dell through acquisitions. But Larry, who has always been maverick, does not want Oracle to be the same company as them. Mark stressed: "We don't like any company, do ourselves, do Oracle." ”

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)