On Oracle’s week

Oracle closed out the week on a bit of a tear in terms of PR and product release.

Posted right around closing time on Friday came some rather emphatic statements from Oracle representatives. Talking more smack about the competition than Charles Barkley ever did, Oracle president Charles Phillips was quoted as saying, “Our most recent financial results indicate that Oracle is taking market share from SAP.” Continued C. Barkley Phillips, “Oracle Applications grew 80 percent in [the first quarter], which is ten times SAP’s 8 percent new license sales growth rate in their most recently completed quarter. …. We believe our application strategy is working and anyway you measure it, Oracle’s momentum against SAP continues to accelerate.”

All right, then.

More specifically, Oracle numbers declared that 88 organizations had chosen an Oracle solution in the first quarter. Ostensibly, these 88 wins came in “over SAP,” but whether any of these now-Oracle customers considered SAP at all is not addressed.

The Oracle PR department took some time to enumerate some recent wins, a fairly impressive list to be sure: Ashok Leyland Limited, Bare Escentuals, Barrick Gold Corporation, Cafeteria Toks, Central Plastics, Christus Muguerza, Consorcio Periodistico de Chile S.A., El Calvario, Encana Corporation, Flowserve, Gilead Sciences, Golden Concord (Group) Co. Ltd, Instituto Hondureñe Seguridad Social, InterStep, Lotte Card, MG Parts, Piraeus Pharmaceutical Co-operative Group, RAVAK, TETAS, Tennessee Valley Authority, The Mega Life and Health Insurance Company, and Wireless Information Network Ltd.

Last week also saw the release of Oracle Workforce Scheduling, an offering that seeks to assist organizations in accurately forecasting and scheduling workers. Oracle Workforce Scheduling is a product of intellectual property recently acquired from TempoSoft.

Back in August (a long long time ago), in the afterglow of Oracle’s acquisition of TempoSoft, AMR Research published a report entitled, “An In-Depth Look at Oracle’s Retail Strategy: Don’t Call it ERP.” Oracle PR was happy to exhume the report in light of TempoSoft’s successful output in its Oracle era. That report stated that “The intent is also to closely align demand forecasts derived from merchandise planning, markdowns, logistics, and such, with specific needs for store labor from TempoSoft. This critical integration point will distinguish Oracle from its competition.”

In Oracle Workforce Scheduling’s future, Oracle hopes to include integration with other Oracle applications and to extend functionality to other sectors such as retail branch banking, call centers, healthcare and others. Meanwhile, CRN’s Barbara Darrow wrote a piece on Siebel 8 worth reading, pointing out that when Oracle releases Siebel 8, “the venerable CRM application will, for the first time, run on Linux servers.” Siebel 8 is the upgrade to the swallowed up firm’s flagship product, and the first in the post-acquisition era. Oracle laid out a whopping US $5 billion last year.

Darrow also wrote that “It is likely Oracle executives will talk about this development at Oracle OpenWorld kicking off October 22 in San Francisco.” The entire article, with some nice quotes kicked in by a player or two, can be found here.

O, and Oracle asks The Chump to remind you all that Oracle is putting on some 1,000 events around the world under the rubric of the “Oracle Applications World Tour.”