The Hindu Business Line : Oracle sees buoyancy in Asia-Pacific region

Hyderabad March 30 Oracle Corporation on Friday said that its database, middleware and applications business software are witness to buoyancy in the Asia Pacific region and Japan, wherein India has become a significant business opportunity with new deployments across several sectors.

Interestingly, software as a service or on demand software is beginning to get assimilated in India with Customer Relationship Management (CRM)-related software from Siebel. And this could potentially move on to other areas.

The Senior Vice-President, Oracle Asia Pacific, Mr Brain Mitchell, said software as a service (SAS) would attract small and medium enterprises as they seek to get more competitive. Speaking to media persons from Singapore, Mr Mitchell said Oracle has a large footprint in India employing over 19,000 people and big chunk of them work on the development capabilities. With Indian economy buoyant, presence in 23 cities would be particularly useful for small and medium sized enterprises. They could take to Oracle eBusiness suite replacing their home grown applications, pick and choose product and service of their choice to suit their distinct requirements which would be addressed through partners.

Acquisitions

Answering queries, Mr Mitchell said, "With some 30 acquisitions in 30 months, we continue to pursue potential acquisitions in some select verticals and these could be anywhere in any part of the world."

Mentioning about some recent wins, the Managing Director of Oracle India, Mr Krishan Dhawan, said they witnessed growth across product lines and some of the key deals include ITC, LG Electronics, BSE, Gujarat State Electricity, Shree Cement, ICICI Prudential Life, among others.

Some of the new industry segments being addressed include cement, paints, construction, real estate, retail, education and healthcare.

The company said APAC has emerged as a growth engine of the world and their new licence revenues from applications in the region was up 89 per cent during the third quarter of FY 2007.

Interestingly, Linux as a platform is a high growth area that is doing well in partnership with Intel and AMD, Mr Mitchell said.