Oracle's Fourth Quarter Will Be Tough to Top

With Oracle's big-acquisition spree winding down, the already fiercely competitive company is likely to become even more aggressive in trying to win market share away from both IBM(IBM Quote - Cramer on IBM - Stock Picks) and SAP(SAP Quote - Cramer on SAP - Stock Picks), according to Williams.

Oracle will push its Linux operating system and grid -- or distributed -- computing products to attack IBM's mainframe-based software business, Williams wrote.

And "Oracle will leverage its increasingly integrated software stack as a 'standards compliant' replacement for the proprietary Microsoft(MSFT Quote - Cramer on MSFT - Stock Picks) stack," Williams wrote. Oracle's integrated stack starts with database and middleware packages, which are topped by both generalized software applications, such as customer relationship management software, and industry-specific programs, like retail or insurance systems.

Williams also suggested that Oracle will pursue the on-demand software market, in which it has dabbled for 10 years while upstarts like Salesforce.com(CRM Quote - Cramer on CRM - Stock Picks) eat away at Oracle's market for on-premise CRM software.

Analysts and investors have called for Oracle to buy Salesforce, although CEO Larry Ellison has backed its smaller rival Netsuite(N Quote - Cramer on N - Stock Picks) with a personal investment.

But Ellison is still resistant to taking Oracle into on-demand software in a big way, noting that Salesforce's hosted-software model doesn't produce the fat profit margins of on-premise software.

"Q4 is the first quarter where we've actually made money" in on-demand software, he said. "The last thing we want to do is have a very large [on-demand] business that's dragging our margins down." But Ellison noted that Oracle continues to improve and grow its own on-demand business, which remains a small piece of the overall business.

« Previous Page

1 2 3 4

Next Page »