Wall Street Owes Oracle an Apology

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Tuesday's somewhat "disappointing results" from Apple (AAPL) are being hotly discussed, despite the quarter showing annual improvement of 20% for both revenue and profit.

I am reminded that another tech giant, Microsoft (MSFT), didn't fare much better after having reported its first-ever quarterly loss.

Dominant technology companies create pride in knowing they have figured out something better than anyone else. While it's a great feeling, it also means that they have to constantly look over their shoulders worrying that someone is trying to put you out of business.

In some respect, this level of paranoia impacted both companies. We can look back and say perhaps, Apple should not have announced the iPhone 5 so early -- I think that cannibalized some of its revenue.

Likewise, Microsoft's $6.3 billion write-off contributed to its quarterly loss.

But as I've said recently, does anyone really think that either Apple or Microsoft is on the verge of suffering a horrible death? That answer would be no.

Standing for Oracle

Both examples do serve to highlight the achievements of other technology giants such as Oracle (ORCL). Oracle has not only avoided similar missteps, it has executed flawlessly to maintain its enterprise lead while pioneering a cloud transition.

However, unfortunately for Oracle, its consistent performance has gone ignored and it has become apparent that the company's solid performances have become "routine." It is being punished for being great at what it does. For that I think it is owed an apology.

As with Microsoft, which has had to deal with its own levels of disrespect due to increased competition in the consumer markets, Oracle struggles with the negative perception due to the new Wall Street flavors of the month, names that include Salesforce.com (CRM) and VMware (VMW).

While these are good companies in their own right, what gets lost is that Oracle offers enterprise services that many of the new cloud names can't compete with -- particularly in the area of business intelligence.

Additionally, in response to rivals such as Salesforce.com and SAP (SAP) that have acquired Buddy Media and Ariba respectively, Oracle's list of acquisitions include Taleo, RightNow, Endeca, Vitrue and most recently Collective Intellect, a social media monitoring firm rumored to have been acquired due to the growing popularity of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook (FB).

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