The Other Oracle

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I'm starting to realize it's like pulling teeth to get Wall Street analysts to say something indiscriminately positive when discussing the prospects of database giant Oracle (ORCL).

Instead, what you often get are a myriad of "yeah, but..." responses. You know, the conviction-lacking type of responses. Those that suggests, "Yeah, it has great management, but..." or the ever constant "Yeah, it's doing great in the enterprise now, but there's Salesforce.com (CRM).

Those investors continue to get this story wrong.

It seems most investors have already made up their minds and insist Oracle can no longer grow. But the numbers tell another story. What's more, there continues to be this overreaction to its less-than-stellar hardware performance.

But Wall Street is quick to forget Oracle is a software company first. Any ceiling achieved in hardware has more than been offset by its software and services performance.

From that standpoint, a case can be made that the company's true value is far from being reflected in today's prices. I will go a step further and say the stock still has at least 25% more upside from current levels. There shouldn't be any ifs, and or "yeah, buts.." about it.

Granted, the competition is not going away. In addition to the aforementioned Salesforce.com, there is Microsoft (MSFT), Red Hat (RHT), SAP (SAP) as well as International Business Machines (IBM) and a host of other players looking to secure their position within the space.

Currently Oracle is being priced as if it should concede the victory to someone else. Don't hold your breath.

The company has gone on a bit of a shopping spree of late to remind Wall Street it has no plans of stepping aside. In response to acquisitions made by Salesforce.com and SAP, which have opened their wallets to names such as 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 because of the growing popularity of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook (FB).

Oracle understands the strategic importance of these purchases even though they might have escaped analysts on Wall Street. For that matter, the impressive aspect of these purchases is they span various industries with calculated levels of expertise including data analytics, clinical trial, human resources and even social media.

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