The Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) is an American multinational corporation that specializes in developing and marketing enterprise software products — particularly database management systems. In 2007 Oracle ranked third on the list of largest software companies in the world, after Microsoft and IBM.
The corporation has arguably become best-known due to association with its flagship Oracle database. The company also builds tools for database development, middle-tier software, enterprise resource planning software (ERP), customer relationship management software (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) software.
The founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, Larry Ellison, has served as Oracle's CEO throughout the company's history. Ellison also served as the Chairman of the Board until his replacement by Jeffrey O. Henley in 2004. Ellison retains his role as CEO.
Ellison took inspiration from the 1970 paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems named "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks". He had heard about the IBM System R database from an article in the IBM Research Journal provided by Ed Oates (a future co-founder of Oracle Corporation). System R also derived from Codd's theories, and Ellison wanted to make his Oracle product compatible with System R, but IBM stopped this by keeping the error codes for their DBMS secret. Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL). In 1979 SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc. (RSI). In 1982, RSI renamed itself as Oracle Systems to align itself more closely with its flagship product Oracle Database. At this stage Robert Miner served as the company's senior programmer.
Marketing
Sales practices
In 1990 Oracle laid off 10% (about 400 people) of its work force because of a mismatch between cash and revenues. This crisis, which almost resulted in Oracle's bankruptcy, came about because of Oracle's "up-front" marketing strategy, in which sales people urged potential customers to buy the largest possible amount of software all at once. The sales people then booked the value of future license sales in the current quarter, thereby increasing their bonuses. This became a problem when the future sales subsequently failed to materialize. Oracle eventually had to restate its earnings twice, and also to settle out of court class-action lawsuits arising from its having overstated its earnings. Ellison would later say that Oracle had made "an incredible business mistake."
Competition
Although IBM dominated the mainframe relational database market with its DB2 and SQL/DS database products, it delayed entering the market for a relational database on UNIX and Windows operating systems. This left the door open for Sybase, Oracle, and Informix (and eventually Microsoft) to dominate mid-range and microcomputers.
Around this time, Oracle technology started to lag technically behind that of Sybase. In 1990-1993 Sybase became the fastest-growing database company and the database industry's darling vendor, but soon fell victim to its merger mania and to technical issues with System X. Sybase's 1993 merger with PowerSoft resulted in its losing its focus on its core database technology. In 1993, Sybase sold the rights to its database software running under the Windows operating system to Microsoft Corporation, which now markets it under the name "SQL Server."
In 1994 Informix Software overtook Sybase and became Oracle's most important rival. The intense war between Informix CEO Phil White and Ellison made front-page news in Silicon Valley for three years. Ultimately, Oracle defeated Informix in 1997. In November 2005 a book detailing the war between Oracle and Informix appeared. The Real Story of Informix Software and Phil White provides a detailed chronology of the battle of Informix against Oracle, and how Informix Software's CEO Phil White landed in jail because of his obsession about overtaking Ellison.
Once it had overcome Informix and Sybase, Oracle Corporation enjoyed years of dominance in the database market until the rise of Microsoft's SQL Server in the late 1990s and IBM's acquisition of Informix Software in 2000 (to complement its DB2 database). Today Oracle's competes for new database licenses on UNIX, Linux, and Windows operating systems primarily against IBM's DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server (which only runs on Windows). IBM's DB2 still dominates the mainframe database market.
In 2004, Oracle's sales grew at a rate of 14.5% to $6.2 billion, giving it 41.3% and the top share of the relational-database market (InformationWeek - March, 2005), with market share estimated at up to 44.6% in 2005 by some sources. Oracle Corporation's main competitors in the database arena remain IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server, and to a lesser extent Sybase and Teradata, with open-source databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL also having a significant share of the market. EnterpriseDB, based on PostgreSQL, has recently made inroads by proclaiming that its product delivers Oracle compatibility features at a much lower price-point.
In the applications market, Oracle Corporation primarily competes against SAP. On March 22, 2007 Oracle sued SAP, accusing them of fraud and unfair competition.
Oracle and SAP
Oracle Corporation and the German SAP AG had a decade-long history of cooperation. This cooperation began in 1988, with the integration of SAP's R/3 enterprise application suite with Oracle's relational database products. The marketplace regarded the two firms' products as complementing one another, rather than as substitutes. Despite the current SAP partnership with Microsoft, and the increasing integration of SAP applications with Microsoft products (such as SQL Server, a competitor to Oracle Database), Oracle and SAP continue their cooperation, and according to Oracle, the majority of SAP's customers use Oracle databases.
In recent years, however, competition between Oracle and SAP has increased, and as a result, the rivalry between the two companies has grown, even developing into a feud between the co-founders of the two companies, where one party would frequently voice strong negative comments about the other company.
In 2004 Oracle began to increase its interest in the business of enterprise applications (in 1989, Oracle had already released Oracle Financials). A series of acquisitions by Oracle Corporation began, most notably those of PeopleSoft, Siebel and Hyperion).
SAP recognized that Oracle had started to become a competitor in a market where SAP had the leadership, and saw an opportunity to lure in customers from those companies that Oracle Corporation had acquired. SAP would offer those customers special discounts on the licenses for its enterprise applications. Oracle Corporation would resort to a similar strategy, by advising SAP customers to get "OFF SAP" (a play on the words of the acronym for its middleware platform "Oracle Fusion for SAP"), and also by providing special discounts on licenses and services to SAP customers who chose Oracle Corporation products.
Currently Oracle and SAP also compete in the third-party enterprise software maintenance and support market (the latter through its recently acquired subsidiary TomorrowNow). On March 22, 2007 Oracle filed a suit against SAP. The complaint alleged that TomorrowNow, which provides discount support for legacy Oracle product lines, used the accounts of former Oracle customers to systematically download patches and support documents from Oracle's website and to appropriate them for SAP's use. Some analysts have suggested the suit could form part of a strategy by Oracle Corporation to decrease competition with SAP in the market for third-party enterprise software maintenance and support.
On July 3, 2007 SAP admitted that TomorrowNow employees had made "inappropriate downloads" from the Oracle support web site. However, it claims that SAP personnel and SAP customers had no access to Oracle intellectual property via TomorrowNow. SAP's CEO Henning Kagermann stated that "Even a single inappropriate download is unacceptable from my perspective. We regret very much that this occurred." Additionally, SAP announced that it had "instituted changes" in TomorrowNow's operational oversight.
Slogans
- as of 2008: "The Information Company" or "Oracle is The Information Company"
- "Information driven"
- for the Oracle Database: "Can't break it, can't break in" or "Unbreakable"
This article uses content from http://www.wikipedia.org
Interviewing at Oracle
The oracle Oracle interview process often consists of both phone and 1:1 interviews. Interview candidates rate the interview process as "average" (3.1 out of 5) and most describe it as an overall "positive" experience (54%).
Compensation at Oracle
Oracle staff consists of a variety of information technology workers with most regular full-time employees paid on a salaried basis. Some positions receive cash bonuses and some also have equity (stock) as a part of total pay. Below are Oracle salary details for common Oracle positions:
- Oracle Member of Technical Staff (MTS) - $90,923 (Average, USD)
- Oracle Senior Member of Technical Staff (SMTS) - $100,126 (Average, USD)
- Oracle Principal Member of Technical Staff (PMTS) - $117,410 (Average, USD)
- Oracle Account Manager - $80,833 (Average, USD)
- Oracle Principal Product Manager - $113,296 (Average, USD)
