I have been looking through some older technical books in my bookshelf and there is one “A Beginners Guide to Oracle” which is based around Oracle 8.1.7. I was amused about a paragraph in the first chapter “what is Oracle”, it goes on to talk about the database, doesn’t mention any other products and in some ways that is pretty much correct. There was Forms and Reports and Oracle Applications, but Application Server was a little way off when the book was published and, Applications was still primarily the Financials components, although a number of the other modules such as inventory and maintenance where there.

If I was to put the same paragraph in a book now, it would no longer be a paragraph, it would have to be a chapter at least to make any sense and it would be possible to write a full book on the topic. Since then Application Server has sprung to life, there has been 4 major acquisitions Peoplesoft, Siebel, Hyperion, BEA, and numerous smaller ones since then. Smaller may not always be an apt description, but for a lot of people maybe just not as well known, Sleepycat, Retek, and of course in Peoplesoft they also acquired JD Edwards, which Peoplesoft had acquired not long before the purchase. In fact the list of acquired products on Oracle’s home page is 30 long. BEA is not on that list and I suspect there is one or two other smaller players not there also that Oracle has recently acquired to fill gaps in there portfolio. The only thing Oracle doesn’t have is hardware, and quite frankly if they were to move to acquiring a hardware vendor, I suspect that Oracle would suffer. All hardware except at the big end, like HP Superdomes and Sun M9000 series type machines have very tight margins and they would find it tough going selling product in that small end market for an organisation that clearly has strong margins on its products.

Oracle on the published figures still has a formidable margin in the database market, that although Oracle’s product has a premium list price is still a preferred choice among many customers. The database also powers some big e-commerce sites such as EBay and Amazon, giving it a formidable position in the marketing space.

So in just 8 short years the Oracle database has been joined by a plethora of products that enhance Oracle the company’s ability to deliver for its customers.

See ya round

Peter