Oracle to spend $5 billion on research and development efforts

SAN FRANCISCO: Business software and database systems major Oracle Corporation will be spending $5 billion on research and development efforts across multiple areas including product development in cloud, applications, vertical integration. Mark Hurd, president, Oracle annouced this at the keynote address at the ongoing Oracle Open World (OOW) in San Frnacisco.

In his address Hurd said, “Information drives global GDP, based on data, based on analytics. The winners are those who can harness it. Those who can modernize and innovate. Cmpanies want to innovate while reducing costs.”

Noting the trends driving IT businesses Hurd said that there’s an explosion of data, rise of mobility and social business.

Later at a press briefing answering queries on hardware revenue decline, Hurd said, “our hardware story has couple of different pieces to it.” Acknowledging that the server market is either “flat to slightly down.”

On competing with pure-play software as a service vendors ( SaaS) Hurd said, “In HR we offer several things. As a supplement to that is performance management. It gets integrated back into core HQ. We offer a recruiting app, we offer succession planning. It’s a complete suite of HR applications.It’s important that those HR applications work with our financial systems.”

On the IT economy forecast Hurd said, “our view would be in Q1 2013, we grew our software and licence business by 17% and we see it growing further by 6%.”

OOW, the annual Oracle event showcases new technologies. This year it has attracted 60,000 visitors from 145 countries and 3,599 speakers. HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, HCL, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, Tata Sky were among companies from India participating in the event.