Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas, United States.[5] In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization.[6] In 2023, the company’s seat in Forbes Global 2000 was 80.[7] The company sells database software (particularly the Oracle Database) and cloud computing. Oracle's core application software is a suite of enterprise software products, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, human capital management (HCM) software, customer relationship management (CRM) software, enterprise performance management (EPM) software, Customer Experience Commerce (CX Commerce) and supply chain management (SCM) software.[8]
Company type
June 16, 1977, in Santa Clara, California[1]
Worldwide
- Larry Ellison (executive chairman & CTO)
- Jeff Henley (vice chairman)
- Safra Catz (CEO)
US$49.95 billion (2023)
US$13.09 billion (2023)
US$8.503 billion (2023)
US$134.4 billion (2023)
US$1.556 billion (2023)
Larry Ellison (42.7%)[3]
c. 164,000 (2023)
Marketing[edit]
Sales practices[edit]
In 1990, Oracle laid off 10% (about 400 people) of its work force because of accounting errors.[71] This crisis 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.[72] This became a problem when the future sales subsequently failed to materialize. Oracle eventually had to restate its earnings twice, and also settled (out of court) class-action lawsuits arising from its having overstated its earnings. Ellison stated in 1992 that Oracle had made "an incredible business mistake".[71]
Competition[edit]
In 1994, Informix 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. Informix claimed that Oracle had hired away Informix engineers to disclose important trade secrets about an upcoming product. Informix finally dropped its lawsuit against Oracle in 1997.[73] In November 2005, a book detailing the war between Oracle and Informix was published, titled The Real Story of Informix Software and Phil White. It gave 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 with overtaking Ellison.
Once it had overcome Informix and Sybase, Oracle Corporation enjoyed years of dominance in the database market until the use of Microsoft SQL Server became widespread in the late 1990s and IBM acquired Informix Software in 2001 (to complement its Db2 database). Today Oracle competes for new database licenses on UNIX, GNU, and Windows operating systems primarily against IBM's Db2 and Microsoft SQL Server. 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.[74]
Oracle Corporation's main competitors in the database arena remain IBM Db2 and Microsoft SQL Server, and to a lesser extent Sybase and Teradata,[74] with free databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL also having a significant[75] share of the market. EnterpriseDB, based on PostgreSQL, has recently made inroads[76] by proclaiming that its product delivers Oracle compatibility features at a much lower price-point.
In the software-applications market, Oracle Corporation primarily[77][78] competes against SAP. On March 22, 2007, Oracle sued SAP, accusing them of fraud and unfair competition.[79]
In the market for business intelligence software, many other software companies—small and large—have successfully competed in quality with Oracle and SAP products. Business intelligence vendors can be categorized into the "big four" consolidated BI firms such as Oracle, who has entered BI market through a recent trend of acquisitions (including Hyperion Solutions), and the independent "pure play" vendors such as MicroStrategy, Actuate, and SAS.[80]
Oracle Financials was ranked in the Top 20 Most Popular Accounting Software Infographic by Capterra in 2014, beating out SAP and a number of their other competitors.[81]
Controversies[edit]
Trashgate[edit]
In 2000, Oracle attracted attention from the computer industry and the press after hiring private investigators to dig through the trash of organizations involved in an antitrust trial against Microsoft.[113] The Chairman of Oracle Corporation, Larry Ellison, staunchly defended his company's hiring of an East Coast detective agency to investigate groups that supported rival Microsoft Corporation during its antitrust trial, calling the snooping a "public service". The investigation reportedly included a $1,200 offer to janitors at the Association for Competitive Technology to look through Microsoft's trash. When asked how he would feel if others were looking into Oracle's business activities, Ellison said: "We will ship our garbage to Redmond, and they can go through it. We believe in full disclosure."[114]
"Can't break it, can't break in"[edit]
In 2002, Oracle Corporation marketed many of its products using the slogan "Can't break it, can't break in", or "Unbreakable".[115] This signified a claim of information security. Oracle Corporation also stressed the reliability of networked databases and network access to databases as major selling points.
However, two weeks after its introduction, David Litchfield, Alexander Kornbrust, Cesar Cerrudo and others demonstrated a whole suite of successful attacks against Oracle products.[116][117] Oracle Corporation's chief security officer Mary Ann Davidson said that, rather than representing a literal claim of Oracle's products' impregnability, she saw the campaign in the context of fourteen independent security evaluations[118] that Oracle Corporation's database server had passed.
Relationship with John Ashcroft[edit]
In 2004, then-United States Attorney General John Ashcroft sued Oracle Corporation to prevent it from acquiring a multibillion-dollar intelligence contract. After Ashcroft's resignation from government, he founded a lobbying firm, The Ashcroft Group, which Oracle hired in 2005. With the group's help, Oracle went on to acquire the contract.[119]
Expeditionary Combat Support System[edit]
Computer Sciences Corporation, as the prime contractor, reportedly spent a billion dollars developing the Expeditionary Combat Support System for the United States Air Force. It yielded no significant capability, because, according to an Air Force source, the prime contractor "was simply not up to the task of adapting" the Oracle software, on which the system was based, to meet the specialized performance criteria.[120]
Cover Oregon Healthcare Exchange[edit]
Oracle Corporation was awarded a contract by the State of Oregon's Oregon Health Authority (OHA) to develop Cover Oregon, the state's healthcare exchange website, as part of the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. When the site tried to go live on October 1, 2013, it failed, and registrations had to be taken using paper applications until the site could be fixed.
On April 25, 2014, the State of Oregon voted to discontinue Cover Oregon and instead use the federal exchange to enroll Oregon residents.[121] The cost of switching to the federal portal was estimated at $5 million, whereas fixing Cover Oregon would have required another $78 million.
Oracle president Safra Catz responded to Cover Oregon and the OHA in a letter claiming that the site's problems were due to OHA mismanagement, specifically that a third-party systems integrator was not hired to manage the complex project.[122][123]
In August 2014, Oracle Corporation sued Cover Oregon for breach of contract,[124] and then later that month the state of Oregon sued Oracle Corporation, in a civil complaint for breach of contract, fraud, filing false claims and "racketeering".[125] In September 2016, the two sides reached a settlement valued at over $100 million to the state, and a six-year agreement for Oracle to continue modernizing state software and IT.[126][127][128][129]
Class action tracking lawsuit[edit]
On August 23, 2022, Oracle was hit with a class action lawsuit by Lieff Cabraser representing Michael Katz-Lacabe, Dr. Jennifer Golbeck and Dr. Johnny Ryan, the latter of which is a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. The lawsuit, which demands a jury trial, alleges that Oracle has engaged in "deliberate and purposeful surveillance of the general population via their digital and online existence", specifically focusing on Oracle operating a surveillance machine which tracks in real-time and records indefinitely the personal information of hundreds of millions of people. The litigants against Oracle argue that through such surveillance, the company violates the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, California's state constitution, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, competition law, and California Common Law.[24][25]
300 Oracle Parkway in Redwood Shores
Oracle Offices in Redwood Shores, with Oracle Plaza building in left foreground
Oracle Conference Center in Redwood Shores
Fountain in the Oracle lake, Redwood Shores
Since December 2020, Oracle Corporation's world headquarters has been located in Austin, Texas. Oracle has plans to build its largest office hub, with 8500 jobs, in Nashville within the next few decades.
Oracle has a large office complex located on the San Francisco Peninsula in the Redwood Shores area of Redwood City. This complex was home to Oracle world headquarters from 1989 to 2020. It is located on the former site of Marine World/Africa USA, which moved from Redwood Shores to Vallejo in 1986. Oracle Corporation originally leased two buildings on the Oracle Parkway site, moving its finance and administration departments from the corporation's former headquarters on Davis Drive, Belmont, California. Eventually, Oracle purchased the complex and constructed four additional buildings.
The distinctive Oracle Parkway buildings, nicknamed the Emerald City,[183] served as sets for the futuristic headquarters of the fictional company "NorthAm Robotics" in the Robin Williams film Bicentennial Man (1999).[184] The campus also represented the headquarters of Cyberdyne Systems in the movie Terminator Genisys (2015).[185]
Oracle Corporation operates in multiple markets and has acquired several companies which formerly functioned autonomously. In some cases these provided the starting points for global business units (GBUs) targeting particular vertical markets.[186] Oracle Corporation GBUs include:
