Oracle eyes more app server growth

Chandra Devi
New Straits Times
12-02-2004
Oracle eyes more app server growth
Byline: Chandra Devi
Edition: Computimes; 2*
Section: Business Computing

ORACLE Corp sees significant growth prospects for its application servers in the Asia-Pacific, which is the fastest-growing market for the company.

According to its senior vice president, development, application server Thomas Kurian, the exponential market growth in the region is driven by the high economic growth rates especially in India and China.
Companies in the region are heavily investing in technology as a means to compete globally. The trend, Kurian says, is for these companies to move applications from the desktop computer to the Internet. There's a big push to use the Internet to drive businesses in all countries across Asia, and this is driving the growth of the application server market, he adds.

Kurian sees a wave of Internet enablement to run organisations happening in the Asia-Pacific. Most companies are building business applications on the Internet technology architecture, and instead of depending on piecemeal software, which can be costly to deploy and maintain, they are looking for an integrated software stack, he explains.

Another trend driving the application server market is the rapid adoption of radio frequency identification and business-to-business in the region, he adds.

Oracle is currently No. 2 in the application server market behind IBM Corp. However, in terms of incremental market share and growth rate in the last four years, Oracle has grown the fastest, Kurian says. Between 2002 and 2003 for example, Oracle's share growth was 2.6 per cent, compared to IBM's 1.7 per cent and BEA Systems' 1.2 per cent.

Kurian attributes Oracle's fast growth rate to its Application Server 10g technology innovation, which was a major release for the company. He says the reasons for swift customer adoption for 10g are easy and automated upgrade, and the fact that the integrated yet open and modular technology works in a heterogeneous environment.

He adds that Oracle's technical strategy to deliver service- oriented architecture of application with middleware platform built on the Enterprise Grid has also been a selling point.

On the company's strategy to accelerate application server market growth, Kurian says Oracle will focus on the small and medium-sized enterprise space and introduce new products to fit the needs of SMEs.

Besides opening up new markets with specially packaged and priced products such as Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One for SMEs, he says the company has developed a dedicated direct sales team trained in application server technology.

Another strategy, Kurian adds, is to heighten the company's channel presence. Besides aggressively recruiting and training independent software vendors, systems integrators and value-added resellers, Oracle has also invested in developer programmes to attract more developers. The company has about 20,000 partners globally under its partner network programme who specifically focus on the application server market.

(Copyright 2004)