Date:31/03/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/03/31/stories/2005033101540500.htm

Back Oracle upbeat on Asia

Our Bureau

Hyderabad , March 30

ORACLE Corporation announced on Wednesday that the Asia Pacific market accounted for about 20 per cent of its global licence revenues.

The Vice-President of Oracle, Mr Derek Williams, said India, China and Australia had shown strong business potential, where enterprise software, particularly driven by open source, was being rapidly adopted.

Significantly, the automotive industry in the region, which is still legacy system based, was on a rapid technology adoption drive. With Asia emerging as a manufacturing hub for the automotive sector, this could only get better, he said, on a conference call.

Mr Williams said the total revenues for Q3 for the region grew to $425 million, showing a 13-per cent increase.

Referring to Project Fusion whose objective is to integrate all products, Mr Williams said the aim was to lower the cost of ownership for companies. Six out of 26 centres have managed co-location of products.

Speaking on Oracle-PeopleSoft merger issues, Mr Williams said, "With the acquisition of PeopleSoft, Oracle now has the critical mass of a nearly 50,000-strong combined workforce, including 8,000 applications developers, to provide unparalleled innovation and support to 23,000 applications customers globally. Oracle is the largest enterprise software company in the world."

In India, Oracle has witnessed strong momentum in financial services and e-governance.

HDFC and UTI Bank are among the Oracle users along with the Airports Authority of India, BSNL, the Central Board of Excise and Customs and the Geological Survey of India.

India centre on localisation drive

Hyderabad has carved out a separate development team to handle what it describes as a "localisation drive."

This relates not just to Indian requirements but also to the various emerging markets, addressing changes in tax structures and compliance issues.

Speaking to Business Line, the head of IDC at Hyderabad, Mr Murali Subramanian, said right from issues relating to service tax to the recent drive to implement value added tax, the Oracle localisation team handles everything.

"This localisation team functions in an extremely dynamic environment. Right from sifting through the latest budgetary provisions to regulatory and corporate governance issues, it tracks developments and works with software development teams," he said.