Oracle Began To Promote a Two-Architecture Approach to Deployment Middleware in June 2006 before the Release of Their FY 2006 10K.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c43071) has announced the addition of 25 IT Investment Research Facts You Need to Know about Oracle: A FY 2006 Year in Review with FY 2007 Outlook to their offering.

This is a complete review of Oracle's FY 2006 results and future plans based on Oracle's recent 10-K filing, which Oracle released in July 2006.

Oracle's dependence on its database management software business as cash cow, although important, does not even make the top 5 of Oracle's top 25 Research facts outlined in this analysis. What is more important to understand about Oracle revenue flow, as hidden in footnotes and cross references in the Oracle July 21, 2006 SEC 10K filing is that Oracle's real revenue growth for the past few fiscal years has been in the single digits despite (or maybe because of) its multiple acquisitions.

This Oracle IT Investment Research Finding is ranked number one in importance in this analysis. When acquisition accounting rules no longer mask Oracle's below average performance (vs. the IT Top 12 as a group), the company is going to have to ratchet up performance with real "new" business or suffer among the IT investment community.

Another factor for investors to consider is the implication of the number of application architectures Oracle supports (eight), compared to other relevant IT Top 12 suppliers (two for SAP and Intuit, and four for Microsoft). Because "Oracle has a highly diverse application product line architecturally" (Oracle Research Finding 2), it faces much higher research and development (R&D) and ongoing product license update and support costs than these competitors.

In addition, Oracle began to promote a two-architecture approach to deployment middleware in June 2006 before the release of their FY 2006 10K; the author believes Oracle already (as of July 31, 2006) realizes that such a marketing message is self defeating vis a vis the whole Fusion message but if a two-architecture middleware code set is a technical as well as marketing reality (that is, one based on Oracle's Ironflare-heritage J2EE container and one based on its Sandia-Labs-heritage Rules Engine), Oracle will face increased R&D and support costs in this area as well. Oracle bought Datalogix Gemms in 1996 and executed the same kind of integration it now needs to accomplish Vis a Vis PeopleSoft, Siebel and so forth over the period 1997-2001. That it might take four years to accomplish this larger task is not surprising but Oracle's implying that the company is close to completion of the activityamakes this an issue in the market.

"25 IT Investment Research Findings You Need to Know about Oracle" reviews all of the key sections from Oracle's July 21, 2006 10K SEC filing in detail and provides both;

- Technical explanations that I think investors will find helpful, and;

- Opinionated analysis, where warranted, that investors may find actionable.

The two leading Oracle Research Findings mentioned above are explained in more detail along with 23 others.

The author urge's you to read a company's SEC and like material in detail if you are considering investing in any information technology (IT) company including Oracle. Reading SEC and like documentation has two advantages:

- First, it is the most accurate description of the opportunity and risk (guys are going to jail for lying in these filings and like material so most executives are going to great length to ensure accuracy)

- Second, the documentation is very complete in terms of describing both the financial and technology aspects of an investment opportunity.

However the detail is technically complicated for many investors. The purpose of this analysis is to explain the most relevant technical aspects of the investment opportunity in terms investors can better understand. This deliverable also explains the technical statements' relevance to the other information provided in the SEC and like documentation.

The analysis is NOT investment advice nor does it attempt to explain the financial aspects of the investment (although some revenue claims are explained in order to put the IT investment opportunity in context).

Chapter outline is as below:

Foreword 

Methodology

Our Caveats

Oracle Caveats

Part I-Item 1aGeneral Description of Business: What the Opening Paragraphs Mean

Part I-Item 1AaExplaining/Analyzing the "Major Risk Factors" Presented by Oracle

The Risk Factors

Summary of Items 1B - 6

Part II, Item 7aExplaining/Analyzing "Management Summary of Financial Condition and Operating Results" Presented By Oracle

Ranking the Oracle Research Findings

Appendix

List of Figures:

Figure 1. Proforma Trailing-Four-Quarter Oracle Applications Software Revenue

Figure 2. Leading Enterprise Application Suite Suppliers' Revenue by Geography, CY 2005 ($B) Figure 3. Oracle Competitive Revenue Comparison of License, Maintenance and Services Revenue Streams

Figure 4. Overview of Generic Software Stack with Competitive Comparison

Figure 5. Evolution of Classic Oracle Application Architectures/Functionality

List of Tables:

Table 1. Comparing New Software License Revenue and Update License and Product Support Revenue by Oracle Product Segment

Table 2. Oracle's Description of its Business (General and Software/Services Sections) with our Explanation and Analysis

Table 3. Oracle's Description of its Business (Marketing/Sales, Competition and Other Sections) with our Explanation and Analysis

Table 4. Oracle-Identified Risks with our Explanation and Analysis

Table 5. Oracle Management Discussion of Financial Condition and Results of Operations with our Explanation and Analysis

The Companies mentioned inside this report include:

- IBM 

- Intuit

- Microsoft

- Oracle

- SAP

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c43071