Oracle Eyes More Acquisitions For Increased Tech Market Share

Oracle that bought Sun Microsystems this year in a multibillion dollar deal, plans more acquisitions to gain technology, said Jeff Epstein, Chief Financial Officer, Oracle.

Oracle whose products companies use to manage databases and automate their businesses, is moving to compete in high-end servers and other hardware following its $7.5 billion acquisition of Sun.

"We will continue to invest heavily in internal research and development and we'll continue to make small acquisitions and large acquisitions to acquire great products, great R&D," said Epstein.

He reiterated that Oracle plans to invest $4 billion on research and development in fiscal 2011 despite the tepid economy. Combining technology acquired through Sun with Oracle's database software, the company released the Exadata X2-8 database appliance and Exalogic, a new product to help companies manage so-called 'cloud' computing.

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Oracle also released a new suite of applications for managing accounting, human resources, supplies, sales and marketing. Designing hardware and software to work together instead of mixing and matching products made by different companies is expected to boost performance and reduce costs for Oracle's customers. "Our goal is to have substantially higher gross margins in the coming quarters and the coming years," said Epstein.

Oracle's gross margins stood above 70 percent in past quarters. Oracle says that 70 percent of most companies' IT spending goes toward keeping their systems up and running, limiting what they can invest to improve performance. Despite the slow economy, Oracle posted a 25 percent surge in software sales in its first fiscal quarter, sharply beating forecasts.