Oracle heads for the cloud

Grazed from AFR. Author: Stewart Oldfield.

Larry Ellison’s Oracle is trying to transition from a mature data management software vendor into the world’s biggest play on cloud computing, a sector which could triple its revenues over the next five years. Off a relatively small base, Oracle’s cloud computing revenues are growing at 30 per cent a year, while the traditional on-premises software licence business on which the company was built is going backwards.

Given Oracle has a market capitalisation of US$190 billion ($233 billion) and a forward price-to-earnings multiple of more than 15, the market appears to be backing Ellison’s vision of becoming the global leader in cloud computing. To his credit Ellison, 70, was one of the first to see the threat/opportunity posed by the internet and cloud computing to big enterprises’ IT demands…

In 1995, Oracle, which Ellison founded and remains the biggest shareholder of, became one of the first big software companies to announce an internet strategy. A decade ago it launched its first software-as-a-service product, the forerunner of its modern-day cloud offering. Oracle has since spent billions of dollars on its cloud offering…

Read more from the source @ http://www.afr.com/technology/oracle-heads-for-the-cloud-20150519-gh19ud