Oracle and its strategy for future growth
             This paper looks at the strategies adopted by Oracle Corporation to ensure a consistent year on year growth in their core business areas. Oracle Corporation is one of the world's leading supplier of software for information management, and the world's second largest independent software company. The company offers its database, tools and application products, along with related consulting, education, and support services, in more than 145 countries around the world. It employs 43,000 people worldwide of which 21,000 are based in the US while 22,0001 are based outside the US. Its current CEO Larry Ellison founded Oracle in 1977. Identifying relational databases, as a great business opportunity is one of several brilliant moves Ellison made over his career. In the 70's IBM came up with the concept of an inter-connected data store, which allowed users to perform ad-hoc queries. IBM management failed to capitalise on this idea however, but Ellison seized upon it. Customers such a!
             s government agencies and manufacturers used Oracle programs to manage their data. From the beginning Oracle was a sales-driven, win-at-all-costs company. With a unique product and a hungry market this formula turned Oracle into one of the worlds leading company's and Larry Ellison into one of the worlds richest men.
             Larry Ellison has undoubtedly been a key factor in the success of Oracle. He has been able to deliver a year on year growth rate of 30%2 consistently since the company's inception. Last year the company spent 2.6 billion dollars on an aggressive marketing strategy. This is equivalent to 25% of its total revenue. The company spent 1 billion dollars in research and development in the year 2000, refining its new suite of Internet applications software3. Investing heavily in R&D has allowed Oracle to provide its database products for all leading hardware platforms be it mainframe, mini or P...