The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Oracle, salesforce.com, Amazon.com, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft

    The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Oracle, salesforce.com, Amazon.com,
                        Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft

PR Newswire

CHICAGO, June 11, 2012

CHICAGO, June 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Zacks.com announces the list of stocks
featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts
discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets.
Stocks recently featured in the blog include Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq:ORCL),
salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq:AMZN),Hewlett-Packard
(NYSE:HPQ) and Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT).

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Here are highlights from Friday's Analyst Blog:

Oracle Cloud Now Available

Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq:ORCL) recently launched its much anticipated public cloud
computing service. The public cloud system known as Oracle Cloud offers a
portfolio of software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform as a service and social
applications.

The cloud service bundle comprises more than 100 applications that will be
delivered to customers from remote data centers over the Internet. Oracle
applications delivered over the cloud will not only allow customers to start
using them instantly, but will also be updated automatically. Customers will
pay a subscription for these services, which will be more cost effective, as
they will no longer need to maintain an onsite data center for software
installation or update.

Oracle's public cloud offerings include database, java, developer, web,
mobile, documents, sites and analytics services. SaaS offerings include
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications, Human Capital Management
(HCM) solutions, Talent Management services, Sales & Marketing services and
Customer Experience services. Social software offerings consist of Oracle
Social Network, Social data services, Social Marketing and engagement services
and Social Intelligence services.

Other than public cloud services the company is also offering a private cloud
and managed cloud service. Oracle announced that its cloud platform will allow
enterprises to shift data and applications between the public cloud and their
private clouds, a service yet to be available from other cloud computing
providers including salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM).

According to Bloomberg, Oracle also announced its intentions to release
software for accounting and supply chain management as part of the Oracle
Cloud going forward. We believe that Oracle will continue to expand its
cloud-based offerings not only in order to maintain its existing customer base
but also to increase its penetration in the cloud computing market, which is
dominated by Salesforce, Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq:AMZN),Hewlett-Packard
(NYSE:HPQ), Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) and others.

In fact, Oracle, although a late entrant into this highly competitive market,
expects its public cloud to provide a significant competitive edge over its
peers going forward. To gain an upper hand on them, Oracle has been on an
acquisition spree in recent times.

Although its peers such as Salesforce (which recently announced the
acquisition of Buddy Media) and SAP (acquired Ariba in late May) continue to
gather companies from varied sectors, Oracle has been the most aggressive of
the bunch in recent times.

Over the last 18 months, Oracle acquired a number of companies including small
start-ups as well as big-shots from different fields (clinical trial to Data
analytics) such as Taleo (human resource), RightNow (CRM), Endeca
(unstructured data management, web commerce and business intelligence) to name
a few.

The latest acquisitions of Vitrue (a cloud based social-marketing software
developer) and Collective Intellect (a social media monitoring firm) are
expected to help Oracle to solidify its position in the social marketing
arena.

Our Take

According to Forrester research, the global market for cloud computing will
grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion in 2020. The total
size of the public cloud market will grow from $25.5 billion in 2011 to $159.3
billion in 2020. We believe that the public cloud offering from Oracle will
help it to tap this significant growth opportunity.

Currently, Oracle generates approximately $1.0 billion in annual revenue from
cloud computing. We believe that the new public cloud offering will diversify
its revenue base thereby boosting top-line growth going forward.

However, we think that Oracle could see integration issues due to the rapid
pace of acquisitions within a short span of time. Moreover, stiff competition
in most of the markets is expected to hurt its profitability going forward.

We remain Neutral on a long term basis (6-12 months). Currently, Oracle has a
Zacks #3 Rank, which implies a Hold rating on a short-term basis.

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