Oracle OpenWorld: Oracle's SaaSy claims

Despite mixed signals about Software as a Service (SaaS) in the past, Oracle still wants a slice of the SaaS pie - and is positioning its products as a SaaS platform.

By Stuart Lauchlan, news and analysis editor

Earlier this year Oracle president Charles Phillips caused a stir when he declared that the software as a service model (SaaS) was a good driver of database sales. Later, his boss Larry Ellison declared that no-one had worked out how to make decent margins on SaaS.

But Oracle still wants a slice of the SaaS pie and is positioning its products as a SaaS platform. The Oracle SaaS Platform consists of Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Enterprise Manager.

The firm says this allows ISVs to build, deploy and manage SaaS applications on a complete, secure and pre-integrated set of technologies, that work together seamlessly.

"Oracle continues to gain momentum as a leading SaaS platform for ISVs," said John Gawkowski, vice president of Oracle Platform Technology Solutions. "The Oracle SaaS Platform connects leading Oracle technology software and partners, making it even easier for ISVs adopting a SaaS delivery model to build, deploy and manage their applications. With the Oracle SaaS Platform, ISVs are looking to Oracle and its partners as a fully capable, low cost, virtually seamless path to SaaS enablement."

Among the companies that Oracle cited to back up its argument was Cisco WebEx. "As a SaaS leader, quality, speed of delivery and security are the lifeblood of the WebEx business," said Gary Griffiths, vice president, products and operations at Cisco WebEx. "By using Oracle, we can focus on serving our six million users and growing network of WebEx Connect partners without worrying about database scalability within our on-demand collaboration services platform."

Titans fighting

Cisco is of course one of SaaS pureplay Salesforce.com's biggest customers. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff was not about to let anyone steal his firm's thunder. "We deliver over 100 million transactions a day to over 35,000 customers and 900,000 subscribers at less then 250 miliseconds per transaction through our multi-tenant platform as a service, force.com," he said.

"That's why over 700 applications and over 300 ISVs are available on the appexchange today and why our customers have built over 25,000 custom applications using force.com. No other saas platform has the success that Salesforce.com has."

RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte saw Oracle's stance as further ratification of the SaaS model. "The largest players in the software world are aligning their forces to battle over the SaaS platform," he noted. "Google is blowing out its api set and offering more high-level on demand services such Google Gears and OpenSocial. SalesForce has changed all but its ticker symbol to focus on platforms as a service through its force.com initiative.

"Cisco spent $3.2 billion on WebEx and continues to work towards its long-term strategy of dismantling the company’s infatuation with hardware and positioning a Cisco network as the next platform for application delivery. Microsoft is now “a-Live” – moving towards Ray Ozzie’s vision of providing tools and utilities to fuel onDemand applications. And, now Oracle has donned its OnDemand battle gear and is looking to leverage its existing products as the onDemand platform of the future.

"While all of this activity should make for interesting fireworks, RightNow is excited about these moves for two reasons. First, we will continue to leverage the very best tools to build our SaaS based CRM offering. The investments made by these infrastructure companies will only improve what RightNow delivers to clients.

"Second, with the titans fighting over the platform play, RightNow’s focus on helping clients improve their customer experience will only better differentiate the company, as we continue to provide superior software as a service that has been proven to improve customer service, marketing, and sales business processes."

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