ENERGETIC GROWTH in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market for database giant Oracle contributed $12 billion (€8.9 billion) in revenue – over a third of Oracle’s world total – in 2010, and has spurred a hiring spree of 1,700 people across the region this year.
Running from “Ireland to Saudi Arabia”, the EMEA market is “a sizeable region, and a region that is growing very intensely”, said Loic Le Guisquet, executive vice-president, Oracle EMEA. “Last year it had a pretty strong performance”, demonstrating 29 per cent year-on-year growth, he said. “There have been eight to nine consecutive quarters of solid growth.”
Speaking at Oracle’s annual OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, Mr Le Guisquet said Oracle’s application business alone had expanded by 63 per cent in the region. Oracle has 22,000 employees across its EMEA market, and 125,000 customers.
To meet customer demand, the company has embarked on a significant hiring drive, and will take on 1,700 people by the start of the new year, from “all geographies” within EMEA. About half of that number have been taken on already this year.
“We have untapped opportunities, we have customers that need help and we are looking for the best IT professionals. We are looking across the whole IT portfolio and across all geographies.”
He noted Oracle’s support centres, which include “a big one in Dublin”, would be a typical area for increasing employment. He said the company likes to hire young engineers to provide professional support, many of whom will remain with Oracle in their own countries. Using Dublin as an example, he said: “People will go there, live in an international environment, work three to four years and then go back to their countries with very strong understanding of their speciality,” he said.
Mr Le Guisquet said Oracle will spend $4.2 billion on research and development this year, almost triple the amount ($1.5 billion) the company put into RD in 2005.
“That allows a dual strategy of focusing on every aspect of our portfolio, to invest in each , and innovate, but also at the same time to begin to build integrated solutions. So we both go on to develop products independently, but also try to improve the integration. Lots of drivers in the industry are pushing us to innovate,” he said, including the fast-paced adoption of cloud computing, and exponential growth in the amount of data organisations now produce, which will pose a major challenge for management.
Grappling with large amounts of data means customers need to manage separate IT elements including a network, operating system, server and storage. Oracle is trying to reduce complexity for customers by “integrating more and more components”, he said.
At OpenWorld, Oracle has launched a range of new hardware and software products designed to manage, sift through and analyse data. It has more clearly defined its cloud computing strategy for customers, and dedicated a full day of the conference solely to cloud computing talks and events.
In a controversial move, Oracle bumped Marc Benioff, chief executive of rival Salesforce.com, off the agenda on Wednesday, prompting the outspoken Mr Benioff – who was critical of Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison’s Sunday keynote on Twitter – to move his session to a nearby hotel restaurant.
