Oracle's Rapidly Sliding License Revenues

..among other things.

Hey, all... earlier today I posted a (long) article to my weblog
about the prospects for proprietary content management firms, and
about Oracle's rapidly declining database license revenue in the face
of "current conditions" and competition from the likes of PostgreSQL.

I thought it might be useful to note it here...

http://www.skippingdot.net/2002/11/12

If you ever wonder why more people don't seem to "Get It" about open
source software, well, it may be that more people get it than even we
hear about, because they sure aren't buying Oracle like they used to.

Of course, there are a lot of factors at play here, but there's no
doubt in my mind that PostgreSQL is on the list of contributors to
this trend.

For those who don't have time to read the whole thing, here's a
tidbit:

-===-

First, [Oracle's] license revenue overall has dropped at Internet
speed:

- FY 2002 software license revenue was down 25% from FY 2001.
- First-quarter FY 2003 license revenue is down another 23% from the
same quarter in FY 2002.

That compound attrition is unprecedented, and there is no reason to
believe that it won't continue. There is no economic reason for it to
turn around.

Second, licenses for Oracle's core database products contribute
ever-smaller proportions of the company's revenues.

- Database licenses slid from 41% of revenue in FY 1997 to 28% in FY
2002, and
- in Q1 2003, database license revenue was only 21.6% of overall
revenue.

Oracle has a huge and well-established consulting business, which is
a good thing, because they're going to wind up pretty much entirely a
services organization, whether they like it or not.

-===-

Feel free to use the info in that article wherever and whenever you
like.

I'll be watching this trend quarterly from now on, of course.

Thanks,

Shane McChesney
President,
Wesearch Information Services Inc.