Oracle's Agility Cited as Reason for Easily Consummating Acquisitions

No matter what you think of Oracle (News - Alert), there are a few things it cannot be accused of being, and they include being bloated, being unwilling to change and being humble.

In an article for Computerworld UK, author Anh Nguyen takes a look at how the company has evolved based on revelations from Oracle CIO and Senior VP Mark Sunday.

Nguyen brings up Oracle’s business standardization project which began 13 years ago. He wrote that the aim of centralizing and standardizing its processes was to become more operationally efficient. However, the current CIO and Senior VP, sees the “project” as having a much more significant result.

According to the article, Sunday believes the business transformation and standardization project at Oracle those years ago have enabled the company to be able to make corporate acquisitions and assimilate them with total ease. Referring to Oracle’s transformation, he was quoted in the Computerworld UK piece as saying in his keynote to the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) Conference held in Birmingham, England, “I believe that cleaning our house from 1998 to 2001 was not just the enabler, we fundamentally couldn't have done it without it.”

Sunday reportedly went on discuss how the business transformation to simpler, more standardized processes has affected Oracle’s ability to consummate business acquisitions by saying, “It’s made it so easy for us. So when we acquire a company, it will just come in. You will be assimilated—resistance is futile.”

Clearly, the meek will not inherit the earth in Mark Sunday’s eyes. Nevertheless, Oracle has acquired more than 86 companies in the past seven years, so he has footing to back up his statement.

Among the streamlining that has occurred within Oracle since 1998, Sunday reportedly talked about the centralization of the company’s financial division on both an organizational and geographic level as well as the consolidation of data centers to just two, down from 40. Transforming completely to VoIP was also reportedly hailed as having a major influence on Oracle’s agility as was moving to a more self-service model. “We've self-serviced everything, including how I provide IT as a service,” Sunday was quoted by Computerworld as saying.

Of course, no discussion of Oracle and acquisitions would be complete without bringing up Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems (News - Alert) in February 2010. Here again, the article pointed to efficiencies Oracle has been able to achieve in regard to this acquisition. The article noted that within the first year following the acquisition, Oracle was able to achieve a return on its investment in Sun, which takes into account “a 64.2 percent reduction in excess inventory, a 16.7 percent reduction in product lead time and a 9.8 percent reduction in headcount.” By most business standards, that does give Oracle bragging rights.