Salesforce Taking Heat from Oracle

The company will need to move fast if it wants to differentiate itself against Oracle, says analyst.

Trip Chowdhry, the Managing Director of Equity Research at Global Equities Research, sent out an incremental update on Oracle

to discuss the company's forthcoming cloud announcements. "On June 6, Oracle will be launching a Suite of Cloud Applications and Platforms," Chowdhry wrote. "This will include CRM (Customer Relationship Management), HCM (Human Capital Management), and Social [Networking]. On the platform side, it will include Java and Database." Chowdhry believes that these cloud applications and platforms "can scale from an individual user to large enterprises." "Since Oracle has optimized both the software and hardware stack, Oracle's offering [is] expected to be 20% to 40% faster than Salesforce.com," he said. "Pricing of Oracle Cloud is expected to be competitive with Salesforce.com. Starting June 6, Oracle Public Cloud can be accessed at https://cloud.oracle.com." Further, Chowdhry believes that Oracle's Public Cloud will "very likely take aim at SAP with its Public Cloud offering, but may mention Salesforce.com only in passing." "Oracle may openly play down competition with Salesforce.com as Salesforce.com is also Oracle's major customer," Chowdhry added. "However, our research is indicating that some large Salesforce.com customers are in Oracle Public Cloud Pilot. "Large companies are attracted to Oracle Public Cloud because of its Virtual Machine based architecture, which allows the customer data to easily move between the Public Cloud, which is hosted by Oracle, and Private Cloud, which is on the premises of the customer." Finally, Chowdhry said that he thinks that the rumors that Salesforce.com may acquire Buddy Media or some other company in the Social Computing space may be accurate, "as the entry of ORCL into Cloud Application space creates a competitive challenge for Salesforce.com, and Salesforce.com will need to move fast to continue to differentiate itself against ORCL offering."