Global CIO: Oracle And RightNow Have Analysts Bullish On GrowthGlobal CIO: Oracle And RightNow Have Analysts Bullish On Growth

"And how soon will that [profitability] occur? How long do investors have to wait? Not at all; not at all. We'll be profitable this—in February. We'll be profitable in March. We'll be profitable in April—and when I say 'we': the Sun business. We'll be profitable in May," said Ellison.

"Sun will be contributing to Oracle's profits from the first month we own the company. And for the first full year we own the company starting in June, we will make at least a billion and a half dollars in operating profit [from Sun], as we promised, because the Sun business is gonna grow."

And over at RightNow, the combination of the company's own success along with its inclusion in the frothed-up cloud computing marketplace has led one investment manager to cite RightNow as his "highest-conviction" stock pick. Penn Financial Group president Matt McCall cited RightNow's easy implementation, integrated capabilities, and affordable prices as key factors behind his belief that the company will grow significantly faster than the market overall.

(In the interest of full disclosure, McCall holds a long position in RightNow so I realize he's hardly going to say anything critical about the stock—but I wanted to share his perspectives because, across the vast landscape of enterprise software companies, RightNow is not generally the one that comes to mind when thinking about high-growth leaders.)

"When coming out of a recession it is imperative for companies to control their expenses, but at the same time they realize they must ramp up production when demand comes back," said McCall in Q&A session on seekingalpha.com. "They're coming to realize that one way to do this is with products from the cloud computing sector.

"Specifically, RightNow is positioned well because their focus is on helping their clients give a great customer experience. The happier the customers, the higher the sales for RightNow’s clients and even more important the already high retention rate will follow. . . . In the end, RightNow is offering specific services that are designed for the future of customer relationship management and well positioned when coming out of a recession."

The key takeaway from this is that the enterprise-software game is no longer a two-horse contest as SAP and Oracle are being pushed by a cadre of aggressive, successful, and and disruptive competitors optimized for the cloud. These disrupters, typified by RightNow, have broken through to a point of full-fledged legitimacy and are giving CIOs new options, new approaches, and new bargaining power to use in negotiations with the giants in the field.

As we like to say here at Global CIO, isn't free-market competition wonderful?

RECOMMENDED READING: Oracle CEO Ellison: Sun Will Be Profitable In February Global CIO: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's Top 10 Reasons For Buying Sun Global CIO: The Top 10 CIO Issues For 2010 Global CIO: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison On The Future Of IT Global CIO: Oracle-Sun A Bad Deal? Only A Fool Would Say That Global CIO: Why Oracle's Larry Ellison Will Tell The EU To Pound Sand Global CIO: An Open Letter To Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Global CIO: Where Do Oracle's Profits Come From? Global CIO: Sam Palmisano's Grand Strategy For IBM Bob Evans is senior VP and director of information's Global CIO unit.

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