Oracle Heads To Wall Street With New Business UnitOracle Heads To Wall Street With New Business Unit

Oracle Thursday created a business unit dedicated to financial services as part of an effort to organize software from its various acquisitions into targeted product lines for specific industries.

About 12,000 Oracle employees comprise the company's new Financial Services Global Business Unit, based in New York City. However, that office will be made up mostly of the executive management team, including Rajesh Hukku, Oracle senior VP and GM of the new unit. Most of the unit's employees are based elsewhere, including Redwood Shores, Calif., and Mumbai, India, the home of Oracle majority-owned subsidiary i-flex, which has 9,000 employees and makes core banking software.

Oracle created the financial services unit so that it can better provide product lines and technology roadmaps designed for the industry that include offerings from i-flex, Siebel, and PeopleSoft, said Ashwin Goyal, VP of financial services at Oracle. It also provides a single point of contact for financial customers, and makes it easier for Oracle salespeople to sell a cohesive offering to banks and insurance companies. Oracle has previously created business units for the telecommunications, utilities, and retail industries.

The financial industry is also close to the heart of Oracle President Charles Phillips, once a highly acclaimed financial analyst with Morgan Stanley, who keeps offices in both New York and Redwood Shores.

"It's an industry Charles knows very well and where he is extremely well respected," said Goyal. "I would call Charles our executive sponsor within Oracle."

Only about 8,500 out of 275,000 Oracle customers are in financial services, but the company sees big growth potential in the market. It views SAP among its competitors, but its biggest competitor is homegrown systems, Goyal said. The financial services market spends more than any other each year on IT, notes Goyal, yet most of that budget is spent on maintaining core banking systems that were developed internally. Oracle's job will be to convince them that it's packaged offerings provide better value.