Oracle President Mark Hurd: CIOs Face Rubik’s Cube Complexity

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) President Mark Hurd says CIOs face a “Rubik’s Cube” of complexity, involving aging aging applications, mobility, social media, storage and more. So how can channel partners help CIOs solve that IT Rubik’s Cube? Here’s a live blog covering Hurd’s presentation at Oracle Industry Analyst World in Redwood Shores, Calif. Check back every few minutes for updates.

The highlights from Hurd so far:

• CIOs need to “Rubik’s Cube” multiple agendas — old applications, storage, mobility, social media — and those variables are making life more difficult than ever for corporate IT, Hurd said.
• The IT services market is bigger than the IT product market.
• The consumer technology market is now bigger than the corporate IT market.
• Hardware and software prices have come down but IT complexity has to also come down.
• A large bank spent $13 billion on IT last year, but the average age of applications is 15 years and the average age of infrastructure is 10 years.
• Hurd compared cloud computing to Oracle Engineered Systems, claiming the common trait is simplicity. The key need for CIOs: “I’ve got to get costs out and make things simpler.”
• Oracle will offer complete choice — on-premise, private cloud, public cloud, hybrid.
• Our SaaS revenue is now $1 billion. “We’re second in SaaS revenue; I don’t know who is third. Might be NetSuite.”
• “We think we have the best portfolio in the industry and it will do nothing but get better.”
• Question from audience: How can customers have a better relationship with Oracle? Hurd’s reply: 60 percent of the Oracle IT spend involves 2,000 customers. Oracle wants to address an awareness issue — customers aren’t aware of Oracle’s breadth of portfolio. Second, Oracle wants to make sure it’s aligned with CIOs who want to innovate.
• Hurd On what he learned from his days at HP: “My biggest concern at HP eight years ago was our IT spend was bigger than our R&D spend. We had 19,000 IT people and 16,000 sales people. Imagine telling David Packard: ‘We had scaled our way to that, aren’t you proud?’ “
• Hurd’s view of the IT channel and partners: Hurd described how it’s difficult for Oracle to get to the “rest” of the IT spend. Yes, Oracle can get to the 30 biggest banks, the biggest hospitals, the biggest colleges. But who is going to get to the small credit unions, the local hospitals, the community colleges. That’s where partners come in, Hurd said.
• Hurd’s view of distributors: “I don’t mean to sound negative or disrespectful but a  horizontal VAD isn’t fascinating to us,” said Hurd. “We want VADs that have vertical expertise.” He’s seeking VADs and partners that can build applications on top of the Oracle Database Appliance. “Now that’s very interesting to us,” said Hurd.
• “Are you guys all Gartner guys? That’s a very well-behaved table,” Hurd quipped while answering questions from the Gartner team.

That’s it for the live blog. Check back for new updates from Oracle Industry Analyst World throughout today.