甲骨文 (ORCL) 2001 Q4 法說會逐字稿

ORACLE CORPORATION FOURTH QUARTER CONFERENCE CALL

甲骨文公司第四季電話會議

Good day everyone and welcome to the Oracle Corporation fourth quarter financial results conference call. At this time, I would like to introduce Oracle Corporation's Senior Director of Investor Relations, Stephanie Aas. Ms. Aas, please go ahead, madam.

各位大家好，歡迎參加甲骨文公司第四季財務業績電話會議。此刻，我想介紹甲骨文公司投資人關係資深總監 Stephanie Aas。Aas 女士，請開始。

Thank-you operator. Good afternoon everyone. I would like to introduce here the speakers today, Larry Ellison, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Jeff Henley, Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer. Today's call will begin with Jeff reviewing some of the key financial results and Larry will cover the state of the company and industry trend. This discussion will then be followed by a Q&A session. Before we began, I would like to review the required statement for safe harbor. Our discussion may include predictions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. While these forward-looking statements represent our best current judgment on what the future holds, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Throughout today's discussion we will attempt to present some important factors relating to our business that may affect our prediction. You should also review our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q for a complete disclosure of risk factors. Now, I will turn the call over to Jeff Henley.

謝謝接線員。各位下午好。我想在此介紹今天的講者：董事長兼執行長 Larry Ellison，以及執行副總裁兼財務長 Jeff Henley。今天的電話會議將先由 Jeff 回顧幾項關鍵財務結果，接著 Larry 將說明公司現況與產業趨勢。之後將進行問答環節。在開始之前，我想先宣讀所需的「安全港」聲明。我們的討論可能包含預測、估計或其他可能被視為前瞻性陳述的資訊。雖然這些前瞻性陳述代表我們目前對未來的最佳判斷，但仍受風險與不確定性影響，可能導致實際結果與所述內容出現重大差異。在今天的討論中，我們將嘗試提出一些與我們業務相關、可能影響我們預測的重要因素。您也應查閱我們最新的 Form 10-K 與 Form 10-Q，以完整了解風險因素之揭露。現在，我把電話會議交給 Jeff Henley。

Okay and thank you Stephanie. Well, Q4 was definitely a challenge as we had predicted, while we ended up making the ¢15 per share we targeted at the start of the quarter, which is the same as a year ago, excluding the large securities gain, the last year, the previous year with Oracle Japan. We made it due to continued expense efficiencies. Licensed growth was negative 10% rather than flat as we had hoped due to the softening in Europe, that happened during the quarter, as well as continued weakness in the US. Total revenue was down 3% from last year's Q4. A contributing factor was that currency ended up negative 4% versus negative 2 that we forecasted at the start of the quarter. So, the currency continued to deteriorate relative to dollar around the world. As we said on last quarter's call, we had a double whammy affect on demand. First the US economic slowdown created an uncertainty, so buying decisions have been pushed out. Second, the implosion of the dotcom has meant significant negative comparisons in both our fiscal third and fourth quarters. In addition, Europe has now began to soften a bit, plus the euphoria surrounding the Internet has subsided this year and while corporations are still keenly interested, they appear to be working down the existing projects and reassessing their E-Business strategies, so that demand has temporarily dampened, although, I think it bodes well for Oracle long-term, since a more coherent integrated E-Business strategy going forward will favor us. Despite the disappointing short-term earning environment for technology companies in general that has certainly affected most market segments including the enterprise software. We are pleased that we have done relatively well in maintaining our profitability. For instance, our full year fiscal operating margin ended at 35% compared to 30% for the last fiscal year, which had a been a huge increase from the previous best year of 22%, and that's all due to our billion dollar savings, E-Business savings program. Therefore, we have managed so far at least to continue our margin improvements over this last two years and despite the slowdown, we are now awaiting for a resumption to normal demand, which we continue to believe and probably won't have until the end of the calendar year, this calendar year 2001. I would like to point out that we have never had a down year and excluding security gains in the last 10 years here at Oracle, and despite the rough second half our net income for the full fiscal year was up 25%. I will walk through the details of Q4 next, but before I do it, let me make a couple of observations about Q1, and this next fiscal year. For the third quarter in a row, there continues to be less demand and less visibility than if we are in a normal economy. However, it feels to us like in Q4 we hit the bottom and if anything demands, maybe get it a bit better in Q1, although, it certainly won't be a full return to normalcy. The reason why things may begin and start to get better in Q1 are the following: (1) After several quarters of sudden economic slowdown in the US, the Fed is taking strong action, the Congress has enacted and retroacted tax decrease, and I think mainly exactly they have started to feel like that things may not be getting a whole lot worse and so there is less uncertainty. Uncertainty is always our worst enemy. In addition, our sales force is getting smarter about how to sell in this environment. Finally, high ROI projects are on E-Business, it can only get delayed so long before management decides they need to press ahead. (2) Our dotcom comparisons going forward for Q1 and Q2 are somewhat less negative, and by Q3 they should no longer have any impact. (3) Our 11i applications are now very stable, our demo performance is very good now and we have hundreds of solid reference, and I think over 400. There is no question, we have lost the momentum in the last 6 months, because 11i was a massive complex release, which took longer to sort out than we expected. But, now we have lot of great references and this should really help to prove our unique value proposition and we continue to see great interest in the market. We are the only vendor in the marketplace today, who can drive an ultimate standard, Internet architecture interoperable with other vendors and with rich ERP supply chain and CRM suites, that are completely integrated to give rapid implementation, lower cost of ownership and richer information. (4) Our 9i database and applications server launch last week is very exciting. This is the biggest database release since Oracle 7, almost 10 years ago. Coupled with much more marketing focus on technology this summer, we will dispel the marketing myth put out by IBM this past year, and we believe it will now get attraction in the faster growing application server market because we now have substantially superior performance to both BEA and IBM. Again, we will aggressively advertise the facts. In this environment, there are certainly no guarantees and there continue to be risks, but we are cautiously optimistic that things will start swinging upwards. If they do, they will start probably modestly, but we could well end up the fiscal year with very good growth and earnings. So, let me just cover a couple of details and I will turn this over to Larry. In Q4 again, our revenue ended for the quarter at 3.264 billion, our license revenue was down 10%, server growth was flat, and applications were down 24%, partly because we had by far the largest and toughest comparison in applications in the year before. In terms of our large deals, deals over half a million dollars, not surprisingly they were somewhat lower than Q4 a year ago, 52% versus 56% a year ago. In terms of the services that breaks down, support was up 14%, consulting and education were down 6%. Geographically, the America's was down 8% again led by the weakness in the US. On a local currency basis there was 1 point of negative, so it was down 7%. In Europe, it was in dollar terms up to, but in local currency up 9%, Asia-Pacific where we have seen a lot of negative currency was up 7 in dollar terms, but up 20% in local currency. Headcount was down sequentially with 1%, which we commented at the start of the quarter. Our headcount would probably drop 1% to 2%, that was a slight affect we added some more DP, it was actually the rest of the count is down a little bit more than 1%. Year-over-year headcount is up 4 percentage points. In terms of cash, we ended up the year at $5.9 billion and again, we had a lot of cash at the start of last year, but remember because of that large sale of Oracle Japan stock. Our DSO was flat to last year at 67. I guess just a couple more points on the guidance for Q1. At this point, we will guess that our license growth is probably going to be flat. I would say as opposed to last quarter when we put out guidance, we said there is probably more downside then upside. I would say that this quarter might be the opposite. It might be more upside at that number than downside and we will suggest a flat earnings number of ¢8 versus ¢8 a year ago, and again I would say the same thing that there might be more upside than downside and that number if we are right are since based on our pipeline, based upon a lot of conversation with field people over this last week or two, but definitely it feels like for the reasons that I mentioned earlier that things are starting to pickup a bit. So with that I will turn the call over to Larry to put his comments and then we will take questions.

好的，謝謝你，Stephanie。嗯，正如我們所預期的，第四季（Q4）確實充滿挑戰；不過，我們最終仍達成了本季初所設定的每股15美分目標，這與一年前相同（若排除去年因出售 Oracle Japan 而產生的大額證券收益）。我們之所以能做到，主要歸功於持續的費用效率提升。授權（license）成長為負10%，而非我們原先希望的持平，原因在於本季期間歐洲需求轉弱，以及美國持續疲弱。總營收較去年第四季下滑3%。其中一個因素是匯率影響最終為負4%，而我們在本季初預估為負2%。因此，全球各地貨幣相對美元持續走弱。正如我們在上季電話會議所說，需求受到「雙重打擊」。第一，美國經濟放緩造成不確定性，使採購決策被延後。第二，網路公司（dotcom）的崩潰，使我們在本財年第三季與第四季都面臨顯著的負向比較。此外，歐洲現在也開始略為轉弱；同時，今年圍繞網際網路的狂熱已經消退，雖然企業仍高度關注，但看起來正在消化既有專案並重新評估其電子商務（E-Business）策略，因此需求暫時受到抑制。不過，我認為這對 Oracle 的長期發展是正面的，因為未來更一致、整合式的 E-Business 策略將有利於我們。儘管整體科技公司短期獲利環境令人失望，且確實影響了多數市場區隔（包括企業軟體），我們仍很高興能在維持獲利能力方面表現相對良好。例如，我們全年度財年的營運毛利率（operating margin）為35%，相較上一財年為30%；而30%又已較此前最佳年度的22%大幅提升，這完全歸功於我們十億美元的節省——E-Business 節省計畫。因此，至少到目前為止，我們在過去兩年仍設法持續改善利潤率；儘管景氣放緩，我們正等待需求恢復正常。我們仍相信，可能要到今年（2001年）曆年年底才會出現。我要指出的是，在 Oracle 的過去10年中（排除證券收益），我們從未出現過營收下滑的一年；儘管下半年艱困，我們全財年的淨利仍成長25%。接下來我會說明第四季的細節，但在此之前，先對第一季（Q1）以及下一個財年做幾點觀察。連續第三個季度，需求與能見度仍低於正常經濟狀態。然而，我們感覺第四季已觸底；若有變化，第一季需求可能會稍微好轉，雖然肯定還不會完全回到常態。第一季可能開始改善的原因如下：（1）在美國經濟連續數季突然放緩後，聯準會採取強力行動，國會也通過並追溯適用的減稅措施；我認為最主要的是，大家開始覺得情況可能不會再惡化太多，因此不確定性降低。不確定性一向是我們最大的敵人。此外，我們的銷售團隊也更懂得如何在這種環境下銷售。最後，高投資報酬（ROI）的 E-Business 專案，最多只能延後一段時間，管理層終究會決定必須推進。（2）我們未來在第一季與第二季的 dotcom 比較基期負面程度會小一些，而到第三季應該就不再有影響。（3）我們的 11i 應用程式現在非常穩定，展示（demo）表現也已非常好，並且擁有數百個可靠的客戶案例，我認為超過400個。毫無疑問，過去6個月我們失去了動能，因為 11i 是一次龐大且複雜的版本發佈，整理與穩定所需時間比我們預期更久。但是現在我們已有許多很好的案例，這將大幅有助於證明我們獨特的價值主張，而我們也持續看到市場的高度興趣。我們是目前市場上唯一能推動最終標準、可與其他供應商互通的網際網路架構（Internet architecture），並同時提供豐富的 ERP、供應鏈與 CRM 套件，且完全整合，以實現快速導入、更低的總持有成本（TCO）與更豐富資訊的供應商。（4）我們上週推出的 9i 資料庫與應用伺服器（applications server）非常令人振奮。這是自近10年前 Oracle 7 以來最大的一次資料庫版本發佈。再加上今年夏天我們將更聚焦於技術面的行銷，我們會打破 IBM 在過去一年所散播的行銷迷思；我們相信，因為我們現在對 BEA 與 IBM 都具備顯著更優異的效能，將能在成長更快的應用伺服器市場獲得更多吸引力。同樣地，我們會積極以廣告宣傳事實。在這樣的環境下，當然沒有任何保證，風險仍在，但我們審慎樂觀地認為情勢將開始回升。若真的回升，起初可能是溫和的，但我們很可能在本財年結束時仍能達到非常好的成長與獲利。接著我簡要說明幾個細節，然後把時間交給 Larry。第四季，我們本季營收為32.64億美元；授權營收下滑10%，伺服器成長持平，應用程式下滑24%，部分原因是我們在應用程式方面面臨前一年最大且最艱難的比較基期。就大型交易而言（50萬美元以上的交易），不意外地較去年第四季略低，為52%，去年同期為56%。就服務拆分而言，支援（support）成長14%，顧問與教育下滑6%。以地區來看，美洲地區下滑8%，主要仍是美國疲弱所致；以當地貨幣計算，匯率帶來1個百分點的負面影響，因此為下滑7%。歐洲以美元計算為成長2%，但以當地貨幣計算成長9%。亞太地區因匯率負面影響較大，以美元計算成長7%，但以當地貨幣計算成長20%。員工人數（headcount）較前一季下降1%，這點我們在本季初已提過。我們的員工人數可能會下降1%到2%；我們略微增加了一些 DP，因此實際上其餘人數下降幅度略高於1%。年對年員工人數增加4個百分點。就現金而言，我們年底現金為59億美元；同樣地，去年年初我們也有大量現金，但請記得那是因為出售 Oracle Japan 股票的那筆大額交易。我們的應收帳款週轉天數（DSO）與去年持平，為67天。最後再補充幾點第一季指引：目前我們推測授權成長可能會持平。我會說，與上季我們提出指引時相比——當時我們說下行風險可能大於上行——這一季可能相反：在這個數字上，上行可能大於下行。我們建議每股盈餘為8美分，與去年同期的8美分相同；同樣地，我也會說上行可能大於下行。若我們判斷正確，這是基於我們的銷售管線，以及過去一兩週與前線同仁的大量對話；但確實感覺，基於我先前提到的原因，情況正開始略有回溫。那麼我就把電話會議交給 Larry 發表他的評論，之後我們再進行提問。

Okay. At the beginning of last year, we came out with release 11i, the E-Business Suite, and again we advertise, this is the industry's first complete and integrated set of applications to run all aspects of your business, sales, service, marketing, supply chain automation, HR, accounting, you name it, we have it, all the pieces were integrated. No one else before had tried to do this, I mean it was conventional wisdom, and to a large degree it is still conventional wisdom, but the way to automate your business is to buy applications from lots and lots of different companies and then hire a big consulting firm to put all the pieces together and with the Oracle idea, it is interesting, but unproven. While the idea is still interesting, but it is no longer unproven. The world's greatest company, the world's largest company, the world's best managed company General Electric is now using the E-Business Suite in multiple divisions to great affect. There area a variety of GE Power, GE Medical, and again all throughout General Electrics. Perhaps, the most interesting was that GE Power, where they had actually reengineered their business, implemented the E-Business Suite and finished the entire project under budget and ahead of schedule to rollout a brand new plant in Europe. Not a single line of Oracle code was modified. In other words, we finished the software for GE, GE didn't have to finish the software for us, nor did they have to hire a consulting firm for them to finish for us. There are many other General Electric implementations going forward this year. If it works, if the company decides at General Electric that we can do implementations in a matter of months, where our competitors do it in a matter of years, if we could do it under a budget and we can do it ahead of schedule. This is a huge competitive advantage in the marketplace and it also per shadows a continuous decline in our consulting business because we simply don't have to modify our software. We are not doing lots and lots of integration between the Oracle pieces. The Oracle pieces are integrated by engineering, by design. The only thing we have to integrate is to legacy systems or third party systems; by the way GE has none of those. I have read that we still, the way we made our Q4 numbers was to steal up from Q1 and just the opposite is true. We said, well no, it was a number of big deals in Q4 because of the classic approach of approaching Oracle for huge discounts in Q4 was something; we are out of that business. We encouraged our customers to buy what they need, when they need it, not to buy in advance, and those huge discounts that were available are no longer available to our customers. There is tremendous value available for our customers. We can install the applications faster and for less money than anybody else, and that's not just true at Hewlett Packard. We completely automated the Hewlett Packard's sales force globally without modifying a single line of code. We went live in over a 30 countries in a matter of months, and I don't believe there is single Siebel sales force automation implementation that has a global implementation and we did it with no modification in a matter of months at Hewlett Packard, Ford, Cathay Pacific, Boeing, Bell South, Wachovia, you have got a list in front of you that shows, we highlighted 10 of more than 450 customers that are currently live after just 1 year of the E-Business Suite. A year from now, we will have over 4000 customers live on the E-Business Suite. There are 3500 ongoing implementations of the E-Business Suite. Again, as I said in the press release an untested idea that has now become proven technology as the best managed in the company in the world, the largest company in the world can use it. So can everybody and by the way it is not just the giants for using this technology and includes small companies like Papa John. They are using it. We are the world leader in configured pizzas. In automating that business, I don't think anyone can touch us in that vertical market of configured pizzas. That was the year, but the year ended in a very interesting upbeat note. We refreshed all of our technology products and I don't think you have fully understood what happened to Oracle last year, if you don't understand what we have delivered in terms of proving the E-Business Suite concept throughout the year and getting lots and lots of references. We are no longer selling an interesting idea. We have proven the success of the product with the best-managed companies in the world, and we have a fabulous reference base and this gives us a really wonderful competitive position to go and compete in the marketplace for applications going forward. In technology of the where we are already the leader, we introduced a new version database and a new version of the application server. The application server, we are coming from behind, but the application servers business is a very interesting business, because now really it is based on a new standard. Both IBM and BEA, the two contenders in the application server business were saying how fast their versions of Java, which is the language of the application server, how fast their server-based Java ran. Well, our new version of the application server announced a couple of weeks ago; we were the first company to actually publish competitive benchmarks. We didn't make claims about how fast we ran. We actually ran industry standard benchmarks and published the results and guess what, IBM claimed it to be twice as fast as BEA, and IBM benchmark. But, we ran the benchmark and found out that IBM was confused. They were actually half as fast as BEA. We happened to be 6 times faster than IBM and 3 times faster than BEA. Our numbers were so good that Bill Coleman, the CEO of BEA thought we made them up and said so publicly. After his team had downloaded our benchmarks and had downloaded our software and tested our results, he changed his statement and said and I quote, Bill Coleman said, "performance doesn't matter." The whole reason that customers chose Java over Microsoft dot Net was that they wanted standards. They wanted multiple vendors competing on the basis of price and performance, and we are normally cheaper, much cheaper than IBM and a little bit cheaper than BEA. We are also much faster and if you look at the chat rooms of the programmers, the buzz about Oracle's new application server and what's called the J2EE environment or J2EE implementation, they are over the moon. We are blowing the doors off BEA and IBM. We think we are going to make huge gains in the application server business because we are a lot faster than the competitors. The database where we are dominant and have been dominant for sometime, we introduced again the most important new release as Jeff mentioned since release 7, almost a decade ago. Release 9i again I think, a couple of the analyst quoted me as being bombastic in my statements about 9i. I basically said it's game, set, and match. It is over in the database business. We can now do things that IBM and Microsoft currently dream off. What we can do simply stated is we can take a group of inexpensive machines like personal computers, a bunch of separate-to-separate PC servers or inexpensive Unix servers and we can make that group of machines look like one big computer for any Oracle application, that's right. So, SAP is to have SAP run out of big HP machine or big IBM machine, you could now run it faster and more reliably on a group of PC servers or midsize Unix servers. IBM clusters and Microsoft clusters may both claim to have clusters and indeed they do have what they call clusters. The only problem with the Microsoft cluster is in the DB2 cluster on Unix and Windows is they don't run SAP and they don't deny this by the way. I asked IBM, do you have a Unix cluster that run the SAP application, the answer is no. What about Siebel, the answer would be no. We run Siebel, we run SAP, what about PeopleSoft, the answer would be no. IBM can't run it. Microsoft can't run it. The maximum number of computers you can run an IBM computer that you can use to run Siebel or SAP or PeopleSoft or any application is one on Unix and Windows. Let me emphasize on Unix and Windows. It turns out IBM has two totally different databases. Their mainframe database actually has clustering that's very similar for Oracle 9i. Unfortunately, a totally different development team built the Unix and Windows version of the IBM database. Again, I have started to bore you with technical details, but the Unix and Windows database from IBM happens to use an architecture called shared nothing. The IBM mainframe database use an architecture called shared disk, so does Oracle 9i. It turns out to be IBM mainframe database and Oracle 9i can run any application. The IBM database on Unix and Windows run no application, big difference. Their clusters are foe, they are worthless, they run nothing but benchmarks, and we are much faster and more reliable. We run all your applications, they run none of your applications. Ask the question carefully, though IBM will say, "Oh, no, we have clusters that run real applications, that's only on mainframes, that's only on mainframes." How fast is Oracle compared to IBM DB2? Well, when IBM wanted to demonstrate how fast their hardware was, they chose Oracle. IBM hardware guys won't use DB2 to run benchmarks on their fastest hardware, and if IBM hardware won't chose DB2 and instead chose Oracle, why should anyone else choose DB2. Now, there is a lot of buzz about pricing of our database and we use a different metric. We use a pricing based on the speed of microprocessors. We no longer do that. We have the same processor based pricing as Microsoft and IBM. So, it is very easy to compare our price to IBM. One more comment, we bundle a lot of our features into our core database technology. IBM tends to charge separately for all of their pieces. We are much cheaper than IBM when you look at how they charge. Yes, they are 22,000 a processor and we're 40,000 a processor for the basic database. But, if you look at all the things like workflow, and other things that we include in our basic price, and you see how IBM prices those separately, we're about 65% cheaper than IBM on database. We are much faster, much more reliable, much less expensive. We've changed our metric so that people can compare the prices very easily. This is the Holy Grail of the database business. We now can actually turn any Oracle application that you have currently running, and we can make it fault-tolerant by running on our real application clusters. Economy, reliability, and performance advantages over IBM and Microsoft in database business, position us beautifully going into this New Year. We have never had a more competitive set of products, in the application server and the database server, and now proven technology with our release of 11i E-Business Suite.

好的。去年年初，我們推出了 11i 版本，也就是 E-Business Suite；我們再次宣傳，這是業界第一套完整且整合的應用程式組合，可用來運行企業的各個面向：銷售、服務、行銷、供應鏈自動化、人力資源、會計——你說得出來的，我們都有，而且所有元件都已整合。在此之前沒有人嘗試過這麼做；我的意思是，這曾是傳統共識，而且在很大程度上至今仍是傳統共識：要自動化你的企業，就得向非常非常多不同公司購買應用程式，然後再聘請一家大型顧問公司把所有零件拼在一起。而 Oracle 的想法很有趣，但尚未被證實。這個想法仍然有趣，但已不再是未經證實。世界上最偉大的公司、世界上最大的公司、管理最好的公司——通用電氣（General Electric）——現在正於多個事業部門使用 E-Business Suite，成效卓著。GE Power、GE Medical 等多個單位，以及整個通用電氣體系內都有部署。也許最有意思的是 GE Power：他們實際上重新設計了業務流程，導入 E-Business Suite，並且在預算之內、提前於時程完成整個專案，以在歐洲推出一座全新的工廠。Oracle 的程式碼一行都沒有被修改。換句話說，我們把軟體為 GE 做好了；GE 不必替我們把軟體做完，也不必聘請顧問公司替我們把它做完。今年還有許多其他通用電氣的導入案正在推進。如果可行——如果通用電氣決定我們能在幾個月內完成導入，而競爭對手要花上好幾年；如果我們能在預算之內並且提前交付——這將在市場上形成巨大的競爭優勢，同時也預示著我們的顧問業務將持續下滑，因為我們根本不需要修改軟體。我們並沒有在 Oracle 各個元件之間做大量整合。Oracle 的元件是透過工程與設計就已整合。唯一需要整合的是既有（legacy）系統或第三方系統；順帶一提，GE 沒有這些。我讀到一些說法，稱我們之所以能做出第四季（Q4）的數字，是因為從第一季（Q1）「挪用」了業績；事實正好相反。我們說，不是的，Q4 有一些大案子，因為過去那種在 Q4 向 Oracle 要求超大折扣的典型做法——我們已經不做那種生意了。我們鼓勵客戶在需要的時候買需要的東西，而不是提前購買；而且過去那種巨額折扣，現在也不再提供給客戶。對客戶而言仍有極大的價值：我們能比任何人更快、用更少的錢安裝應用程式，而且這不只是在惠普（Hewlett Packard）成立。我們在不修改任何一行程式碼的情況下，將惠普的全球銷售團隊完全自動化。我們在短短幾個月內於 30 多個國家上線；我不相信有任何一個 Siebel 銷售自動化的導入案能做到全球部署，而我們在惠普、福特（Ford）、國泰航空（Cathay Pacific）、波音（Boeing）、Bell South、Wachovia 都在幾個月內、零修改完成。你面前有一份清單，我們從目前在 E-Business Suite 上線的 450 多家客戶中，挑選並重點列出 10 家；而這些都只是在 E-Business Suite 推出後的第 1 年。一年後，我們將有超過 4000 家客戶在 E-Business Suite 上線。目前有 3500 個 E-Business Suite 導入案正在進行。再次如我在新聞稿中所說：一個未經測試的想法，如今已成為被證實的技術——連世界上管理最好的公司、世界上最大的公司都能使用它。那麼任何人都能用；而且順帶一提，使用這項技術的不只是巨頭，也包括像 Papa John 這樣的小公司。他們正在使用它。我們是客製化披薩（configured pizzas）領域的世界領導者。在自動化那門生意上，我不認為在客製化披薩這個垂直市場有人能碰得上我們。那是過去一年，而這一年也在一個非常有趣、令人振奮的基調下結束。我們更新了所有技術產品；如果你不了解我們去年在全年如何交付成果、如何在各處證明 E-Business Suite 的概念並取得大量客戶背書，你就不會完全理解 Oracle 去年發生了什麼。我們不再是在賣一個有趣的想法。我們已在全球管理最好的公司中證明了產品的成功，並擁有極佳的參考客戶基礎；這讓我們在未來應用軟體市場競爭中，具備非常優越的競爭位置。在我們本來就領先的技術領域，我們推出了新版資料庫與新版應用伺服器。應用伺服器方面，我們是後來追趕者，但應用伺服器的生意非常有意思，因為現在它真正建立在一個新標準之上。IBM 與 BEA——應用伺服器市場的兩大競爭者——一直在說他們的 Java 版本（也就是應用伺服器的語言）在伺服器端跑得有多快。那麼，我們在幾週前宣布的新版本應用伺服器，是第一家真正公布具競爭性的基準測試（benchmark）的公司。我們沒有宣稱自己跑得多快；我們實際跑了業界標準的基準測試並公布結果。結果如何？IBM 聲稱它比 BEA 快兩倍——這是 IBM 的 benchmark。但我們跑了 benchmark 後發現 IBM 搞錯了：他們其實只有 BEA 的一半速度。而我們剛好比 IBM 快 6 倍、比 BEA 快 3 倍。我們的數字好到 BEA 的執行長 Bill Coleman 以為我們編造數據，並公開這麼說。在他的團隊下載了我們的 benchmark、也下載了我們的軟體並測試了結果之後，他改口了，並且我引用他的原話，Bill Coleman 說：「效能不重要（performance doesn't matter）。」客戶之所以選擇 Java 而不是 Microsoft .Net，整個原因就是他們想要標準。他們希望多家供應商在價格與效能上競爭；而我們通常更便宜——比 IBM 便宜很多，也比 BEA 便宜一點。我們也更快；如果你看看程式設計師的聊天室，對 Oracle 新應用伺服器以及所謂 J2EE 環境或 J2EE 實作的討論熱度，他們興奮不已。我們把 BEA 和 IBM 遠遠甩在後面。我們認為我們將在應用伺服器業務上取得巨大進展，因為我們比競爭對手快得多。至於資料庫——我們長期占據主導地位——我們再次推出了如 Jeff 所提、可說是自第 7 版以來（將近十年前）最重要的新版本。9i 版本，我想有幾位分析師引用我對 9i 的說法，認為我言詞誇大。我基本上說：這是「game, set, and match」。資料庫市場的比賽結束了。我們現在能做 IBM 與 Microsoft 目前只能夢想的事。簡單說，我們可以把一群便宜的機器——像個人電腦，一堆彼此獨立的 PC 伺服器或便宜的 Unix 伺服器——讓這一群機器對任何 Oracle 應用看起來就像一台大型電腦，沒錯。也就是說，SAP 以往必須跑在大型 HP 主機或大型 IBM 主機上，現在你可以在一群 PC 伺服器或中型 Unix 伺服器上跑得更快、更可靠。IBM 叢集與 Microsoft 叢集都可能宣稱自己有叢集，確實他們也有所謂的叢集。Microsoft 叢集的唯一問題，以及 DB2 在 Unix 與 Windows 上的叢集的問題是：它們跑不了 SAP，而且他們也不否認。我問 IBM：你們有能跑 SAP 應用的 Unix 叢集嗎？答案是沒有。那 Siebel 呢？答案也是沒有。我們能跑 Siebel、能跑 SAP；PeopleSoft 呢？答案仍然是沒有。IBM 跑不了；Microsoft 也跑不了。在 Unix 與 Windows 上，你能用來跑 Siebel 或 SAP 或 PeopleSoft 或任何應用的 IBM 電腦數量上限是 1 台。我要強調：在 Unix 與 Windows 上。事實上，IBM 有兩套完全不同的資料庫。他們的大型主機（mainframe）資料庫其實有與 Oracle 9i 非常類似的叢集能力。不幸的是，IBM 資料庫的 Unix 與 Windows 版本是由完全不同的開發團隊打造。再次，我可能開始用技術細節讓你覺得無聊，但 IBM 的 Unix 與 Windows 資料庫剛好採用一種叫 shared nothing 的架構；IBM 的大型主機資料庫採用 shared disk 架構，Oracle 9i 也是如此。結果就是：IBM 大型主機資料庫與 Oracle 9i 可以跑任何應用；而 IBM 在 Unix 與 Windows 上的資料庫跑不了任何應用，差別很大。他們的叢集是假的，毫無價值，只能跑 benchmark；而我們更快、更可靠。我們能跑你所有的應用，他們一個都跑不了。不過要仔細問問題，因為 IBM 會說：「喔不，我們有能跑真實應用的叢集。」那只是在大型主機上，只在大型主機上。Oracle 跟 IBM DB2 相比有多快？嗯，當 IBM 想展示他們硬體有多快時，他們選擇了 Oracle。IBM 的硬體團隊不會用 DB2 在他們最快的硬體上跑 benchmark；如果連 IBM 的硬體部門都不選 DB2、而是選 Oracle，那為什麼其他人要選 DB2？現在，市場上對我們資料庫定價有很多討論，我們曾使用不同的衡量方式：以微處理器速度為基礎定價。我們不再這麼做了。我們採用與 Microsoft 和 IBM 相同的「以處理器為基礎」的定價方式。因此，非常容易把我們的價格與 IBM 做比較。再補充一點：我們把許多功能打包進核心資料庫技術中；IBM 則傾向於把所有元件分開收費。當你看他們的收費方式，我們比 IBM 便宜得多。是的，他們基本資料庫每顆處理器 22,000 美元，而我們每顆處理器 40,000 美元。但如果你把工作流程（workflow）等我們在基本價格中包含的所有功能都算進去，再看看 IBM 如何把那些功能分開定價，我們在資料庫上大約比 IBM 便宜 65%。我們更快、更可靠、成本更低。我們已改變衡量方式，讓大家能非常容易比較價格。這是資料庫業務的「聖杯」。我們現在確實可以把你目前正在運行的任何 Oracle 應用，透過我們真正的應用叢集（real application clusters）來運行，使其具備容錯能力。在資料庫業務上，相較於 IBM 與 Microsoft 的經濟性、可靠性與效能優勢，讓我們在邁入新的一年時擁有極佳的定位。我們從未擁有過如此具競爭力的一整套產品：應用伺服器與資料庫伺服器，以及如今已被證實的 11i E-Business Suite 技術。

Operator, we are ready for questions.

接線員，我們已準備好回答問題。

Thank-you. Our question and answer session will be conducted electronically today. If you would like to ask a question, simply press the '*' key, followed by the digit '1' on your telephone keypad. We will proceed in the order that you signal us. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question per queue, and we will pause for just a moment to assemble our roster. And our first question will come from Jim Moore.

謝謝。今天的問答環節將以電子方式進行。若您想提問，請在電話鍵盤上按下「*」鍵，接著按數字「1」。我們將依您示意的順序進行。我們也請您每次排隊僅限一個問題，我們將稍停片刻以整理提問名單。我們的第一個問題來自 Jim Moore。

Yeah. Hi! Good job on the quarter. I was wondering, Larry, if you could comment on clustering. How important is it today to customers, and how else do you differentiate against the distributed DB2 product?

是的。嗨！本季表現做得很好。我想請問 Larry，您能否談談叢集（clustering）？對客戶而言，現在它有多重要？另外，您如何在分散式 DB2 產品面前做出差異化？

Well, clustering is worthless to customer today, because clustering has just been a benchmark special for the last decade. Keep in mind Oracle clustering, IBM clustering, and Microsoft clustering was only used to run benchmarks, because less than 1% of our customers actually use clustering. So, the reason that no one uses clustering, except on IBM mainframes, is that you had to modify your application to take advantage of it. Now, with real application clusters, any Oracle application runs, all you have to do is just plug in another machine, it keeps running. So, you want it to run faster, plug in another machine, you don't have to change your application at all. You want to run fault tolerantly, for example, all mission critical applications on Oracle have a machine sitting idly by called the Hot Backup. That machine no longer sits idly by. That machine now takes up part of the load. You no longer have to use Hot; you have an idle machine just sitting there, in case your primary machine breaks. How do IBM and Microsoft respond? Well, buy an extra machine and have it sit there idle. IBM cannot run any application, that's Unix and Windows. They can run no applications on clusters. We think we are going to go from less than 1% or 1/10th of 1% of our customers using clusters that virtually all of our application customers, and half of our other customers using cluster standard. You can now buy 2 or 3 inexpensive machines rather than one really expensive machine, to get performance, and then there is no single point of failure. So it is economical, not only does clustering improve your performance, not only does clustering eliminate a single point of failure, dramatically improving your reliability. It improves your economy by letting you buy a small number of inexpensive machines, rather than one really big expensive machine, to run your application. So, there is overwhelming reason to use clusters, if you don't have to modify your application. What Oracle's done with 9i, we are the first database other than IBM on mainframe, the real DB2, not the fake DB2 on Windows and Unix, which used to be called UDB, by the way, till IBM changed the name to confuse the innocent. We're the first company that can do that with Unix machines and Windows machines. So, we think it is a very, very big deal. Again, it makes your applications fault-tolerant. It makes your application much faster and it costs you less to run.

嗯，叢集對客戶而言在今天其實毫無價值，因為過去十年叢集一直只是用來做基準測試的特例。請記住，Oracle 叢集、IBM 叢集以及 Microsoft 叢集只被用來跑基準測試，因為實際上不到 1% 的客戶真的使用叢集。所以，除了 IBM 大型主機之外，沒有人使用叢集的原因是：你必須修改你的應用程式才能利用它。現在，有了真正的應用程式叢集（real application clusters），任何 Oracle 應用程式都能運行，你只要再插入一台機器，它就會持續運作。所以，你想讓它跑得更快，就再加一台機器，你完全不必更改應用程式。你想要容錯運行，例如，所有在 Oracle 上的關鍵任務應用程式都會有一台閒置的機器，稱為熱備援（Hot Backup）。那台機器不再只是閒置。那台機器現在會分擔部分負載。你不再需要用熱備援；你不需要一台閒置機器只是坐在那裡，以防主機壞掉。那 IBM 和 Microsoft 怎麼回應？嗯，買一台額外的機器，然後讓它閒置。IBM 無法在任何應用程式上運行，那些是 Unix 和 Windows。他們在叢集上跑不了任何應用程式。我們認為，我們將從不到 1% 或 0.1% 的客戶使用叢集，提升到幾乎所有的應用程式客戶，以及其他客戶中有一半使用標準叢集。你現在可以買 2 或 3 台便宜的機器，而不是買一台非常昂貴的機器來取得效能，而且沒有單點故障。因此它很經濟：叢集不僅提升效能，不僅消除單點故障、顯著提高可靠性；它也透過讓你買少數幾台便宜機器，而不是一台很大很貴的機器來跑應用程式，改善你的成本結構。所以，如果你不必修改應用程式，就有壓倒性的理由使用叢集。Oracle 在 9i 上所做的，我們是第一個資料庫公司（除了 IBM 在大型主機上的那個真正的 DB2——不是 Windows 和 Unix 上那個假的 DB2，順帶一提，那以前叫 UDB，後來 IBM 改名只是為了混淆無辜者），能在 Unix 機器與 Windows 機器上做到這一點。因此，我們認為這是一件非常、非常重大的事。再說一次，它讓你的應用程式具備容錯能力；讓你的應用程式快得多，而且運行成本更低。

You said third party application companies like SAP and Siebel and even Oracle with the 11i, are those applications ready to run the clustering and also on the pricing...

你提到像 SAP、Siebel 這些第三方應用公司，甚至 Oracle 的 11i，那些應用程式是否已準備好在叢集上運行？另外在定價方面……

Let me, let me just answer your question. SAP was part of our announcement, but you have to got to understand, SAP doesn't have to do anything to make their application run on clusters. Siebel doesn't have to do anything to make their application run on clusters. All applications run on our clusters, because the application doesn't have to be changed, that's the beauty of this, versus what IBM and Microsoft have. So, in fact, every customer written application, any application that runs on Oracle on one computer, now runs on Oracle clusters with no changes whatsoever. It applies to every single Oracle application in the world. SAP, in fact, one of the things we demonstrated with SAP as part of our announcement, is that we now run four times faster on Oracle than on IBM, and that we run SAP applications four times faster than IBM. We published that benchmark and those results are at SAP's website. So, we are now four times faster on SAP, but even more important, we are fault-tolerant . There is no single point of failure. So, we are hundreds of times more reliable. Think of it, do you remember tandem fault tolerance; you had to build by special computers and write your customer applications to achieve fault tolerance? Clusters make every single Oracle application fault-tolerant. This is not well understood. You need to go to the chat rooms, and look at what the programmers are saying. This is a very big deal, a very, very big deal. All of a sudden, every Oracle application is fault-tolerant. No IBM applications are fault-tolerant. No Microsoft applications are fault-tolerant. None.

讓我、讓我先回答你的問題。SAP 是我們公告的一部分，但你必須了解，SAP 不需要做任何事就能讓他們的應用程式在叢集上運行。Siebel 也不需要做任何事就能讓他們的應用程式在叢集上運行。所有應用程式都能在我們的叢集上運行，因為應用程式不必更改——這就是它的美妙之處，相較於 IBM 和 Microsoft 的作法。事實上，每一個客戶自行撰寫的應用程式，任何在一台電腦上跑 Oracle 的應用程式，現在都能在 Oracle 叢集上運行，完全不需要任何變更。這適用於全世界每一個 Oracle 應用程式。SAP 方面，事實上，我們在公告中與 SAP 一起展示的一件事是：我們現在在 Oracle 上比在 IBM 上快四倍，而且我們跑 SAP 應用程式比 IBM 快四倍。我們已發布該基準測試，結果也在 SAP 的網站上。所以，我們現在在 SAP 上快四倍，但更重要的是，我們具備容錯能力。沒有單點故障。因此，我們的可靠性高出數百倍。想想看，你還記得 Tandem 的容錯嗎；你必須打造特殊電腦並撰寫客製應用程式才能達到容錯？叢集讓每一個 Oracle 應用程式都具備容錯能力。這點並未被充分理解。你需要去聊天室看看程式設計師在說什麼。這是一件非常重大的事，非常、非常重大的事。突然之間，每一個 Oracle 應用程式都具備容錯能力。沒有任何 IBM 應用程式具備容錯能力。沒有任何 Microsoft 應用程式具備容錯能力。沒有。

It seems like IBM was really using the pricing against you over the last six months, and you looked to be, maybe, 50% less expensive, at least from a list price perspective. Do you think that's going to stop IBM's pressure on the market share there?

看起來 IBM 在過去六個月確實用定價來對你施壓，而你看起來可能便宜了 50%，至少從牌價角度來看。你認為這會讓 IBM 在市占率上的壓力停止嗎？

Well again, we've actually gained market share this last year. IBM is a great marketing machine, I give them credit for marketing, and they created some tremendous buzz around our pricing. We're five, six, ten times more expensive than DB2, and I mean, you could find a scenario where we are six times faster, but it would be extremely unlikely. In fact, we think, we are cheaper and we have published real numbers. IBM would never publish numbers. They would just make these statements like they are twice as fast as the BEA. I mean, IBM has been amazing this last year. I mean, they said they are twice as fast as the BEA application server, and they published the benchmark, and when we ran it we found it to be half as fast as the BEA. They are making these claims with no numbers. Let's see them publish some numbers. They don't publish numbers. They don't publish benchmarks. They don't publish anything. The only benchmark that I know they have published is this one cluster benchmark. It is always these cluster benchmarks, which run no real applications. So, IBM did create a lot of buzz around pricing. That is, they did not create a buzz around performance or any of the other stuff. I think we have cleared all that up. It's very easy to compare Oracle prices with IBM prices. We are cheaper. We are faster. We are more reliable, questions.

嗯，再說一次，我們其實在去年已經提升了市占率。IBM 是一部很強的行銷機器，我肯定他們的行銷能力，而且他們在我們的定價上製造了很大的話題。他們說我們比 DB2 貴五倍、六倍、十倍；我的意思是，你或許能找到一種情境讓我們快六倍，但那會極不可能。事實上，我們認為我們更便宜，而且我們已公布真實數字。IBM 從不公布數字。他們只會做一些陳述，例如他們比 BEA 快兩倍。我的意思是，IBM 去年真的很驚人。他們說他們比 BEA 應用伺服器快兩倍，並公布了基準測試；但當我們跑同樣測試時，發現它只有 BEA 的一半速度。他們在沒有任何數字的情況下做這些宣稱。讓我們看看他們公布一些數字吧。他們不公布數字。他們不公布基準測試。他們什麼都不公布。我所知道他們唯一公布過的基準測試，就是這個叢集基準測試。總是這些叢集基準測試，而它們不跑任何真正的應用程式。所以，IBM 的確在定價上製造了很多話題；也就是說，他們並沒有在效能或其他任何事情上製造話題。我認為我們已把這些都釐清了。比較 Oracle 價格與 IBM 價格非常容易。我們更便宜。我們更快。我們更可靠，還有問題嗎。

Well, thanks a lot.

嗯，非常感謝。

I think we need to move to the next question.

我想我們需要進入下一個問題。

Certainly. Our next question will come from Gretchen Teagarden.

當然。我們的下一個問題將由 Gretchen Teagarden 提出。

Great. Thanks. Larry, we had a webcast with you guys about a month ago, and regarding the application Suite, you had mentioned that you had used the word mea culpa, and you were just saying how you didn't think that maybe the Suite approach was the right approach than more of an integrated slow approach, would be the right approach. Are your comments today a change in strategy? Are you going to be going back to more of the Suite sale approach?

太好了。謝謝。Larry，我們大約一個月前和你們做過一次網路直播，談到應用程式 Suite 時，你提到你用了「mea culpa」這個詞，你當時是在說你覺得也許 Suite 的做法不是最好的做法，而更整合、循序漸進的做法才是正確的做法。你今天的說法是否代表策略改變？你們會回到更偏向 Suite 銷售的做法嗎？

No. No Gretchen. The issue is, again, just like IBM used price against us in marketing, what our competitors would say regarding applications. Oracle expects you to throw out everything you have, and put in the whole E-Business Suite all at once, and that's a marketing pitch. So, we have never said that. But people continue, that is what they say, Oracle says throw out everything and put in the Oracle E-Business Suite. We have never ever said that. And I think, we have got to do a better job of being clear of what we mean about the E-Business Suite. You don't have to install all the Suite at once. You can do, what a number of our customers have done, for example if you do purchase, do Internet procurement, through payables. You can automate all of the entire procurement business flow, and you can plug that in first. We don't expect any of our large customers to throw everything out at once, and completely put in the E-Business Suite, it's not possible. We never said that. What I am trying to say was not [________________] oh! Boy, we made a big mistake, what we did, we weren't clear enough in our marketing message. Yes, we have a whole of the E-Business Suite, and you should put it the whole E-Business Suite, but you don't have to do it all at once. You can just pick up flow like order to cash, you can pick up a flow, procure to pay, and we have completely automated that business flow, or you don't have to put a whole Suite in at once. Our competitors are being disingenuous by saying, you have got try to use this Suite message against us, by saying Oracle expects you to throw out everything and put in the whole Suite at once. Nonsense, we never said that, you can install this flow by flow.

不。不，Gretchen。問題在於——同樣地，就像 IBM 在行銷上用價格來對付我們一樣——我們的競爭對手會怎麼談論應用程式。Oracle 的競爭對手會說：Oracle 期待你把現有的一切都丟掉，一次性導入整套 E-Business Suite，而那是一種行銷話術。所以，我們從來沒有那樣說過。但外界一直在傳、一直在說：Oracle 說要把所有東西丟掉，然後一次上 Oracle E-Business Suite。我們從來、從來沒有那樣說過。我想我們必須把「E-Business Suite」的意思講得更清楚。你不需要一次安裝整套 Suite。你可以像許多客戶所做的那樣，例如你先做採購（purchase），做網際網路採購（Internet procurement），一路串到應付帳款（payables）。你可以先把整個採購端到端的業務流程自動化，先把那一段接上去。我們不期待任何大型客戶一次把所有東西都丟掉，然後完整導入 E-Business Suite；那是不可能的。我們從未那樣說過。我想表達的不是那種「[________________] 喔！天啊，我們犯了大錯」；而是我們的行銷訊息不夠清楚。是的，我們有完整的 E-Business Suite，你也應該導入完整的 E-Business Suite，但你不必一次全部上線。你可以只先挑一個流程，例如 order to cash（接單到收款），你可以挑一個流程，例如 procure to pay（採購到付款），而我們已經把那個業務流程完全自動化；你不需要一次把整套 Suite 全部導入。我們的競爭對手不夠誠實，試圖用這個 Suite 訊息來對付我們，說 Oracle 期待你把所有東西丟掉並一次導入整套 Suite。胡說，我們從未那樣說過；你可以按流程、逐步安裝。

Okay great, and one another quick question. We have heard examples with large corporate websites, where they originally had their databases in a distributed environment. We have heard examples from them, using some of those back on to the mainframe, are you seeing an example of that kind of a renewed interest in databases on the mainframe.

好的，很好，另外再問一個很快的問題。我們聽到一些大型企業網站的例子，他們原本的資料庫是在分散式環境中。我們也聽到他們的一些例子，正在把其中一部分移回大型主機（mainframe）。你們是否看到這種對大型主機上資料庫的重新興趣？

Mainframe, you mean like IBM mainframes, like real mainframes or eframes?

大型主機，你是指像 IBM 大型主機那種真正的 mainframe，還是 eframe？

Like real mainframes.

像真正的 mainframe。

No. Actually, I started my career designing real mainframes at Amdocs. Real mainframes are unbelievably expensive, unbelievably difficult to program, and what people don't realize very, very slow. So, the reason IBM will not publish any mainframe benchmarks at all. You will find their TPCC on an IBM mainframe, is that mainframes are extremely slow. They are very difficult to program, very expensive, and extremely slow, I am not going into reasons why, but no, we have seen with the exception of a few companies in Germany, where IBM has remained very, very strong. We see very little interest in mainframes other than how fast we can get rid of them.

沒有。其實我職涯一開始是在 Amdocs 設計真正的大型主機。真正的大型主機貴得離譜、程式開發難得離譜，而且很多人沒意識到——非常、非常慢。所以 IBM 才完全不公布任何大型主機的基準測試。你找不到他們在 IBM 大型主機上的 TPC-C，因為大型主機非常慢。它們很難程式設計、非常昂貴，而且極度緩慢；我不打算深入原因。但總之，除了德國少數幾家公司（IBM 在那裡仍然非常、非常強勢）之外，我們幾乎看不到對大型主機的興趣；大家關心的反而是我們能多快把它們淘汰掉。

Great. Okay, thanks.

很好。好的，謝謝。

Our next question will come from Chris Shilakes.

我們的下一個問題將由 Chris Shilakes 提出。

Thanks. Just wondering given that the applications performed dramatically different between the US and Europe. What was the main issue in the difference, was it that the quality issues were better known in the US and became the factors [_______________] or were there other issues that caused Europe to execute better than the US in the application business.

謝謝。只是想問，鑑於應用程式在美國與歐洲的表現差異非常大，造成差異的主要原因是什麼？是因為品質問題在美國更早被了解並成為因素 [_______________]，還是有其他原因使得歐洲在應用程式業務上的執行優於美國？

I think, it is 2 issues, Chuck. Really it's a comparison issue. Of course, our growth over the last quarter has, there are 2 things you have to consider, how well we did in this quarter, and how well we did last quarter. So, Europe had a very easy comparison, and the US had a very difficult comparison. And of course the economy in the US has slowed much more precipitously than in Europe. I think, those were the 2 issues. Easy comparisons and different economies

我想有兩個因素，Chuck。其實這是一個比較基期的問題。當然，我們上季的成長，有兩件事要考量：這一季我們做得多好，以及上一季我們做得多好。所以歐洲的比較基期很容易，而美國的比較基期很困難。當然，美國經濟的放緩也比歐洲更為急遽。我想就是這兩個因素：比較基期容易，以及經濟環境不同。

Was the dotcom issue a factor?

網路公司（dotcom）的問題是一個因素嗎？

Yeah, sure. Dotcom and Telecom. Our 2 biggest markets, a year ago, were the Telecom industry and the Dotcom industry, and those markets have, what's the right word, played it down.

是的，當然。Dotcom 和 Telecom。我們一年前最大的兩個市場是電信產業與網路公司產業，而那些市場——用什麼詞比較好——已經降溫了。

Anyway quantifying the impact. In other words, kind of inclusive of dotcom's, what the applications would look like.

那麼量化其影響呢？換句話說，把 dotcom 的影響也包含在內，應用程式的表現會是什麼樣子？

Jeff.

Jeff。

No, I haven't through the America's in total, I didn't go and try to figure out the applications versus database because clearly it affected both. The impact of total license was about 11 points. So, there was a 11 points of negative impact on the growth rate.

沒有，我沒有把美洲地區整體拆開來看，我沒有去試著把應用程式與資料庫分開計算，因為很明顯兩者都受到影響。對總授權（total license）的影響大約是 11 個點。所以，成長率有大約 11 個點的負面影響。

I would like to comment about the core quality problems in the first year of the E-Business Suite, which submits you the proposition that given the size and complexity of this new version of applications, we have made it through this transition much more gracefully than SAP and introducing our [_______________] mySAP, or introducing PeopleSoft ACE. We have actually got live customers, real customers in one year. To have all of these customers live and running their businesses on a Suite of this size and complexity has never been done before in the history of application business. So, I would say that 2 things that are unique about our 11i, one is the comprehensive nature, the size of the new offering. And the other is how quickly in one year, we have got giant companies live and had their money in this business on this Suite. I would like to have any analyst to try go back and find in history a transition that was accomplished in 12 months.

我想評論一下 E-Business Suite 第一年的核心品質問題；這也支持一個觀點：考量到這個新版應用程式的規模與複雜度，我們完成這次轉換的過程其實比 SAP 推出他們的 [_______________] mySAP，或 PeopleSoft 推出 ACE 還要平順得多。我們在一年內就已經有上線客戶，是真正的客戶。讓這麼多客戶上線，並用如此規模與複雜度的一套 Suite 來營運他們的業務，在應用程式產業史上從未發生過。所以我會說，我們 11i 有兩個獨特之處：第一是它的全面性，也就是新產品的規模之大；第二是我們在一年內就讓大型企業上線，並且把真金白銀投在這套 Suite 上。我希望任何分析師都可以回頭去找歷史上是否有在 12 個月內完成的轉換案例。

And then on the real applications clusters, one of the market research firms came out with the statement advising their clients to kind of wait a year saying that it had a short data cycle only once a year kind of status. From your perspective are there enough customers, who have picked the cost hopefully in production, where it is not issue in terms of quality and things are ready to go?

另外關於 Real Application Clusters，有一家市場研究公司發表聲明，建議他們的客戶大概等一年，說它的資料週期很短、只有一年一次那種狀態。從你的角度看，是否已經有足夠多的客戶，已經承擔成本並希望已在正式環境（production）中運行，使得品質不再是問題、而且已經準備好可以上線？

I mean, I don't know what analyst is questioning the quality of our database product. In fact, the preposterous, let tell me tell you how preposterous that is. The single most important thing about application clusters, real application clusters is it make your application so much more reliable architecturally. So, what are they waiting for. It immediately makes your application more reliable and it tolerate failures. So, why would you wait. I mean, it is a very funny thing to wait on. It's a little bit saying, gee, this fire extinguisher hasn't been thoroughly tested, so, let's go with no fire extinguisher for the first year because the fire extinguisher will be get better over that 12 month period. Again, I would love to know the name of the analyst who said that . Perhaps I heard some pretty bizarre things about real application clusters. Real application clusters, clusters we have been working for 10 years. We have numerous accounts. They have tested it and are using it, it is again, we encourage people to use it right away because it makes your application immediately and much more reliable. I do not know why anyone would wait.

我的意思是，我不知道是哪位分析師在質疑我們資料庫產品的品質。事實上，那太荒謬了，我來告訴你有多荒謬。Real Application Clusters 最重要的一點，就是它在架構上讓你的應用程式可靠性大幅提升。所以他們到底在等什麼？它會立刻讓你的應用程式更可靠，並且能容忍故障。那為什麼要等？這就有點像在說：嗯，這個滅火器還沒有被徹底測試，所以第一年我們先不要滅火器，因為滅火器在接下來 12 個月會變得更好。再說一次，我很想知道是哪位分析師說的。也許我聽過一些關於 Real Application Clusters 的相當離奇的說法。Real Application Clusters——我們做叢集（clusters）已經做了 10 年。我們有很多客戶帳戶，他們已經測試並正在使用。再一次，我們鼓勵大家立刻使用，因為它會立即讓你的應用程式變得更可靠、而且可靠性大幅提升。我不知道為什麼有人要等。

Last question on the application server. Just a time frame and kind of when only your own applications were supported, and secondly kind of maybe a sum of how you are going in the marketing and going to track developers to compete with BEA.

關於應用伺服器的最後一個問題。想請教一下時間表，也就是在什麼時間點之前只支援你們自家的應用；第二個是，請大致總結一下你們在行銷方面的進展，以及你們打算如何追蹤開發者，以便與 BEA 競爭。

Again, I believe the next version of application support, the full new version of our application server. The best way to understand how excited people were about our application server, was get into the chat rooms and talk to programmers and just see what programmers are saying about it. Don't believe me in terms of the benchmarks that we published, see all the different peoples who have downloaded the application server. Over a million downloads since our announcement in Java 1, over a million downloads. Major customers have already taken applications of the WebSphere in BEA and find that they run much, much faster on our application server. So, again, the great way, if I were an analyst the way I would tried to gather intelligence is I wouldn't look and see what other analysts were saying, I would see what programmers were saying, because the programmers are actually trying it and using it, and they are pretty blown away. The other thing, this is an interesting community and with regards to the Java community. The Java community never liked the idea of being locked in to anyone vendor. The reason they chose Java and Microsoft dot Net is that they didn't want to be held captive by any one vendor. I think, they kind of perceive BEA as trying to be the Microsoft to Java, and there are not entirely thrilled with being held captive by one vendor and they liked the idea of us competing with the BEA, and since we have fastest software and more reliable software right now than BEA. They are going to exercise their freedom to choose. These are not Microsoft captives, these are members of the free and standard based Internet world.

再說一次，我相信下一版的應用支援，也就是我們應用伺服器完整的全新版本。要了解大家對我們應用伺服器有多興奮，最好的方式就是進聊天室跟程式設計師聊聊，看看程式設計師怎麼說。不要只聽我講我們公布的基準測試，去看看有多少不同的人下載了這個應用伺服器。自從我們在 Java 1 上宣布以來，下載量已超過一百萬次，超過一百萬次。大型客戶已經把原本在 WebSphere 或 BEA 上的應用拿來測，發現跑在我們的應用伺服器上快得多、快非常多。所以，再次強調，如果我是分析師，我蒐集情報的方式不會去看其他分析師怎麼說，我會去看程式設計師怎麼說，因為程式設計師真的在試、在用，而且他們相當震撼。另一點，這是個很有意思的社群，尤其是 Java 社群。Java 社群從來不喜歡被鎖定在任何一家供應商。之所以選 Java 而不是 Microsoft .Net，是因為他們不想被任何單一供應商挾持。我想他們某種程度上把 BEA 視為想成為 Java 世界的微軟，而他們並不完全樂見被單一供應商綁住；他們喜歡我們跟 BEA 競爭的想法，而且因為我們目前的軟體比 BEA 更快、更可靠，他們會行使自己選擇的自由。這些不是微軟的俘虜，這些是自由、以標準為基礎的網際網路世界的成員。

Thank-you and good job on the quarter in a tough environment.

謝謝你，在艱困的環境下這一季做得很好。

Thank-you.

謝謝你。

As a reminder, please limit yourself to one question per queue. We will now here form Neil Herman.

提醒一下，請每次排隊僅限一個問題。接下來我們將聽取 Neil Herman 的提問。

Hi! guys. Could you just give us kind of general sense as to by geographic region, what your sense is as to when things may begin to pick up, and what kind of anecdotal evidence or underlying things that you're seeing out there gives you the sense that hopefully, we should see that pick up in the US by the end of the year and if you just address the other major ERP's as well.

嗨，各位。你們能否就地理區域大致談一下，什麼時候你們覺得景氣可能開始回溫？以及你們在外面看到哪些軼聞證據或基本面因素，讓你們覺得美國有希望在年底前回升？也請順便談談其他主要 ERP 廠商的情況。

Ya, I think my comments initially were geared more towards the US because that is where we saw the slowness start and because it is our biggest region. So, we have 3 people who manage the US force and each one of the individuals is more bullish, starting off this quarter than they were last. Their pipelines are better, they feel good about the product position, but just the general aggregate demand, I think is better and it is biggest single thing. Europe is on lag affects. So, it started slowing down a bit and again we just spoke to the guy, [_______________] and his comments was, gee, I think things are a bit softer, but I certainly don't see the kind of slowdown that we saw in US at this point. So, his assumption is because he started slowing down later than the US, it will take him a couple of quarters and so, he is not looking for easy turn around, but nor is he looking for a sharper slowdown either. So, I think we can do okay in Europe. I don't think it's going to be the big negative that US was and he doesn't have the same dotcom. He has got a limited dotcom population, but nothing to the magnitude US had and then Asia is kind of mix, but overall it has held up. If you cut to the currency and look at real constant growth, it has done well all last year and their outlook for this quarter is looking good, despite what you hear about Japan and these places still doing reasonably well. So, I think hopefully, we are not going to see a big slowdown in Asia, and the US will come out of this quicker in terms of real up trend and then Europe will follow back as well.

是的，我一開始的評論比較偏向美國，因為我們看到放緩是從美國開始，而且那也是我們最大的區域。所以，我們有 3 位負責管理美國銷售團隊的人，而他們每一位在本季一開始都比上一季更偏多。他們的案源管線更好，對產品定位也更有信心；但我認為整體總需求的改善，才是最大的一件事。歐洲有滯後效應。所以它開始稍微放緩；我們剛剛也跟那位先生談過，[_______________]，他的評論是：嗯，我覺得有些變軟，但我當然還沒看到像美國那樣的放緩程度。所以他的假設是，因為歐洲比美國晚開始放緩，可能還要幾個季度才會走完，因此他不期待很快就反轉，但也不預期會出現更急劇的下滑。所以我認為我們在歐洲可以做得還不錯。我不認為它會像美國那樣成為很大的負面因素，而且歐洲沒有同樣的 dotcom 情況。那邊的 dotcom 族群有限，遠不到美國當時的規模。至於亞洲則是有點混合，但整體撐得住。如果把匯率因素剔除、看實質的固定匯率成長，去年整年表現都不錯，而他們對本季的展望也看起來不錯，儘管你聽到日本等地的消息，但仍算表現得相當可以。所以我希望我們不會在亞洲看到很大的放緩；而美國在實質上升趨勢方面會更快走出來，接著歐洲也會跟上。

If you were to take a longer term view trying to exclude the economic cycles here, what do you think the longer term range growth is in the database business and the application business.

如果用更長期的角度、試著排除景氣循環的影響，你認為資料庫業務與應用業務的長期成長區間各是多少？

I think the database business is 15%-20% over a long-term. It is not in unreasonable position as we have been gaining share over the several years and including this past year contrary to what IBM or Microsoft says, we actually gained share points by going with the numbers you have right here, and I expect we will continue to gain share with real application clusters. We think we will dramatically gain share and now for the first time also by their mainframes. So, I think there is going to be a big shift not only will information grow this is the beginning of the information age not the end of it. More and more information will be stored on computers, but also you will see more and more data migrating offered by their mainframes, now that we have this clustering technology. It gives you reliability and high performance. Application's business, I don't see no reason why we can't get that to a 50%-100% growth in the application business.

我認為資料庫業務長期大概是 15%–20%。這並不不合理，因為過去幾年我們一直在提升市占，包括去年也是；與 IBM 或微軟所說相反，實際上我們是增加了市占點數，從你們手上這些數字就看得出來，而且我預期我們會持續透過 Real Application Clusters 來提升市占。我們認為市占會大幅提升，而且現在也首次能從他們的大型主機那邊取得份額。所以我認為會有很大的轉移：資訊量不只會成長，這是資訊時代的開始，不是結束。越來越多資訊會被儲存在電腦上；同時，現在我們有了叢集技術，你也會看到越來越多資料從他們的大型主機遷移出來。它能提供可靠性與高效能。至於應用業務，我看不出有什麼理由我們不能把應用業務做到 50%–100% 的成長。

And then one quick last one and that is, I know you have change your database pricing. What's been the early response from customers and what do you think the impact is going to be taking a longer term look at your database business from that pricing change.

最後再快速問一個：我知道你們調整了資料庫定價。客戶的早期反應如何？從更長期來看，你認為這次定價變更對你們資料庫業務的影響會是什麼？

The customers generally liked the change, they changed the system that we had before, again didn't allow them to do. When they upgraded their computer, if you had a 4 processor machine running Oracle with 400 MHz microprocessor and you change it to a 4 processor machine with 700 MHz microprocessor you actually had to pay Oracle more money and just keeping track of all of this was more complicated than simply counting processors. So we decided to go with a much simpler metric. It is easier for our customers. It is easier to do comparison shopping. You can argue that it was a price decrease, but actually all we really did was reset prices to where they were a year ago, that's all we did. I have actually seen analyst's report saying with a huge price reduction, I don't see an analyst report. First one I saw this morning says that it was actually a price increase. It was neither, it was actually just a reset to last year, maybe the slight reduction 10%-20% something like that, but we think it will have no impact whatsoever in terms of our revenues. We expect normal circumstances to grow our database business 15%-20% and we think these pricing won't impact that one way or the other.

客戶普遍喜歡這個改變；我們把之前那套制度改掉了，因為那套制度在他們升級電腦時，實際上不允許他們怎麼做。舉例來說，如果你有一台 4 顆處理器的機器跑 Oracle、每顆是 400 MHz 的微處理器，然後你換成同樣 4 顆處理器但每顆是 700 MHz 的機器，你其實就得付 Oracle 更多錢；而追蹤這些事情比起單純按處理器數量計算要複雜得多。所以我們決定採用更簡單的衡量方式。這對客戶更容易，也更容易做比價。你可以說這是降價，但其實我們真正做的只是把價格重設回一年前的水準，就只是這樣。我其實看過分析師報告說是大幅降價，但我沒看到那樣的分析師報告；我今天早上看到的第一份報告反而說這其實是漲價。兩者都不是；它其實只是回到去年，可能有一點點下調，大概 10%–20% 之類，但我們認為對營收不會有任何影響。我們預期在正常情況下資料庫業務會成長 15%–20%，而我們認為這次定價不會在任何方向上影響這個成長。

Thanks a lot.

非常感謝。

Our next question will come from Rob Tholemeier.

下一個問題將由 Rob Tholemeier 提出。

Hi! Thanks a lot. Just looking at the number of customers that you have running applications and their application revenue in the pipeline of 3500, do you think that there is a possibility that there could be some negative shelfware, places where the applications have been deployed and you have not collected. Let me ask one other question quickly on pricing. If your price has so many features, but is slightly more expensive than IBM have you considered doing additional unbundlings, so that you have a nominal sort of "I got your price", that's lower than the IBM price as a way of getting people started and knowing that though immediately by the upgrades.

嗨！非常感謝。就你們目前有多少客戶在跑應用程式，以及 3,500 的應用程式營收管線來看，你覺得是否可能存在一些負面的「擱置軟體」（shelfware）情況，也就是應用程式已經部署了，但你們尚未收款？我再快速問一個關於定價的問題。如果你們的價格包含很多功能，但比 IBM 略貴，你們是否考慮做更多拆分（unbundling），讓你們有一個名目上「我有你的價格」的方案，價格低於 IBM，用來讓客戶先開始使用，並且知道之後可以立刻透過升級來帶動收入？

No actually IBM has just done that with Webster. They have now completely unbundled Webster and they just fell it piece by piece. We think that's a very bad idea. It makes it very difficult for us to test our products. We sell our products in a variety of permutations and different combination of products. It is very hard for us to test the product to make sure it is reliable. Also it is very confusing because if an application developer is developing software on top of our product. If our product is really nothing more than some number of 30 separate components, you don't know what's there. So, we have made the decision that all versions of Oracle are the same, have the same features. The only difference by and large so that an application will run on the standard edition that same application will run on enterprise edition and what we charge extra for primarily is more performance and more reliability. There are few exceptions to that. We do have a few functional extensions. We have introduced integrated OLAP with its version of the database and integrated data mining, our latest version of database. It is interesting to note that there our OLAP is 2.5 times less expensive than IBM, and our data mining is 3 times less expensive than IBM, and ours is integrated with the database and their is a separate products and in fact, their OLAP product is really good, they are just reselling [_______________]. It is not integrated as a separate product, we have integration. We think we have enough separate products that we can go back to our installed base and sell them additional value and get paid for that additional value, but we don't want to so thoroughly autotomize our product, but Oracle ceases to have a meaning, just like Webster. Webster has a meaning. I think Webster is something like 60 separate products. There is no such thing as Webster, you can't buy it and we don't want that to happen to Oracle.

不，其實 IBM 剛剛在 Webster 上這麼做了。他們現在已經把 Webster 完全拆開，然後一塊一塊地賣。我們認為那是非常糟糕的主意。這會讓我們很難測試我們的產品。我們以各種排列組合、不同產品組合來銷售我們的產品；要測試產品並確保其可靠性就變得非常困難。而且也非常令人困惑，因為如果應用程式開發者要在我們的產品之上開發軟體，若我們的產品其實只是 30 個獨立元件的某種組合，你根本不知道裡面到底有哪些東西。所以，我們已經決定 Oracle 的所有版本都是一樣的、具備相同功能。唯一主要的差異是：同一個應用程式在 Standard Edition 上能跑，在 Enterprise Edition 上也能跑；而我們主要額外收費的是更高的效能與更高的可靠性。當然也有少數例外，我們確實有一些功能性延伸。我們在資料庫版本中導入了整合式 OLAP，也在最新版本的資料庫中整合了資料探勘。值得注意的是，我們的 OLAP 比 IBM 便宜 2.5 倍，我們的資料探勘比 IBM 便宜 3 倍；而且我們的是與資料庫整合的，他們的是獨立產品。事實上，他們的 OLAP 產品其實做得不錯，他們只是轉售 [_______________]。它不是整合的，而是獨立產品；我們則是整合。我們認為我們已經有足夠多的獨立產品，可以回到既有客戶基礎去銷售額外價值，並為這些額外價值收費；但我們不想把產品拆得支離破碎，拆到 Oracle 這個名稱失去意義，就像 Webster 一樣。Webster 這個名字曾經有意義。我想 Webster 大概變成 60 個獨立產品。根本沒有一個叫 Webster 的東西，你買不到「Webster」本身；我們不希望 Oracle 也變成那樣。

What about the issue of with this many live customers in this years pipeline, the revenue number seems to be kind of light given the number of our customers that are out there. Do you think there are people they are maybe running in our production, but development licenses?

那關於這個問題：今年管線裡有這麼多已上線的客戶，但以外面這麼多客戶的數量來看，營收數字似乎有點偏輕。你覺得會不會有人其實已經在正式環境（production）跑了，但用的是開發授權（development licenses）？

No, I think what we have done is again is we have been very cautious about doing lot's of big deals at big discounts and again, I know there was some prior report, I read saying we really to make Q4, we borrowed from Q1, just the opposite was true. We have said no to a number of deals in Q4. One of the reason why our Q1 pipeline looks little better than some people might think is when a large customers said, hey, we are rolling out this big application. We want to buy all we need for the next 3 years we will you give you a big check right now and just gives us a 95% discount. We said no, thanks it's very nice of you, but keep your money and pay us as you need the software. We are not doing that anymore and by the way that had impact in Q4. We could have sold a lot more software in Q4.

不，我認為我們做的事情是——再一次——我們對於以大幅折扣做很多大案子一直非常謹慎。而且我知道之前有一些報告，我也讀到，說我們為了達成第四季（Q4），把第一季（Q1）的業績借過來；事實正好相反。我們在 Q4 對不少交易說了不。其中一個原因是，當大型客戶說：「嘿，我們要推出這個大型應用。我們想一次買足未來三年所需，你現在就給你一大筆支票，只要給我們 95% 的折扣。」我們說不，謝謝，你很客氣，但把你的錢留著，等你需要軟體時再付給我們。我們不再做那種事了。順帶一提，這確實對 Q4 有影響；我們本來可以在 Q4 賣出更多軟體。

One more think, the pipeline looks much better than for the application looking forward.

再補充一點，往前看，應用程式的管線看起來好很多。

I would like to repeat exactly what Jeff Henley, we are kind of cautiously optimistic, but in a couple of our US units, let me just give you just facts here. We have unprecedentedly high pipeline coverage. In other words, the pipeline is the 5 times the size of what has been forecasted in one our units, 4 times in another of our units. Never had pipeline coverage like that. That's a reason why we are optimistic, but we are also being very, very cautious. This is uncharted territory.

我想重複 Jeff Henley 的說法：我們算是審慎樂觀（cautiously optimistic）。但在我們美國的幾個事業單位，我先給你一些事實：我們的管線覆蓋率（pipeline coverage）高得前所未見。換句話說，在我們其中一個單位，管線規模是預測（forecast）金額的 5 倍；在另一個單位是 4 倍。我們從來沒有看過這樣的管線覆蓋率。這也是我們樂觀的原因之一，但我們同時也非常、非常謹慎。這是未知領域。

Thanks.

謝謝。

Thank-you and our next question will come Wendell Laidley.

謝謝，下一個問題將由 Wendell Laidley 提出。

Yeah congratulations. Two questions. Could you provide more granularity on the application business. Specifically, do you think you have a critical mass now of reference customers such that those businesses can reaccelerate and secondly, on the margins side, how much of the margin expansion going forward will come from operating efficiencies as opposed to growth in license revenue and other gross margin efficiencies. Thanks.

是的，恭喜。兩個問題。你能否就應用程式業務提供更細的拆解？具體來說，第一，你是否認為你們現在已經有足夠的標竿/推薦客戶（reference customers）臨界規模，使得這些業務能夠重新加速？第二，關於毛利率/利潤率（margins）方面，未來的利潤率擴張有多少會來自營運效率（operating efficiencies），相對於授權收入成長以及其他毛利效率的提升？謝謝。

Yeah, I think we have in terms of references, we are literally you can look at our advertising for the E-Business Suite, we just talked about for a year. We saved a billion dollars, Oracle saved a billion dollars in E-Business Suite. We talked about the concept of the Suite being complete for the first time during everything. It really was a conceptual sell and the primary reference was Oracle for the first year. We have gone from that to saying our preeminent reference is General Electric. Our preeminent reference is Wachovia, Hewlett Packard, Ford, and Sony, and Sony implemented a complete supply chain automation in 45 days. You want to compare that 45 days implementation at a company of the size of Sony with I2 implementation. You want to compare a 5-1/2 month GE Power implementation with an SAP implementation. In both cases no software modification. So, we are through talking about how much, well I guess we still talk about how much Oracle saves you [________________] offer, but that's not going to be our primary emphasis. We are going to talk about how quickly our customers implemented this. How the best companies in the world Ford, Wachovia, General Electric, Sony, Boeing, etcetera are using this Suite to run their business today. How they put it in record time. How they are able to put it in without making any software modification. How these projects were delivered ahead of time and under budget, really it's an unprecedented thing to happen in the application business. So, it is a whole different sales pitch and we have already talked to out people saying that the only thing we are going to advertise are references, that's it. We are going on a pure reference basis. It is no longer a concept sale. It is a reference sale. That's a huge difference in one year.

是的，我想就推薦案例而言，你真的可以看看我們對 E-Business Suite 的廣告——我們過去一年一直在談：我們省下了 10 億美元，Oracle 在 E-Business Suite 上省下了 10 億美元。我們談到這個 Suite 首次在各方面都「完整」的概念。那其實是一種概念式銷售（conceptual sell），而第一年的主要推薦案例就是 Oracle 自己。我們已經從那樣，走到現在說：我們最重要的推薦案例是通用電氣（General Electric）。我們最重要的推薦案例是 Wachovia、Hewlett Packard、Ford，以及 Sony；而 Sony 在 45 天內就完成了完整的供應鏈自動化導入。你想把 Sony 這種規模的公司 45 天導入，拿去跟 I2 的導入比較嗎？你想把 GE Power 5 個半月的導入，拿去跟 SAP 的導入比較嗎？兩個案例都沒有做任何軟體修改。所以，我們不再只是一直談「Oracle 幫你省多少」——嗯，我想我們還是會談 Oracle 幫你省多少 [________________] offer，但那不會是我們的主要重點。我們要談的是客戶導入得有多快；世界上最好的公司——Ford、Wachovia、General Electric、Sony、Boeing 等等——今天如何用這個 Suite 來營運他們的業務；他們如何在破紀錄的時間內上線；如何在不做任何軟體修改的情況下導入；這些專案如何提前交付且低於預算。這在應用程式業務中真的是前所未見。因此，這是一套完全不同的銷售說法。我們也已經跟我們的人談過：我們唯一要做的廣告就是推薦案例，就這樣。我們要完全以推薦案例為基礎來推廣。這不再是概念式銷售，而是推薦案例式銷售。這在一年之內是巨大的改變。

Can you talk about specific breakdown within the applications business? What's coming from ERP, supply chain, CRM etc?

你能談談應用軟體業務內部更具體的拆分嗎？例如 ERP、供應鏈、CRM 等各自貢獻多少？

Again, we sell the E-Business Suite, we stopped doing that a while ago, and we sell the entire E-Business Suite. And, we have some spectacular CRM successes in Bell South. I don't know about a 10,000 agent automation project of Siebel. I don't know where Siebel can show you that they have got their live in 30 countries like Hewlett Packard in sales force automation. Siebel doesn't even have their Internet system yet I know they claim to have had it a couple of years ago, but now they've just said they had it a couple of years ago, now they have just said they will have it at the end of this year. Well, one of those two times they must have been mistaken. It is either going to be done or was done. I am not going to even ask them about them. Interesting. They don't even have an Internet system yet. They are doing very well in the market. They are going to make hire most of their products. Their products are not integrated. Those pieces don't fit together, and they are not on the Internet. We now have solid references. They've gotten away saying Oracle has their references, Oracle levered the big pitch against 11i, quality problems in their references. Well, look at GE, that's how they run their business, works at Ford, works at Wachovia, works at HP, works at Sony, works at Boeing, works at Bell South.

再說一次，我們賣的是 E-Business Suite；我們在一段時間前就停止只賣其中某些部分了，我們賣的是完整的 E-Business Suite。而且，我們在 Bell South 有一些非常亮眼的 CRM 成功案例。我不知道 Siebel 所謂的 10,000 名客服人員自動化專案是怎麼回事。我也不知道 Siebel 能在哪裡向你展示他們像 Hewlett Packard 在銷售自動化那樣，已在 30 個國家上線。我知道他們聲稱幾年前就有網際網路系統，但現在他們又說要到今年年底才會有。嗯，這兩個時間點其中一個肯定是搞錯了；不是已經做完了，就是還沒做完。我甚至不想去問他們。很有意思，他們到現在連網際網路系統都還沒有。他們在市場上做得很好。他們將會把大部分產品外包製造。他們的產品沒有整合，那些模組彼此拼不起來，而且也不在網際網路上。我們現在有扎實的客戶參考案例。他們一直靠著說 Oracle 的參考案例有問題、Oracle 在 11i 上大肆宣傳、參考案例有品質問題而蒙混過關。那就看看 GE——他們就是這樣在經營業務的；在 Ford 可行、在 Wachovia 可行、在 HP 可行、在 Sony 可行、在 Boeing 可行、在 Bell South 也可行。

Okay. And the margins question?

好的。那毛利率的問題呢？

I think you will see margin expansion both ways. If the economy comes back to normal, if things go back, you will see us expanding our sales, but I don't think you will see us expanding our expenses. We don't think it's necessary for us to grow expenses to grow sales. In fact, we can get more savings to be had, by using the Internet. So, we expect, we have two avenues where we can improve margins. We can continue to cut expenses. We think there is still fat in this company. There are still ways to improve our processes, move out across the Internet and do more with fewer people and fewer dollars by using technology, by using the Internet. The other is, we think our products are fabulously competitive across the board in sales, in borrowing, in economics, disaster, sales should go up. Then, we will see expansion based both on top line acceleration and further expense cuts.

我認為你會看到毛利率從兩個方向擴張。如果經濟回到正常、如果情況回穩，你會看到我們擴大銷售，但我不認為你會看到我們擴大費用。我們不認為為了成長銷售就必須成長費用。事實上，透過使用網際網路，我們還能取得更多節省。因此，我們預期有兩條途徑可以改善毛利率：第一，我們可以持續削減費用。我們認為公司裡仍然有冗餘；仍有方法改善流程，轉移到網際網路上，用更少的人力與更少的資金，透過技術、透過網際網路做更多事。第二，我們認為我們的產品在各方面都極具競爭力；一旦景氣、融資、經濟等狀況回升，銷售應該會上來。那麼，我們將同時受惠於營收端加速成長以及進一步的費用削減，帶來毛利率擴張。

Congrats on a very spectacular quarter.

恭喜你們有一個非常亮眼的季度。

We will take one more question operator.

接線員，我們再接最後一個問題。

Thank-you. Our final question will come from Rick Sherlund.

謝謝。我們最後一個問題來自 Rick Sherlund。

Thanks. I wonder if you could just talk about the sale cycle on the application side versus database, and Larry if you could also talk a bit about what you seeing on the competitive front? PeopleSoft had, in your release. What are you seeing from SAP and Siebel?

謝謝。我想請你談談應用軟體端相較於資料庫的銷售週期；另外 Larry，也請你談談你在競爭面看到的情況。你們的新聞稿裡提到 PeopleSoft。那你們從 SAP 和 Siebel 那邊看到了什麼？

Well let's see. I'm sorry Rick, but .........

嗯，讓我想想。抱歉 Rick，不過……

First was sale cycle related.

第一個是關於銷售週期。

Okay. Clearly the applications have a much longer sales cycle than either the application server or the database. And, in fact, I think, one of the things that were most interesting, one of the interesting wildcards out there, is that we think the application server might be a very short sales cycle. We have never had a product with this short a sales cycle. So, we are very curious about that. It is very easy to verify our benchmark number. It is very easy to move an application from BEA or WebSphere, to the Oracle application server, it is very simple to do. We think that is going to be an exceptionally short sales cycle, much shorter than database, so we have got this new product that has a very short sales cycle on it. Obviously, database is what the database is, and then there is the sales cycle for applications, which was longer than it should have been because of lack of references for 11i. Again, it was really a concept sell. Hey, this sounds great, all the pieces are there. You don't have a lot of references, but I love the idea, and you are using it internally, that sounds pretty cool. So, the sale that we've made is directly on 11i, we are based on this notion, this notion of a complete integrated E-Business Suite that help make Oracle successful. Now, we've got tons and tons of references that provide a lot of comfort. So, we think will allow us to shorten the sale cycle for applications going forward. We are at it again, doing primarily reference selling and demonstration selling going forward, as opposed to concept selling. So, we think that will speed up the sales cycle for applications. The reason that we are able to complete this transition so quickly, the interesting thing, the answer I gave to Chuck, one year later we have got so many customers live, you know, HP, Ford, you know blah, blah, blah, all the guys, Wachovia. TOSCO the largest steel company in the world live and it is in one year. The reason that we are able to do this, is we can do these implementations very fast because they require no software modifications and a minimum to no systems integration. So, you would think in a down economic cycle, we can cost a tiny, putting in our applications cost a lot less than putting in Siebel, or putting in PeopleSoft, or putting in SAP or anybody else. We don't think that is well understood yet. But again, how could we have gotten all of these customers loyal, an interesting question. How do we get these giant companies live in such a short period of time? Well GE is the perfect example. They did not do any systems integration. They did not do any software modification. We did systems integration in a lot of places, but 85% of our implementations are now running without any software modifications at all. That allows us to get them in very quickly at a very low cost. Typically, I know, we're bidding these things. We're bidding a cost of implementation equal to the cost of license. This compares with Siebel, which is seven to ten times the cost of the license. And as people begin to grasp, you know IBM made a big stink about it. It is either cheaper than our database. Well, talk about being cheaper than Siebel, we are 1/3rd or 1/4th the cost of Siebel or 1/5th the cost of SAP, if you count the implementation cost. For us, we get installed very quickly. Find a Siebel implementation where they put a company like HP live in every country in which they do business for sales force automation in less than a year. Find anything like that, and, with no software modifications. So, again, we think this new idea, this E-Business Suite idea, implementing software without modification. Now that we've got references, now that we can site this, now that we are willing to say 'Hey! if you give us 10 million of your license, we will do the whole implementation for a second 10 million.'

好的。很明顯，應用軟體的銷售週期比應用伺服器或資料庫都長。事實上，我認為其中一個最有趣的點、也是一個有趣的變數，是我們認為應用伺服器的銷售週期可能會非常短。我們從未有過銷售週期這麼短的產品，所以我們對此非常好奇。我們的基準測試數據非常容易驗證；把應用從 BEA 或 WebSphere 移到 Oracle 應用伺服器也很容易，做起來非常簡單。我們認為那會是一個極短的銷售週期，比資料庫還短得多，所以我們有了這個新產品，它的銷售週期非常短。當然，資料庫就是資料庫；而應用軟體的銷售週期，過去之所以比應有的更長，是因為 11i 缺乏參考案例。再說一次，那真的比較像是在賣概念：嘿，這聽起來很棒，所有零件都在；你沒有很多參考案例，但我喜歡這個想法，而且你們自己內部也在用，聽起來很酷。所以，我們現在做成的交易是直接基於 11i，基於這個概念——完整整合的 E-Business Suite，這個概念幫助 Oracle 成功。現在，我們有大量大量的參考案例，讓客戶更安心。因此，我們認為這將使我們未來能縮短應用軟體的銷售週期。我們又回到主要以參考案例銷售與示範銷售為主，而不是概念銷售。所以，我們認為這會加快應用軟體的銷售週期。我們能如此快速完成這個轉變的原因——也就是我回答 Chuck 的那個有趣點——一年之後，我們有這麼多客戶已經上線，你知道，HP、Ford，等等等等，那些公司，還有 Wachovia。TOSCO，世界上最大的鋼鐵公司，也上線了，而且是在一年內。我們之所以能做到，是因為我們可以非常快速地導入，因為不需要軟體修改，而且系統整合需求極少甚至不需要。因此你會想，在景氣下行的週期裡，我們的成本很低，導入我們的應用軟體比導入 Siebel、PeopleSoft、SAP 或任何其他家的成本都低得多。我們認為市場還沒有充分理解這點。但再說一次，我們怎麼可能讓這些客戶都如此認同？這是個有趣的問題。我們如何讓這些大型企業在這麼短的時間內上線？GE 就是最好的例子。他們沒有做任何系統整合，也沒有做任何軟體修改。我們在很多地方做過系統整合，但現在我們 85% 的導入案完全不需要任何軟體修改。這讓我們能以非常低的成本、非常快地讓客戶上線。通常你知道，我們是在投標這些案子。我們投標的導入成本大約等於授權費用。相較之下，Siebel 的導入成本是授權費用的 7 到 10 倍。當人們開始理解這點——你知道 IBM 對此大做文章，說它比我們的資料庫還便宜——那就談談比 Siebel 便宜吧：如果把導入成本算進去，我們的成本是 Siebel 的 1/3 或 1/4，是 SAP 的 1/5。對我們而言，我們能非常快地完成安裝。找一個 Siebel 的導入案例，能在不到一年內、在其業務所在的每個國家，讓像 HP 這樣的公司在銷售自動化上線；再找一個同樣的案例，而且還不做任何軟體修改。再說一次，我們認為這個新想法——E-Business Suite 的想法、在不修改的情況下導入軟體——現在我們有了參考案例，現在我們可以引用這些案例，現在我們也願意說：「嘿！如果你給我們 1,000 萬美元的授權費，我們就用另外 1,000 萬美元把整個導入都做完。」

Larry, do you think that the weakness in the quarter is more a function of a tough year over your comparison versus anything unusual going on in the application space versus the database space?

Larry，你認為本季的疲弱，更多是因為相較基期是一個艱難的一年所致，而不是因為應用軟體領域相對於資料庫領域出現了任何不尋常的情況嗎？

Again, I think, it is a tough comparison, tough economic climate, and the fact that we were, after Q4 we were selling our applications based on the concept rather than based on references, and so I think all three of those things conspired to slowdown our applications business. Going forward, so I know you're saying how much can you extrapolate to other application companies? Well, clearly the tough economic climate, you can extrapolate. We think our position is much stronger in applications going forward because of this rather phenomenal reference base. Not just the applications are running, we got them running in less than a year in all cases, and in 85% of the cases we did it without any software modifications. It's really a wholly new approach to the applications business. If you just own an application, you save five to ten times more for the labor to put it in. Now, the cost of the license and the cost of the labor are about the same.

再說一次，我認為這是艱難的比較基期、艱困的經濟環境，以及我們在第四季之後銷售應用軟體時，是基於概念而非基於客戶參考案例，因此我認為這三件事共同導致我們的應用軟體業務放緩。展望未來，我知道你在問的是：你能把這種情況外推到其他應用軟體公司多少？嗯，顯然，艱困的經濟環境是可以外推的。我們認為，因為這個相當驚人的參考客戶基礎，我們在應用軟體方面的地位未來會強得多。不只是應用軟體在運行；在所有案例中，我們都在不到一年的時間內讓它們上線，而且在 85% 的案例中，我們是在沒有任何軟體修改的情況下完成的。這真的是一種全新的應用軟體業務做法。如果你只是擁有一套應用軟體，你在導入所需的人力成本上可以節省 5 到 10 倍。現在，授權成本與人力成本大約是相同的。

And SAP and PeopleSoft?

那 SAP 和 PeopleSoft 呢？

We see SAP, certainly a resurgence in Europe in SAP. Less so over in United States. And we see PeopleSoft has better of resurgence in HR, but no place else, absolutely no place else. And in fact, one of the interesting things is that we are having a very hard time finding any PeopleSoft customers live anywhere. Though PeopleSoft [________________], oh this is another thing, let me just comment about PeopleSoft [________________], what PeopleSoft is saying "Gee! They are more Internet standard than we are. That's a big ditch, because they use HTML on the client, and we use HTML and Java. What is true? Oracle uses a combination of HTML and Java to build our applications. PeopleSoft uses a combination of HTML, and their famous industry standard PeopleTools. So, they want to talk about HTML and the fact and punish us for using Java. We readily admit that we build our applications in a combination of Java on a server and a combination of HTML and Java on the client. PeopleSoft on the other hand use HTML, and again that's fabulous, open industry standard that everyone knows about called PeopleTools. By the way, Siebel doesn't run on the Internet really. They run a combination of Visual Basic and Siebel Tools. SAP runs ADAPT 4 and a little HTML. We are the only company that has pure Internet standard based implementations, and for PeopleSoft they want to take us on based on Internet standards, is a very interesting notion. They only want to talk about what's running on the client. They seem to forget that actually all the applications are really on the server. Nothing's on the client but a browser. So, how are you going to do anything with those applications on the server, you have to use, and again, I repeat, that industry standard, go to your bookstore and buy a copy of PeopleTools Made Easy. We use Java. And they are criticizing us for using Java. Interesting position.

我們看到 SAP 在歐洲確實出現復甦。美國則沒那麼明顯。而我們看到 PeopleSoft 在人資（HR）方面有較好的復甦，但在其他地方沒有，絕對沒有。事實上，有趣的一點是，我們很難找到任何已上線運作的 PeopleSoft 客戶，任何地方都很難。雖然 PeopleSoft [________________]，喔，這是另一件事，讓我順便評論一下 PeopleSoft [________________]：PeopleSoft 在說：「哎呀！他們比我們更符合網際網路標準。那是一條很大的壕溝，因為他們在用戶端使用 HTML，而我們使用 HTML 和 Java。」那麼，事實是什麼？Oracle 使用 HTML 與 Java 的組合來建構我們的應用軟體。PeopleSoft 使用 HTML 的組合，以及他們著名的、所謂的產業標準 PeopleTools。因此，他們想談 HTML，並且拿我們使用 Java 這件事來懲罰我們。我們很樂意承認：我們用 Java 在伺服器端建構應用軟體，並在用戶端使用 HTML 與 Java 的組合。另一方面，PeopleSoft 使用 HTML，而再次強調，那個人人都知道、非常棒、開放的產業標準叫做 PeopleTools。順帶一提，Siebel 其實並不真正跑在網際網路上；他們跑的是 Visual Basic 與 Siebel Tools 的組合。SAP 跑的是 ADAPT 4 和一點 HTML。我們是唯一一家擁有純粹以網際網路標準為基礎之實作的公司，而 PeopleSoft 想以網際網路標準來挑戰我們，這是個非常有趣的想法。他們只想談用戶端上跑什麼。他們似乎忘了，其實所有應用軟體真正都在伺服器上。用戶端除了瀏覽器之外什麼都沒有。所以，你要如何在伺服器上的那些應用軟體上做任何事？你就必須使用——我再重複一次——那個產業標準：去書店買一本《PeopleTools Made Easy》。我們用 Java。而他們在批評我們使用 Java。很有意思的立場。

Why do you see SAP getting stronger in Europe?

你為什麼認為 SAP 在歐洲變得更強？

Again, I think, mySAP is getting a little bit more mature, mySAP was new and again it's been out for a couple of years now, so it's a little bit more credible than it was before. I think SAP has made a huge mistake by the way by partnering, first with Clarify and then with Commerce One, and a number of other partners. SAP has now, kind of adopted this best of breed approach, which we think is terribly flawed because it involves so much labor installing these pieces. Plus Commerce One technology is highly questionable, but again, the big issue here, we believe that all these pieces need to be engineered to fit together. SAP can't go out and buy a bunch of companies, or make bunch of partnerships and glue the pieces together after the pack, that's very labor intensive. Those glue joints are terribly unreliable. It's a flawed strategy. When SAP was truly a great company they built the entire ERP suite and that's what made SAP a great company. They delivered a complete integrated ERP suite and in a sense, all we've done is adopt the old SAP strategy that applies not only to the back office, but also to the front office and build all the pieces and get them all over together.

再說一次，我認為 mySAP 變得更成熟了一些；mySAP 當初是新的，而現在也已推出幾年了，所以比以前更有可信度。我認為 SAP 順帶一提犯了一個巨大的錯誤：先與 Clarify 合作，接著與 Commerce One 合作，以及其他一些合作夥伴。SAP 現在某種程度上採用了這種「最佳組合」（best of breed）的做法，我們認為這非常有缺陷，因為安裝這些零件需要投入大量人力。此外，Commerce One 的技術也非常值得懷疑；但無論如何，這裡的重大問題是：我們相信所有這些零件都需要被工程化設計，才能彼此契合。SAP 不可能出去買一堆公司，或建立一堆合作關係，然後在事後把零件黏在一起；那非常耗費人力。那些黏合接點非常不可靠。這是一個有缺陷的策略。當 SAP 真正是一家偉大的公司時，他們打造了完整的 ERP 套件，而那正是讓 SAP 成為偉大公司的原因。他們交付的是一套完整整合的 ERP 套件；而某種意義上，我們所做的只是採用舊的 SAP 策略——不僅適用於後台（back office），也適用於前台（front office）——把所有零件都建起來，並讓它們全部整合在一起。

Thanks. See you next Wednesday.

謝謝。下週三見。