Oracle Systems Corp chief financial officer Jeff Henley told the assembly that the database and applications software company hopes to gain three to four percentage points of the relational database market next year, at the expense of some rivals: Oracle currently claims a 44% to 45% share of a market estimated at about $2,500m according to analysts, and If we could gain three to four points, I’d be pleased, Henley told the attendees; he sees Oracle gaining share at the expense of everybody’s current target, Ingres Corp, which has just been acquired by Computer Associates International Corp; he also said Oracle hopes not to lose share to its main rival Sybase – analysts say Sybase has about a 22% market share and it has been the fastest-growing but We think we can start to close the gap (with Sybase), Henley said, adding that Oracle is hiring more employees in its next fiscal year, which ends May 31, especially in sales; Oracle is already seeing some revenue from its software for interactive television, but it is relatively insignificant, at about $40m to $50m, and is offset by research expenditures – 15% of the research and development budget goes into this project, Henley said, but he added that the potential is huge, because once it is installed on a server by telephone or cable companies, Oracle will receive some monthly fees.
