Oracle Corp is moving fast to fix the weakness in its applications business by appointing former SAP AG executive vice president Peter Dunning to head Oracle’s industrials vertical and major account sales. Dunning, appointed a senior vice president at Oracle, will work under executive vice president Robert Shaw, who now heads a combined division made up of Oracle’s application and vertical software businesses. As part of the changes, Oracle president and chief operating officer Ray Land appointed George Roberts to run Oracle’s database sales operations and Barry Ariko to manage Oracle’s Canadian and Latin American subsidiaries. Lane said the changes would reinforce Oracle’s commitment to the applications market by putting a unified, experienced leadership team in place. At SAP, Dunning has been credited as the man responsible for a significant percentage of the German company’s US growth over the last six years. Applications revenues at Oracle were flat in its last quarter, while database revenues rose 13%, and tools 6% – though all the serious growth was from services related business (CI No 3,434). Lane has also been talking to the Big Six accounting firms and leading IT outsourcing companies about partnerships intended to boost its applications sales (CI No 3,437).
