Oracle Systems Corp has reorganised its product divisions along hardware lines, with the Oracle-on-Unix business, which was previously handled under the Unix business division, now split across a number of vendor-aligned divisions. The Digital Equipment Corp product divisions assume responsibility for both VMS and Ultrix-based Oracle products while the Hewlett-Packard Co unit takes over responsibility for Oracle under HP-UX, as well as MPE. A Sun Microsystems product division is headed by Roger Choplin, previously senior director of development at Oracle’s Unix division. It will handle Sparc and compatible systems, as well as the Solaris operating system on Sparc and Intel hardware. The former Unix business unit becomes the Unix products division, being headed by James Sha, and will handle Oracle on Pyramid Computer, Sequent Computer Systems, Silicon Graphics, Intel, and AT&T-NCR systems. A desktop products division, headed by John Kish, has responsibility for Apple A/UX, as well as MS-DOS, OS/2, Windows and MacOS. In calendar 1991, Oracle’s estimated Unix-related revenues were $561m, a 47.2% and increasing proportion of total revenue. Revenue from each of the three main vendor hardware environments Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and IBM (RS/6000) – is expected to be between $80m and $100m this year: Oracle UK did UKP4m of business on the RS/6000 in just the last six months of 1991. The reorganisation does not affect Oracle’s overseas operations which, according to Jerry Baker, vice president of the product line divisions, are pretty much decentralised in terms of development and marketing anyway. Oracle’s plans for the near future include support for increasing integration of Unix with Novell Inc networking, and the incorporation of multimedia business data. This will surface first in the upcoming Oracle version 7.0, which will have the capability to store unstructured database elements such as audio and video. Beta releases of the software are due soon and implementation on half a dozen initial environments has begun. It expects a minimum six-month beta test period. Object-oriented technology will feature in subsequent releases.
