Oracle CEO Larry Ellison yesterday blamed the complicated business model of his company’s US field sales operations as the main reason for the poor performance of its troubled applications division. Speaking at a press conference at the Fall Internet World show in New York yesterday, Ellison said he felt confident that Oracle would see a substantial improvement in the division’s performance by the end of this quarter, with continued growth in successive quarters thereafter. He said one of the decisive factors was that Oracle has decided to sell internet- only versions of its applications. We have the technology right, he said, now all we have to do is fix our field problems and we’re working on that right now. Oracle’s first quarter figures (CI No 3,493) showed net profits of $195m up from profits of $150m last time, while total revenues grew by 28% to $1.75bn. Although services and applications services grew by 37% to $0.5bn, applications revenues themselves remained flat.
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