Oracle Corp has found another way of cashing in on its Business OnLine outsourcing service, this time launching what it claims is the first open hosted marketplace that will enable vendors to sell their goods on line without owning any Oracle software. Other procurement offerings, from the likes of Ariba and SAP’s upcoming mySAP.com portal, require that you own that company’s software if you want to sell your products through their service. That’s a closed environment, said Lou Unkeless, senior director, applications marketing, what Oracle is offering is completely open. It doesn’t matter what software the vendor is running, it can still join the marketplace.
Called OracleExchange, the service is part of the database giant’s Business OnLine service, announced last November as a way of enabling customers to rent Oracle’s applications on an outsourced basis without actually having to buy any software themselves.
The difference with Oracle Exchange is that you neither have to buy, nor rent Oracle’s applications. Rather, once you have signed up to be a member of the company’s www.OracleExchange.com hosted marketplace site, you are free to start selling your products on line. Of course Oracle isn’t hosting the site for free. Vendors can opt for different levels of service, Unkeless said, although he added it was too early to give any details of what they might be. As an example, however, he said a basic service would just enable users to offer products on line, for which Oracle will charge a fee per transaction made, while a more advanced offering would have the vendor paying Oracle to host additional services, such as on-line reverse auctioning. The latter is where a buyer can go on line, state his or her order and wait for competing suppliers to bid for the business. Clearly, the more additional services Oracle can sell, the more money it makes, and that’s exactly what it intends to do, said Unkeless. It’s currently planning partnerships with credit card validation and checking companies, finance houses and the like, so that when the service is up and running at the end of the year, Oracle will have a host of services to offer on top of just basic selling.
The Redwood Shores, California database giant is characteristically bullish and optimistic about its chances in the on-line procurement market. On the day of announcing the service, the company announced some 260 vendors, which it says have already signed up to sell their products over Oracle Exchange. It was also quick to point out that Ariba, whom it considers its main competitor, only has 40. It also points to the success of its existing web-based procurement application, which it says has already attracted some 300 customers. Unkeless didn’t rule out a consumer version of Oracle Exchange but he said that it wasn’t in the pipeline at the moment. He did, however, say that the company was working with partners to deliver industry- specific marketplaces, for verticals such as oil and gas, aerospace, and utilities. The procurement sites will be co-hosted by Oracle and a prominent player in each particular sector and will offer exactly the same types of services as Oracle Exchange. More details will be announced in the upcoming months.
