Oracle eyes India's retail sector for its solutions

New Delhi, Feb 20 (UNI) In a bid to tap the lucrative retail market in India, enterprise software company Oracle today said it is in talks with the big players to provide its application and technology services.

''The recent spurt in the retail space in the country has made us take initiatives in this direction. We are in talks with all the big players in the sector,'' Oracle Senior Vice President Mark Gibbs said here, while launching new versions of its five major product lines to address customer needs.

On a question if the company was looking to tie-up with Wal-Mart in India, Mr Gibbs said, ''The expanding retail sector in India is very important for us. We are targeting it as an industry. We are comfortable about the retail sector in the country.'' Mr Gibbs also said financial and communications sectors are also booming in India. We have almost all the players in the sector including utilities and others as our customers.

''We are also in the process of adding more partners in different sectors to provide applications in a cost-effective manner. The company is competing with Microsoft in the SMB segment,'' Mr Gibbs said.

The company was having 500 applications customers and 6,000 technology customers in India last year.

The company is also in the acquisition mode to complement strategy and deepen footprint in the industry.

Oracle released new versions of its five product lines -- Oracle e-business suite, Siebel CRM 8, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Eswards World and JD Edwards Enterpriseone -- which will be provided free of cost to their existing customers, which are in a maintenance contract with the company.

The company recorded year-on-year growth of 53 per cent in new licence revenues for Asia pacific region in its second quarter ended November, 2006.

UNI