Oracle ready for India expansion: CEO Hurd

San Francisco, Oct 27: An overall positive mood under a business-friendly government in India has reassured software major and leading cloud services provider Oracle to expand its base in the country via its diverse portfolio of integrated cloud platforms and new-age Java.

Responding to an IANS question on the second day of the Oracle's OpenWorld 2015 conference on October 26, Oracle CEO Mark Hurd said that he is committed to expanding Oracle's reach in the burgeoning cloud and software market in India.

"We are seriously working on the expansion plans in India. It is really a good time for this," he told IANS, adding that Loic Le Guisquet, Oracle's president for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region and Asia Pacific, has already initiated the expansion plan.

In a latest media interview, Guisquet was quoted as saying that Oracle has initiated a huge recruitment drive for cloud in India to expand its base as the demand for information technology is growing faster in India than other regions.

India has always been at the forefront for Oracle and its bouquet of innovations. With new initiatives like "Digital India" now in place, the thrust is likely to get bigger.

Oracle has 12 development centres in India, including facilities in many emerging cities like Vijayawada, Thiruvananthapuram, Noida and Ahmedabad.

India is home to Oracle's second largest workforce of developers and engineers and accounts for its largest research and development investment outside the US.

In an another question to whether Chinese cloud firms can pose any threat to Oracle's global expansion plans, Hurd said that we do not view Chinese firms as competitors at all.

"Some of those Chinese cloud firms can become our partners though," he added.

"Currently, we want to win the space in Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) and Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS) and then the entire focus will shift to Infrastructure-As-A-Service (IaaS) platform," he announced.

India is home to more than 700,000 members of Oracle's online and developer community.

India software revenue totaled $4 billion in 2014, an 8.3 percent increase from 2013 revenue of $3.7 billion, according to a latest Gartner report.

Among the leading trends that are common across the India software market include Software as a service (SaaS) adoption and development and Open-source software (OSS) adoption and its broader market implications, the report added.

Among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations, the India software market experienced the highest growth rate in 2014.

"Government plans around Digital India, smart cities and increased focus on broadband internet infrastructure is expected to drive local consumption of IT software and associated services," the Gartner report added.

"After the last election, the mood of the economy has changed, and we are slowly seeing a revival in IT spending particularly in areas of digital and nexus of forces that combine cloud, mobile, social and big data," it added.

Oracle India is the only organisation outside its California headquarters to represent all divisions including sales, marketing, consulting and education operations for the domestic market, global product management, global consulting, support to global customers and global financial accounting analysis.

Currently, it has 33,000 employees in India with over 7,000 customers across technology and applications and over 1,000 partners.

Earlier, addressing some of the top innovators and technology leaders at the packed Moscone Centre, Hurd said that by 2025, all enterprise data will be stored in the cloud and Oracle is going to be the best choice.

"In a dynamically changing working environment, the demographic shift is forcing a technology shift worldwide. We understand this shift and are ready to provide customised cloud platforms to our existing and new customers which will help them meet new demands," he told the audience.

"There is very little room for error. If you don't deliver, someone is waiting to take your place," he added.

By 2025, 80 percent of production apps in the world will be in the cloud and by the same time, all enterprise data will also be stored in cloud, he noted.

The five-day event is witnessing some of the technology's greatest minds brainstorm on the future of the enterprise, Oracle's integrated cloud platform and the new era of secure computing.

The conference, which runs October 25-29, is taking place at 18 locations throughout downtown San Francisco with the iconic Moscone Centre serving as its epicentre.

Over 60,000 people including Oracle partners, customers and developers from 141 countries have gathered for the OpenWorld and JavaOne conferences.

IANS