Oracle CEO says no big deal in mind right now

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Oracle's chief executive said on Wednesday that the database software giant has no big acquisitions planned at the moment and sees stiffening competition from rivals such as Microsoft and others in coming years.

"We have no large acquisitions in mind right now," Larry Ellison told reporters after a keynote speech at a company conference here, adding that the company must still close its acquisition of rival Siebel Systems, for which it is paying nearly US$6 billion.

Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle announced earlier this month its planned acquisition of Siebel, giving Oracle a stronger foothold in the niche of customer management software to better challenge industry leader SAP of Germany.

Ellison also said that far smaller rivals such as Salesforce.com, a maker of customer management software that is sold over the internet, and bigger rival Microsoft, which competes against Oracle in the market for database software and business applications, and others will be competitive forces for years.

"We're going to go after Salesforce the best we can," Ellison said. "I'm an investor in Salesforce. I'd like to see my investment goes to zero."

Ellison was once on the board of Salesforce.com, which was founded by former Ellison protege Mark Benioff, and invested in the San Francisco-based company before it went public.

"We think Microsoft is a very serious competitor going forward in the applications business," Ellison said at an earlier question and answer session after his keynote that preceded the discussion with reporters. "It's not simply going to be Oracle versus SAP."

Ellison also said that Oracle was still considering whether to allow rival databases, notably IBM's DB2 database product, to work with Oracle's forthcoming integrated suite of business applications that is named Fusion.

"If you ask me right now which way I think it's going to go, it's a toss of the coin," Ellison said. "I don't know."

Some parts of Fusion, which will be a next-generation combination of products it now has due to its acquisitions of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and others, are due out in 2006 but most of the major ones are slated for 2007, Oracle has said.

Ellison also downplayed the likelihood that it would buy BEA Systems, a one-time high-flying maker of middleware, software that helps disparate applications interact with each other.

"At one time, BEA was very high on our list," Ellison said, adding that he was pleased with the growth of its own middleware product relative to BEA's offering. "They're less interesting to us than they used to be. They also really don't want to be bought."

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