Ellison's Oracle army seeks telecomms domination

Which is why Ellison's army has chosen to host a telecommunications summit in Copenhagen, Denmark this weekend.

Oracle claims that two of its key Telco customers - TeliaSonera and Telenor - form the next generation of integrated telecomms suppliers.

Oracle's Lars Wahlstrom pointed out that while 30 per cent of NTT DoCoMo's customerbase had entered into an 'online' transaction with it, a mere 30 per cent of Telenor's customers hadn't<,i> entered into a transaction with it.

The clear message from Oracle here was that it intends to tighten its grip on the telecomms industry. Eight out of ten of the world's top mobile operators already use its products. Larry obviously wants the other two.

Sergio Giacoletto, an Oracle executive vp, revealed how his company intends to tighten its grip. Firstly it will make more acquisitions like TimesTen which it took over in July.

Secondly it will continue to introduce more software products aimed at Telcos. For example it is building DRM (Digital Rights management) software based on the recent open standard - rights expression layer 1.0.

As Wahlstrom put it - Telcos aren't selling their customers 'iron' any more. Rather than providing just the hardware like a PABX, the telecomms companies are selling their major customers services.

And those services are delivered by software increasingly running on industry standard blades.

Oracle sees that software not being written in-house by consultants (which is 60 per cent of the market right now), but by software houses.

Plus it sees the number of software vendors supplying telcomms vendors shrinking drastically. In some cases this will be down from 500 to just one supplier. Guess which that supplier will be, then? µ