Oracle's stack strategy explored

Over the past three years, through some huge acquisitions as well as internal product transformations, Oracle has evolved into a powerhouse, offering solutions all the way up the stack, from hardware and operating systems to middleware to applications. Only IBM and HP are in comparable positions.

There has been a major push into service oriented architecture during this time, with the software giant providing and promoting a range of solutions in this space.

In a very comprehensive article, InformationWeek's Bob Evans captured the essence of Oracle's strategy going forward. Notice how the strategy evolves around convincing CIOs to buy into the entire stack:

• "Expand and accelerate -- dramatically -- the potentially massive global market for highly optimized and integrated hardware-software systems, and then dominate that market."
• "Convince CIOs that a complete IT stack purchased from Oracle will deliver not only sufficient openness to avoid the dreaded vendor lock-in, but also superior performance compared with heterogeneous combinations."
• "Convince CIOs that the combination of 1 and 2 above will lower the costs of assembling, setting up, testing, tuning, managing, integrating, trouble-shooting, fixing, upgrading, and running those systems."
• "Complete that infrastructure with ultra-modern Fusion applications that can run with existing enterpise apps, from Oracle or anyone else."
• "Win in vertical markets like retail, healthcare, and telecom by complementing the broad horizontal apps with deep industry knowledge and functionality."