主题：【软件】甲骨文拟在中国增设研发中心 -- 西风陶陶

Oracle Considers Ramping Up R&D in China

Fri Jul 16, 2004 12:04 PM ET

By Ben Blanchard

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Oracle Corp. is looking to increase its research capacity in China, its fastest-growing market, and hopes to plug the software developed here into its global network, an executive said on Friday.

California-based Oracle, the world's second most valuable software company after Microsoft Corp., runs two research facilities in China, one in the capital and another in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen.

"If you work with them and your applications can support the needs of maybe 250 or 300 million mobile users ... that technology will work for any operator in the world," said Walsh, who shuttles regularly between Beijing and California.

"We believe that we're going to be able to keep pace with the growth here in China."

The company is also eyeing growth in China from software used to integrate the development of transport, industry and government administration, Walsh said, as the country ramps up the modernization of its infrastructure.

"We're definitely going to see opportunities to expand our footprint as a result of that," he said.

Siemens AG and Motorola Inc. are some of the multinational corporations active in research in China.

Apart from Microsoft, Oracle vies with BEA Systems Inc. and Germany's SAP AG in the field of database systems, applications servers and business software.

China is Oracle's third-biggest market in the Asia Pacific region after Japan and South Korea. Its new software license revenues from the region rose 8 percent to $226 million in the fourth quarter ended May 31.

For the full 2004 financial year, license revenues increased 11 percent to $673 million, or about a fifth of the global total.

China's IT sector is one of the world's bright spots, growing at 20 percent a year, with software sales expected to hit $30.5 billion by 2005, according to the International Data Corp.

Its business software market is growing at a compound annual rate of 35 percent and is forecast to hit $400 million in 2007 -- versus just $85.5 million in 2002, IDC says.

It is now considering establishing new research bases in the less prosperous regions of western and northeastern China as well as the booming Yangtze delta region around Shanghai, said Kevin Walsh, Oracle's vice president of Internet technology and head of its China R&D centers.

"What I would like to do is essentially connect the dots and at some point in the future eventually connect the centers," he told Reuters in a telephone interview on Friday.

Multinational companies are increasingly shifting sophisticated functions such as research and marketing to China, which is eager to cast off its image as a mere shop floor.

Some companies goggle at projections that China is expected to turn out around 270,000 information technology graduates annually by 2005, many of them willing to work at lower pay than in the United States or Europe.

But analysts say the country has a way to go before matching Taiwan or Korea in software development.

Oracle, which employs some 600 people in China, will focus on the domestic market for now, Walsh said.

But the research also will eventually be felt beyond the country's borders, he added.

APPLICATIONS ABROAD

For instance, work done for clients such as China Mobile, the bigger of the country's two wireless operators, could apply to a broad range of clients, he said.