Oracle to Focus on R&D Investment

Investment in research and design will be a heavy focus for Oracle in the next few years, company representatives stated at the Oracle Financial Services and Insurance Forum held Tuesday in New York.

In fact, Oracle president Mark Hurd said the business technology giant will spend "a disproportionate amount" of its revenue on R&D. Hurd said this is because the company "is investing heavily in financial services solutions," because many banks have inefficient IT operations and outdated applications and infrastructure. Hurd noted that banks spend so much money on upkeep and maintenance of existing systems that much less time and money is spent on new investment. "Banks need to attain more efficiency through modernization and drive all these manual processes out," he said.

Hurd further noted that financial institutions will have to deal with the ongoing crush of data, especially from mobile devices. "Mobile is driving more data than you can imagine," he said. Pointing to an iPhone, he added, "this is more powerful than the computers I sold out of college."

With all the structured and unstructured data that banks possess in the current age, having "the raw horsepower to be able to deal with these data sets is key," Hurd continued.

Hurd also touched on cloud computing, saying that the cloud won't replace other channels, but will become yet another channel to choose from. "We see it evolving as a pick-and-choose thing," he said. "We want to make our delivery architecture flexible. If you want cloud, you got it, but I won't tell you what you need."

Frank Brienzi, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Oracle’s Financial Services Global Business Unit, said integrating all these channels will be major focus of Oracle's product offerings.

"We are putting a lot of money into channels," he said. "We're confident we have the core engine to drive all this, but we are really working on the front-end channel integration."

Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio