On Oracle's solutions for five verticals:

Till now, Oracle was been focussed on providing solutions to five main sectors which include communications (including telecom and media), financial services industry (banking, capital markets and insurance), utilities like oil and gas sector, packaged consumer goods and consumer retail, besides the entire transportation sector. But now, Asia-Pacific division hasincreasingly begun to focus on two new segments which have been getting Oracle good revenue from Asia-Pacific. These are government education and healthcare and high-technology industry such as semiconductor manufacturing. While India offers a great market in the first, it does not figure in the latter category.

On revenue generation pattern in India:

In India, almost 30 per cent of our business comes from government and government agencies and public sector. If more investment is made in education and healthcare, we could get up to 40 per cent of revenue from the government sector.

Telecommunications is about 15 per cent of business. Insurance sector and public banks computerisation form another 15 per cent of our business. We get a meagre eight per cent from consumer packaging and retail at present, but I would expect it to go up to as much as 20 per cent. Transportation lags behind as there has not been too much investment. Share of energy has seen about 5 per cent, mostly related to power,and manufacturing makes up the rest.

On the solutions offered by Oracle and its position vis-a-vis competition:

On the technology side, our database and tools face competition from Sybase and IBM, and to some extent from Microsoft.

Globally, we have a share of about 60 per cent in Unix-based database market. In India, it is even higher. When you look at other factors such as the need for skilled people to operate the kind of technology architecture that Microsoft has in contrast to our internet computing model and a three-tier computing architecture, we don't feel there is any real ongoing sustainable competition in the database and tools area.

In applications area such as ERP, we have significant competition. We have a whole financial accounting suite and extensive manufacturing software solution. The We partner with a lot of companies and architect the best of the breed solutions. For example, we take our financials and manufacturing software and combine with three other companies toprovide the total supply chain or demand management and all the aspects covering the consumer sector.

For retail solutions, we partner with another company. We may not fulfill the customer's requirement ourself, but we partner with the best to provide total solutions which is a fundamentally different approach. Same is the case in financial services segment. In banking, TCS and Infosys provide solutions based on our technologies. For risk management and customer profitability, we provide solutions of Treasury Services Corporation which was bought by us.

On convergence of technology and how will it affect IT solutions market:

We need to keep in mind global trends. The complexities in the utilities sector such as power, or networks in media are hidden from user interface. But computing has been complex, till the new generation PCs came. Now, we are in a way catching up with other industries and removing the complexities from the desktop computing which is almost synonymous with Net based computing.The idea is to keep it very simple at the user end using a Jawa browser or whatever. You need not keep everything within the PC, but can source it from the Net.

Media companies can reach out to the consumer using the same networks and offer a myriad of services.

On building blocks of standard IT solutions:

Broad solutions have already become quite standardised with certain aspects that are common. There is convergence in technology architecture happening. Internet- and intranet-based computing models hold good across a large industrial segment and is just as applicable to consumer retail or banking. The actual applications might differ radically, but even there is convergence happening.