R & D: Nigeria to benefit from Oracle’s $4.3bn

Vice President and country leader at Oracle Corporation South Africa, Mr. Nicky Sheridan has disclosed that Nigeria is one of the countries on the continent to benefit from the research and development budget of the organisation worth $4.3 billion, about N652.5bn.

Speaking at the Oracle-Sun Customer Day in Lagos, put together by the Computer Warehouse Group (CWG) and tagged ‘Oracle+Sun Transforming the industry’ Mr. Sheridan said that Nigeria is very important market for the organisation.

Insisting that Oracle strategy is to remain complete solution, open, offer lower cost in terms of deployment as well as fast and predictable performance.

He recalled that Oracle on April 20, 2009 announced acquisition of Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash; a transaction valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt.

According to him, some of the value propositions of Oracle after it acquired Sun, has not changed, but would remain the fastest time to value and lowest risk, working database and system delivered.

For him, middleware bridges the business execution gap, so Oracle compete for the best – product quality, service excellence, especially now customers are competing for most effective and efficient business process.

“Middleware is absolutely essential in cutting cost of integration,” he declared, stressing that Oracle leads in industry system integration solutions.

“Our software would remain open and we have been open in over 20 years,” he asserted, assuring that Oracle would remain a complete open standard.

Open standard, he said, is consistent with Oracle’s vision and logical footprint, pointing out that the marriage with Sun, has three things to offer, namely the cost reduction, business intelligence and agile organisation.

Just as he said that data consolidation as far as Oracle acquisition of Sun is concerned, creates a valuable products for the end users, maintaining that the goal of Oracle is to bridge gap between the customer and organisations.

Equally speaking, the managing director, ExpertEdge Software, a CWG company, Mr. James Agada, said that Computer Warehouse has certification partnership with Oracle, Sun among others before the acquisition and therefore stand a better chance to serve Nigeria companies hoping to engage on Oracle portfolio and those already using it better.

Earlier in his message, the Commissioner for science and technology, Lagos State, Dr. Kadiri Obafemi Hamzat, represented by Mr. Adeyinka Sorungbe of ABAT Centre, commended the partnership between CWG and Oracle and assured that Lagos State would continue to use its Oracle application to the benefit of Lagosians.

The event was also graced by the Group Managing Director, CWG, Mr. Austin Okere, the chief operating officer, Mr. Phillip Obioha and Vice president, Hardware Sales for Oracle-Sun at Middle East and Africa, Mr. Tom Pegrume among others.


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