Oracle Chief leaves Kiwi wing in top shape

By ADAM GIFFORD

Oracle New Zealand head Leigh Warren is leaving after two years to manage partner relations, a newly created position, for Oracle Australia.

Robert Gosling, a 12-year Oracle New Zealand veteran, takes over the top slot here.

Warren, a Briton who previously ran Oracle's South African operation, instigated a number of significant changes, including establishing Oracle New Zealand's autonomy from Australia.

While he will remain on the board of the New Zealand subsidiary, that autonomy will continue.

He leaves on an upbeat note. In the year to May 2001, Oracle New Zealand made a profit of $8.27 million on revenue of $54.35 million, compared with the previous year's profit of $1.19 million on revenue of $44.16 million.

Figures for the year just ended were not available.

Staff numbers have dropped in the past two years from more than 200 to about 120, as a number of big projects have ended.

"Everyone is happy with the performance in New Zealand over the past two years. It exceeded expectations," Warren said.

"One of the success stories for New Zealand has been its strong application sales. For the past two years the percentage of applications in total revenues from licence sales is one of the highest in the world."

While Oracle would not release the breakdown of revenue between its core database technology and its applications, the New Zealand figure was "not a million miles away from" 50 per cent for application licences, compared with 20 per cent worldwide.

Gosling said he would continue the emphasis on applications. The sales team had been broken into two, to focus on either applications or technology.

"The technology market here is pretty mature. We knew that for us to grow we had to grow the applications business," Gosling said.

"We have 128 modules in the application suite, and people who buy applications are different to those who buy technology.

"Their focus is on the functionality and how it meets their business requirements."

He said the company here was focusing on the needs of smaller organisations.

"This is a unique market because of the disproportionate spread of SMEs [small and medium enterprises] to large organisations."

Warren said his new job involved all of Oracle's business partners, including resellers, global alliances, consulting and research firms.

"It also means I am in charge of the outsourcing side of business," he said.

"This is one of the key focus areas for Oracle going forward and we see Australia as one of the largest and more mature markets for outsourcing."