Ireland the top European performer for Oracle


25 Jan 2006

Ireland was the top performing region in Europe for Oracle last year, the company’s new Irish managing director Paul O’Riordan has said.

Growth came right across all major market verticals and was evenly split between public and private sectors. According to O’Riordan, there was a marked pick-up in private sector technology spending last year to arrive at this balance. In contrast, in 2004 the IT budgets were being spent more by the public sector.

Oracle has a substantial presence in the government sector: nine of the 15 major departments in Ireland use Oracle Financials payroll software; 13 of them use the company’s human resources software, due to products gained through Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft.

Dublin City Council is another major Oracle customer. O’Riordan described as “revolutionary” the system it is putting in place which uses database and middleware software to manage the services it applies to citizens. “They’re the most enterprising authority in the country,” he said.

Oracle’s customer base in Ireland covers a range of sectors from the public sector to financial services, retail, pharmaceuticals, telecoms and utilities, commercial and healthcare. Prominent clients include Arnotts, An Garda Síochána, Tesco, Google, Eircom, Pfizer, Aer Lingus, Tallaght Hospital and most of the country’s major banks.

Oracle sells many of its products through third-party software developers that create sector-specific applications using the company’s technology. Almost every pharmacy in the Republic uses software based on Oracle, O’Riordan added.

Oracle’s Irish operation controls 11 lines of business for the company.

By Gordon Smith