Taipei Times: What kind of business is Oracle doing in "Greater China," how has it been impacted by the downturn?
Derek Williams: I guess there are some common threads whether it's Taiwan, Hong Kong or China and that is that we've always done a lot of business with governments and government agencies. We've always done a lot of business in telecommunications, both fixed-line, mobiles and most recently, value-added services. We've also done a lot of business in the financial services and that would be a common thread really ... if you asked which three industries are we very strong in, in the three geographies, it would be those three. That would be one common thread.
I think the second common thread as far as Taiwan and China is concerned, and obviously Taiwan is showing leadership here, is the whole area of manufacturing: ERP (enterprise resource planning software -- consolidating all information within a company and making it useful for planning), and supply chain (software). Taiwan has a much more sophisticated set of manufacturing companies and much more sophisticated supply chains.
So, a lot of what we do here in Taiwan, we and our customers learn about what you can do and then apply a lot of that principle and thinking to organizations in China and also Taiwan companies operating in China. Increasingly, we're seeing an organization work with us here in Taiwan, go across to China and continue to use our technology as a common technology -- often, in fact, still holding their major systems center here in Taiwan.
TT: How have companies been affected by the global slowdown?
Williams: I would say Hong Kong has been affected the most, and that is quite interesting because leading up to Sept. 11, Hong Kong was actually holding up quite well, even with the IT slowdown in the United States. But post-Sept. 11, Hong Kong really has had a very tough time. Whereas Taiwan had already seen in many industries a slowdown over a more progressive period of time. It wasn't the IT slowdown in the US as much as some of the issues which were affecting Taiwan itself, both in terms of ... obviously the introduction of the new government and that settling down and the introduction of some of the issues associated with stock market-falling pressures, had already affected some of the development here, therefore we have not seen the same dramatic slowdown we saw in Hong Kong in Taiwan.
Now of course China is really the total opposite. There was no slowdown associated with the IT recession in the US, there was no slowdown associated with Sept. 11, and basically the market is still showing very dynamic growth. For us, basically, China is a market where we have been growing at 100 percent per annum. We have seen very good historic growth and one would hope that it may be able to continue and I think it can.
TT: Is Oracle seeing a significant return on its investment in China?
Williams: Yes. I think one of the reasons why we have seen a good return on our investment in China is we were a very early entrant. We entered China in 1990 and became a wholly owned foreign enterprise in 1991. That was a very early for a wholly owned foreign enterprise in the IT sector. And consequently, I think we have learned how we can be trusted: we have met our commitments, we have delivered on our promises and therefore I think our business is a very, very strong business. I think it's very interesting that CAAC (China Aircraft and Airports Corp), had to make a decision of who did they feel would be the company they could trust to put in all of the new financial systems into the airlines, all of the new airports, the whole of that developing industry: they chose us. Which I think for us was a big landmark for us in our business in China and that contract was struck probably 5 years ago now or 4 years ago now and is fully implemented and totally signed off. So now our business in China shows good return on investment and all of our profitability in China is plowed back into the business to develop the business. So, we do see enormous opportunities in China.
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