In their marathon webcast extravaganza last week, Oracle had a lot to say about the types of customers they’re looking for and how they’re going to sell stuff to them. The overarching themes that we heard over and over again as they laid out their forthcoming value proposition were “Enterprise,” “Mission-critical,” and “Integrated.” The ‘old’ Sun used to talk about this same game, but with a very large, heaping helping of Web 2.0, new app developers, and utility computing. We didn’t hear much, if any, of that stuff from Oracle – which is a good thing, since concentrating on those markets only served to drive Sun into the ground in terms of sales and profitability.

Product-wise, they talked about moving away from commodity x86 servers – preferring, as Larry said, to leave that market to Dell. But I think this stance is more about marketing than about eliminating sales of small x86 systems from their product line. They’re going to need those boxes for HPC and for filling out general business solutions as well. Our pal Timothy Prickett Morgan did a great job of outlining what he divined about product roadmaps and offerings in this article.

We expect to see Oracle push hard into vertical markets with bundles of Oracle DB and Apps software coupled with hardware. We haven’t heard anyone talking about what Oracle brings to the table in terms of vertical market expertise. Their Oracle Applications business, along with acquisitions made along the way, has given them deep knowledge about unique industry business models, key performance metrics, and data processing needs. They’ve used this knowledge to build software packages that help companies accurately track their business and optimize operations. Oracle’s verticals extend beyond the usual five or six industry buckets that you’d see from the typical system vendor – not surprising, given their range of software suites. If you’re interested, here’s a list of them.

Many of the folks who work in Oracle’s industry segments are former practitioners in their respective fields. As such, they have a solid handle on how their particular verticals are changing and adapting over time. They’re also, assumedly, tracking the winners/losers, the emerging industry threats/opportunities, and the implications of it all for their customers and for Oracle. This knowledge is very valuable; it obviously allows Oracle to evolve their software offerings to better address industry-specific conditions, but it should also put Oracle in a position to become an advisor rather than just a software vending supplier.

Becoming a trusted business-side advisor is the key to unlocking large, high-value, high-margin deals. These are the ‘big picture’ strategies that might start on a whiteboard as simply a few statements of direction, and then expand into multi-year projects that can transform an entire company for the better – or end in ignominy as a very expensive train wreck and industry-wide cautionary tale. Most of these deals today are much smaller in scope than what we used to see in the 90s, but they are generally more profitable than the deals for new boxes or software that arise from the IT shop. Helping to originate a deal in the executive suite can sometimes allow the vendor to shape the specifications and success metrics in a way that gives them substantial advantages over competitors. As the deal is fleshed out, the primary vendor can bring in more and more of their product portfolio (hardware, software, services) and grow their share of the take. IBM has played this game very well with their Global Services unit.

This is the type of business that Sun was hard-pressed to land. They stuck with a ‘best of breed’ partnering approach, preferring to have others in key roles either because they didn’t have (or didn’t want to develop/buy) a particular capability themselves or because they didn’t want to take responsibility for anything beyond their own contribution. The merger gives Oracle a much bigger portfolio to deploy toward big opportunities – they will be able to sell and integrate an entire solution from the ground up, which was typically the province of an IBM or a Hewlett-Packard.

We wouldn’t be surprised to see Oracle add more business-centric consulting and professional services in the near future. IBM uses their PriceWaterhouse unit to capture the attention and engage the imagination of their customers’ executive management. HP recently added EDS to their mix, in part to give them the same capabilities, and Dell’s Perot purchase is also a move in this direction. We think that Oracle will look to do the same, although the pickings in this area are slimmer than in the past. The big players have either been bought already or have become too big to buy and digest easily, while the small fry might be too small to have the impact that Oracle wants. Nevertheless, look for Oracle to complement their drive toward data center solutions with some additional firepower aimed at the executive suite.