We've been closely watching Oracle President Mark Hurd's attempt to overhaul the company's sales force.

Hurd's plan is risky for Oracle because the company has always been known to be one of the best-paying tech companies for sales jobs.

Skip directly to a list of software sales salaries around the country >

So, just how much money can someone make selling enterprise software?

Top performers get up to $400,000 a year, year after year, our sources say. (Bear in mind that the average salary in the U.S. is about $46,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

"On average, an Oracle sales rep has a base of $110,000 and earns $250,000 a year, but there will be people at Oracle this year who earn over $500,000," says headhunter Paul McEwan, a partner for technical sales recruiter, Richard, Wayne and Roberts.

Overall, at top-paying enterprise software companies like Oracle, SAP, HP, Microsoft, and IBM, the "top 20 percenters"—  the 20% of salespeople in the company who consistently sell the most — make $250,000 to $350,000 a year, headhunters and enterprise sales people tell us.

The top 10 percenters "make from high the $200s to low the $400s, and are cranking in that zone, year after year," McEwan says.

In a really good year, a top salesperson at these companies can even earn $1 million, says Eliot Burdett, CEO of headhunting firm Peak Sales Recruiting.

But it's tricky for them. Salespeople are paid a base salary plus commission, and the commission structure can be complicated, Burdett says. An enterprise software salesperson will have a quota, perhaps $5 million.

Hit the quota and it's "cha-ching!"

Miss it and risk losing your job.

Salespeople who regularly exceed their quota will find that the company raises it. They should get paid more, but they'll also have more pressure to perform.

One salesperson who has worked for several of the top companies mentioned here, but who requested anonymity, told Business Insider:

"My base has run from $100,000 to $134,000 and commissions for sales on target are typically $200,00 to $300,000 with $240,000 or $250,000 being most common. The last two years I was in the low to mid $400,000s."

This person also told us that while Oracle, SAP, and EMC are known for their high pay scale, "the best pay is at mid to large independents like Informatica, Tibco, etc. They have more aggressive sales plans."

Software-as-a-service cloud-app vendors like Workday, Salesforce, and Cloudera are also known in the Valley for paying very well, where Microsoft and IBM have a mixed reputation. They have complicated commission schemes, but giant sales support systems that help sales folks earn their quotas, they've told us.

Software startups tend to pay less (not surprisingly) and frequently offer bonuses of stock against an eventual IPO. Top salespeople work for startups for two reasons: 1) they like the culture or the company or 2) they are proving themselves so that an Oracle or Salesforce will one day hire them, says Burdett.

The best salespeople are folks who are naturally driven and competitive, but also extremely helpful. They want to solve their customer's problems, not just sell stuff, says McEwan.

"It's not their resume, it's their presence. When you meet a star salesperson, people will ask, did you meet her? She's awesome," he describes.

But the pay is high for a reason. This isn't an easy career, warns Burdett.

"It's a tough life. Some of these folks are on the road all the time. That's tough to do if you have a family. It's a high pressure job where you are only as good as your last quarter or fiscal year. There's lots of pressure keep performing or running on that treadmill. If you take a breather could get thrown off for good," he says.

Washington: Highest ever income, $300,000 - $400,000

The "vertical industry" experience is important. That indicates which industries a salesperson knows, has contacts in.

Outside Rep/Field Sales, Washington

Previous Employer(s): Oracle, BEA, IBM
Product Expertise: Enterprise Application Integration/B2B Integration, Internet Infrastructure Software, Business Intelligence, Database & File Management Software
Vertical Expertise: Health care & Medical, Industrial Manufacturing
Largest Deal Ever Closed: Greater than $2.0 Million
Highest Ever W2: $300,000 - $400,000
Average W2 Last Four Years: $250,000 - $350,000

^{Source: SoftwareSalesJobs.com}

North Carolina: Highest ever income, $300,000 - $400,000

Enterprise resource planning software (ERP) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) are big, expensive investments, that yield big commission checks.

Outside Rep/Field Sales, North Carolina

Previous Employer(s): SAP, Siebel, Oracle
Product Expertise: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Vertical Specific Solutions, Business Intelligence, Customer Relationship Management
Vertical Expertise: Industrial Manufacturing, Capital Equipment, Consumer Goods
Largest Deal Ever Closed: Greater than $2.0 Million
Highest Ever W2: $300,000 - $400,000
Average W2 Last Four Years: $250,000 - $350,000

^{Source: SoftwareSalesJobs.com}

New York: Highest ever income, $300,000 - $400,000

A sales person that isn't routinely making over $150,000 a year won't last long in this business, sources say.

Outside Rep/Field Sales, New York

Previous Employer(s): TIBCO, Information Builders, Computer Associates
Product Expertise: Enterprise Application Integration/B2B Integration, Internet Infrastructure Software, Systems & Network Management, Business Intelligence
Vertical Expertise: Mid-Market, Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology, Financial Services
Largest Deal Ever Closed: Greater than $2.0 Million
Highest Ever W2: $300,000 - $400,000
Average W2 Last Four Years: $150,000 - $250,000

^{Source: SoftwareSalesJobs.com}

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Oracle Corp CEO Larry Ellison skipped a keynote address at his software company's massive annual customer conference on Tuesday to be on San Francisco Bay as his Oracle Team USA made a comeback in the America's Cup.

Hundreds of Oracle OpenWorld attendees streamed out of San Francisco's Moscone conference center after an Oracle executive announced that Ellison was still on a boat and would not attend the keynote presentation, a focal point of the annual event.

America's Cup sailing is a major passion for Ellison, rivaled only by his focus on expanding what is already the world's third-largest software maker.

Last week, Ellison was absent from Oracle's quarterly earnings conference call with analysts so that he could be close to the racing, which the sailing enthusiast has been viewing from a team speedboat.

In the past, Ellison has used his OpenWorld keynote to attack rival companies and colorfully criticize their products to the delight of attendees.

At least a few of the more than 60,000 people registered to attend this year's OpenWorld were disappointed by Ellison's absence.

"I can understand his dedication to the racing, but it does send an interesting message to the audience here about his priorities," said Mason McDaniel, whose company spent a few thousand dollars in travel expenses to send him from Washington, D.C., to OpenWorld, one of San Francisco's biggest tech conferences.

Oracle Team USA won its seventh straight race on Tuesday and looked set to keep the Cup from rival Emirates Team New Zealand.

The Cup, which has gone on longer than expected due to unfavorable weather, will go to whichever team wins the next race, scheduled for Wednesday.

Oracle Team USA won the America's Cup in Valencia, Spain, in 2010 and with it the right to set the rules for this year's competition, including choosing to hold the regatta on San Francisco Bay.

(Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Ken Wills)

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Year after year, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison lands on the lists of the highest-paid paid CEOs. 

Ellison is the heart and soul of Oracle. He's the cofounder, the visionary, and the longest sitting CEO of a major tech company. His pay reflects that.

Even so, by nearly every measure imaginable, his annual compensation is massive, especially considering that Oracle's share price has languished below $40 since the Internet bubble crashed way back in 2000.

In 2013, Ellison was paid $78 million in cash and stock, mostly stock, compared to an industry average of $29 million, according to an investment group that wants to draw attention to Ellison's pay. In 2012, it was $96 million, according to Oracle's SEC disclosures, compared to an average of $43 million. And in 2011, it was $76 million, compared to $22 million.

Now, activist investment group CtW Investments, which owns 6 million shares of Oracle, is calling for an end to it.

"The board should tie his compensation to some kind of revenue target or strategic inititiave, not just throw options at him in such a huge amounts," Michael Price Jones, CtW's senior governance analyst told Business Insider.

CtW also wants lower pay for Oracle's five other top execs, too. In 2012, for instance, Oracle's top five were paid $253 million, compared to an average of $90 million at other tech companies.

If they don't, it wants shareholders to vote them off, CtW argues in a letter to shareholders.

It's a long shot. For the most part, shareholder activist protests like this one go no where.

CtW argues that it's been on a winning streak lately. It was among the investors who successfully pushed board members to resign at HP and JP Morgan.

However, both of those companies had made some huge misteps. Oracle is facing its challenges to grow, but it's still a hugely profitable company with a stranglehold on the enterprise database market.

We reached out to Oracle for comment but did not immediately hear back. We'll update this post when we do.

SEE ALSO: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH: It's Crunch Time For Oracle And Mark Hurd

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The oldest, most heated rivalry in the enterprise tech world has just flared up again. SAP's billionaire cofounder, Hasso Plattner, is now throwing punches at Oracle president Mark Hurd.

Plattner wrote in a blog post on Monday, "When it comes to competition you should either know exactly what your are talking about, or keep your mouth shut."

He was responding to things Hurd said about the SAP HANA database at a press conference last week. Hurd spoke to reporters shortly after Oracle introduced a new in-memory database that competes with SAP's in-memory database, called HANA. Oracle also introduced a new "Exadata" hardware product that runs its new in-memory database.

In-memory databases are where an entire database, even an enormous one, is stored in a server's memory, not on a hard disk. That means it can crunch through vast amounts of data  instantly and isn't slowed down by grabbing data from the disk.

With these new products, Oracle is trying to keep SAP's customers from yanking out their Oracle database and replacing it with SAP's database. Here's what Hurd said at the conference, reported by Chris Kanaracus from IDG News Service:

"I don't like it when [Oracle's] Exadata or the in-memory options get compared with SAP HANA ...I don't think it's even comparable. HANA has to be programmed. What we told you about [with the new 12c database] has nothing to do with that. You're not rewriting anything." Putting it more bluntly, Hurd said about SAP, "Forget them."

To which Plattner responded:

"Fact is: nobody likes to be replaced by a competitor's solution. A good defense is to build a better product, not to bad mouth the competition with straight lies."

Plattner then went into a technical deep dive about how databases work, refuting that Oracle apps need "reprogramming" when used with SAP's HANA.

The fighting words are entertaining, but this is serious business. By some accounts there are at least 60,000 enterprises out there using SAP's apps with the Oracle database.

In two years since HANA launched, SAP has snagged some 2,000 customers for it, it says. SAP hinted that about 300 HANA customers are using it with SAP's financial apps, although it won't say how many switched from Oracle to HANA. 

But clearly, there's a lot at stake and executives at both companies are ready to fight.

We reached out to Oracle for comment.

SEE ALSO: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH: It's Crunch Time For Oracle And Mark Hurd

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We've been closely watching Oracle president Mark Hurd's overhaul of Oracle's salesforce.

Hurd's plans have been controversial within the company and have caused a long string of Oracle's most experienced salespeople to quit, sources have told us.

Hurd's plan involves giving Oracle salespeople quotas to sell certain types of Oracle hardware in addition to software, notably the "Exa" hardware product line, sources say. (The "Exa" servers are specially designed to run Oracle software.)

Hurd is also hiring thousands of new salespeople, and making each specialize in certain software products. He wants each salesperson to have fewer clients, with teams selling more Oracle software to each enterprise, sources say. By April of this year, Oracle had increased the sales force by 4,000 people, Hurd said, and he's still hiring.

Hurd's plan has yet to drive much revenue growth. Oracle has missed analyst's revenue expectations three quarters in a row.  Plus, the company warned that next quarter, revenue for new software and subscriptions should land in a range of down 4 percent to up 6 percent, from the year-ago quarter.

That said, thousands of salespeople are still betting their careers on Oracle. We just talked to one new hire who requested anonymity. We can tell you that the person left a senior role at one of the world's largest enterprise tech companies to join Oracle.

Business Insider: Why did you take this job at Oracle?

Salesperson: I'm getting a chance to work with [an industry very concerned about security] that is still buying a lot of on-premises software, instead of the cloud. The large enterprise IT companies have really struggled with how to compensate the salesforce in the cloud model.

BI: So you feel that you'll make more money at Oracle because you can sell traditional software licenses instead of selling cloud subscriptions?

Salesperson: Yes.  Even the mediocre performers selling enterprise license software are going to be making in the $300,000-$350,000 range where top performers are going to make $400,000-$600,000. Other than the pure cloud companies (like Salesforce.com or Amazon), large enterprise companies like IBM, Cisco, EMC, Microsoft are struggling with compensating salespeople on the old model versus selling cloud-based software.

BI: Does Oracle's hardware quotas worry you?

Salesperson: Yes. It's very challenging in this austere environment. But that's the same for EMC, IBM, Cisco. To make the most money, you need to hit those accelerators [a bigger % of commissions earned once a salesperson meets a quota, including the hardware quota]. So they really put the onus on the hardware guys to help the software guys to get these deals done.

BI: Does it concern you that many long-term salespeople recently left Oracle?

Salesperson: Everyone realizes that there's no retirement, no gold watch, no pension. People are following the money where they think they are going to make their number.

I don't think Oracle recruits very well. I told my spouse, they are a delightfully arrogant company to work for.

But their benefits are great, their training is great, their engineering resources are great. They give the salespeople everything they need to be successful.

SEE ALSO: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH: It's Crunch Time For Oracle And Mark Hurd

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The tablet is the thing that's most threatening big enterprise software companies like Oracle, Google chairman Eric Schmidt said on stage at the Gartner Symposium conference happening this week in Orlando.

We've embedded a clip from that talk in the video below. He used a lot of techie terms so we'll decode it.

He said that we are witnessing the demise of the big software company, or at least their classic business model, invented by Oracle. That model involved selling software to enterprises for large chunks of money every few years. An enterprise would buy a software license that covered more employees than it needed and would then grow into it.

Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft still sell a whole lot of software that way.

But tablets are changing the way companies buy software, something that Schmidt says he didn't see coming.

"I was actually surprised by this. I didn't call this. Would the phone replace the PC?  I figured employees would be using a PCs and a phone. But it was the tablet revolution. It looks to us like the majority of enterprise computing is being done on mobile devices, in particular on tablets. That broke the old model," he said.

He expects enterprises will have to "dismantle" their existing technology – in other words get rid of old-fashioned software and all the data center technology they've bought over the years to support it.

He didn't say what they'll replace this with, but presumably, simpler apps and software from the cloud.

Schmidt didn't go so far as to say that Oracle (or SAP or Microsoft) would be killed by the cloud. They obviously see the same thing coming and are all scurrying to offer their software via the cloud. Last month Oracle even announced it would be selling its flagship database software via its cloud.

And also remember that Google and Oracle don't like each other very much these days, ever since Oracle sued Google (and lost) over Android.

But we'll see. No big enterprise software vendor has really transformed itself yet into a cloud company. All of them are still heavily dependent on selling old-fashioned software on old-fashioned software licenses for most of their revenue.

Here's the video.

SEE ALSO: Tour Google's Luxurious 'Googleplex' Campus In California

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On the surface, Oracle's acquisition of a startup named Compendium announced Thursday seems run-of-the-mill.

But it's really a signal that the feud between Oracle and Salesforce.com, and their flamboyant CEOs, Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff, is alive and well (despite the love-fest they threw last summer).

Oracle bought Compendium for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2007, Compendium manages corporate marketing blogs and has customers like Bass Pro Shop, Cvent, Gymborie. It raised $2.8 million in angel/seed funding (and took out $1 million in debt).

Here's the interesting part: Compendium was founded by Chris Baggott, who previously co-founded ExactTarget where he was CMO until he left for Compendium.

Salesforce.com bought ExactTarget in June for $2.5 billion, it's largest-ever acquisition. CEO Scott Dorsey, ExactTarget's other co-founder, joined Salesforce.com.

Compendium is part of the dueling acquisitions between Benioff and Ellison.

Both companies are trying to dominate what looks to be the next big trend in enterprise IT. Companies spend nearly $4 trillion a year on technology, mostly through their IT departments. But Benioff believes that by 2017, the chief marketing officer will buy more tech than the chief information officer. So he's building out his marketing tech offerings to grab that business.

Oracle wants the CMO's business, too, but Ellison is also trying to knock Benioff off his game.

These two companies and CEOs are like a parent/child relationship gone bad. Benioff once worked for Ellison at Oracle. Ellison even gave Benioff the idea for Salesforce.com, the story goes. Ellison was also seed investor.

But Salesforce.com's main product competes directly with one of Oracle's software businesses (Siebel Systems). Cloud computing became popular, largely thanks Benioff. In 2011, the two friends had a very public split when Ellison cancelled Benioff's keynote at Oracle World at the last minute.

Benioff responded by publicly bashing Oracle's cloud tech.

As cloud services gained steam among enterprise computing buyers, Oracle found itself trailing the trend.

In 2012, Oracle ramped up its cloud business through acquisitions including Eloqua, which it bought for $871 million. Eloqua and Salesforce.com were close partners so when Oracle bought it, it gained access to a whole bunch of Salesforce.com customers.

The quarter after Salesforce.com spent a fortune on ExactTarget, Benioff announced it was in the middle of its first-ever $1 billion quarter, in large part due to ExactTarget.

Now, ExactTarget's cofounder and former CMO is firmly in Oracle's camp, via the Compendium buy. The cherry on top? ExactTarget is one of Compendium's (now Oracle's) customers.

Oracle and Salesforce.com declined comment on this story.

SEE ALSO: The 21 Hottest Cloud Startups Right Now

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Friday morning Oracle told us in a press release that it is declaring itself to be the second-biggest software company in the world, taking over IBM's spot, thanks to IBM's declining revenues.

Oracle doesn't mention who's on top. That would be Microsoft.

The press release is funny because last week, one of the most respected Oracle Wall Street analysts, Nomura's Rick Sherland, issued a research note that dissected Oracle's business. If it weren't for acquisitions, Oracle's revenue from new software contracts declined about 1%, year-over-year, he said.

Oracle, (like IBM and other software vendors) makes almost all of its software money from customers making payments on their software licenses and buying something called "maintenance," meaning updates, patches, fixes and support for when things go wrong. (That's not a bad thing. Oracle's customers don't ditch Oracle's software lightly.) That's really the part of Oracle's software business that's growing.

But in the brave new world of cloud computing, Oracle seems to be losing software contracts to competitors like Salesforce.com and Workday, Sherland noted.

He thinks it may take Oracle 3 years – and maybe as long as 10 years – to "hit its stride" in cloud.

Not that IBM's software business is wonderful either. Year-over-year revenues were basically flat.

IBM CFO Mark Loughridge was forced even forced to admit to analysts during a quarterly conference call, "I agree we did not have the software quarter we’re looking for."

If Oracle really wanted to rub salt in IBM's face, it could point to the alarming declines in its hardware business. Revenues from IBM's third-quarter hardware dropped 16 percent, year over year. Profits from IBM's hardware business are down $1 billion, too, Loughridge said.

But then again, Oracle's hardware business is even more of a mess. It declined another 14% in its last quarter and is down about 40% since Oracle bought Sun in 2010.

We reached out to IBM for comment and will update when we hear back.

Here's the press release full of Oracle bravado that caused us to laugh:

Oracle Becomes Second Largest Software Company in the World

IBM Falls to Third

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. – October 17, 2013

News Facts:

Given IBM’s recently announced quarterly results, we would like to take this opportunity to point out that Oracle’s software business has been growing faster than IBM’s software business and now Oracle has moved up to become the number 2 software company in the world while IBM has slipped to number 3. Over IBM’s last four quarters, they reported software revenue totaling $25.7 Billion, while during Oracle’s last 4 quarters, we reported software revenue totaling $ 27.8 Billion.

IBM Software and Oracle Software (in millions):

ORACLE                                Q2'13     Q3'13     Q4'13     Q1'14     LTM

                GAAP                    $6,649   $6,672   $8,428   $6,084   $27,833

IBM                                        Q4'12     Q1'13     Q2'13     Q3'13     LTM

                External               $7,915 $5,572   $6,423   $5,798   $25,708

SEE ALSO: The 21 Hottest Cloud Startups Right Now

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Oracle bought BigMachines on Wednesday.

Oracle didn't reveal the terms of the deal but a source close to the company tells Business Insider that Oracle paid "hundreds of millions" at a valuation of about five-times the company's revenue.

BigMachines generated $58 million in 2012, Inc. reports, and was on track to nearly double that to about $100 million in 2013, this source said.

So we're looking at an acquisition of around the $400 million - $500 million mark.

Interestingly, Salesforce.com was an investor in BigMachines, as part of an undisclosed sum raised in 2012, although we understand that it took a minor stake. (The round was lead by Vista Equity Partners and JMI Equity.)

There's two big reasons Oracle wanted BigMachines. 1) It gives Oracle a jump start with an enterprise cloud product called "Configure, Price and Quote" (CPQ).  CPQ helps companies put together complex bids, quotes and proposals for customers. Oracle already has its own CPQ product, but it's classic software, not a cloud product. 

2) BigMachines gives Oracle access to a whole bunch of Salesforce.com's customers. About half of BigMachines customers are Salesforce.com's customers, thanks to an offering it has called Big Machines Express. Express is built on Salesforce.com's software cloud, Force.com

Among BigMachine's 300+ enterprise customers are companies like Hewlett Packard, Symantec, GE, huge companies that Oracle wants to win to its own cloud.

Buying BigMachines is part of a bigger effort Oracle is making to compete more heavily with Salesforce.com. Late last year, Oracle bought big Salesforce.com partner Eloqua for $871 million, which gave it access to many Salesforce.com customers. Last week, Oracle bought a startup named Compendium, created by the cofounder of ExactTarget, a company Salesforce spent $2.5 billion to buy, it's largest-ever acquisition.

Oracle declined comment.

SEE ALSO: The 21 Hottest Cloud Startups Right Now

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Experts from Google, Oracle, and Red Hat have joined the "tech surge" to fix HealthCare.gov, the dysfunctional federal health insurance website, according to multiple reports. 

CNBC, Fox News, and Reuters, each citing an official, reported the news. The help comes as the Obama administration scrambles to fix HealthCare.gov, a key part of the Affordable Care Act that has been plagued by outages since its launch on Oct. 1. 

It wasn't immediately clear the scope of the help, or those companies' officials involved in the "tech surge."

President Barack Obama announced the "tech surge" last week, and the Obama administration said it expects the web site to be fixed by the end of November. 

Jeff Zients, the official in charge of leading the surge, said on a conference call last Friday that there's a "punch list" for site improvements. Zients did not delve into specifics on that list, but he said there are "dozens of items" on it. He did say, though, that at the top of the list was ensuring that health insurers receive correct enrollment data from consumers signing up. 

Zients said last week about 90% of people can now create accounts, but only about 30% can get through the full application process.

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At Oracle's annual meeting on Thursday, shareholders told CEO Larry Ellison and Oracle's other top execs that they makes too much money, reports Reuters' Noel Randewich.

Shareholders took part in a non-binding 'say on pay" vote, where they could vote in favor of the pay packages awarded to executives, or against. More than 2 billion votes were cast against, compared to more than 1 billion in favor, Randewich reports.

However, in a mixed message, they also voted to retain all of Oracle's directors.

Activist investment group CtW Investments, which owns 6 million shares of Oracle, started lobbying for a pay cut for Ellison and other execs in September. They wanted shareholders to vote "no" and also vote out three board member on the Compensation Committee: Bruce Chizen, George Conrades and Naomi Seligman.

"The board should tie his compensation to some kind of revenue target or strategic initiative, not just throw options at him in such a huge amounts," Michael Price Jones, CtW's senior governance analyst told Business Insider at the time.

Oracle's board didn't see it that way. Oracle's top attorney, Dorian Daley, responded to CtW by saying: 

As best we can decipher, your position seems to be that Mr. Ellison’s compensation package is approximately $50 million too high against a backdrop of $13.6 billion in free cash flow delivered under his leadership. In other words, we are spending approximately 36 basis points of our free-cash flow (less than one-half of one percent) too much to ensure the continued services of one of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs and technological visionaries.

Top proxy advisor firm, Institutional Shareholder Services, agreed with CtW. It recommended that shareholders vote against Oracle pay packages and vote "withhold" for eight of Oracle's 11 directors, Reuters' Ross Kerber reported. A withhold vote is a non-binding way for shareholders to express disapproval.

This is the second year in a row that shareholders have voted against executive pay packages. And Ellison did give up a $1.2 million cash bonus for fiscal 2013, which ended in May. His annual salary is a token $1. But the board still showered him with stock options.

CtW pointed out in a research report that in 2013 that Ellison was paid about $78 million in cash and stock, mostly stock, compared to an industry average of $29 million. In 2012, it was $96 million, compared to an average of $43 million. And in 2011, it was $76 million, compared to $22 million. CtW also wants lower pay for Oracle's five top execs. In 2012, they were paid $253 million, compared to an industry average of $90 million, it said. 

Larry Ellison is a self-made billionaire, one of the founders of Oracle and the Valley's longest-running CEO. He's the heart-and-soul of the company and his pay reflects that. Year after year, Ellison lands on the lists of the highest paid CEOs. 

But his company is struggling to grow as smaller cloud computing players rise up to bite his ankles. And his grand vision of moving Oracle into the hardware business hasn't yet paid off.

This chart explains the problem:

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Oracle is being publicly flogged for Oregon's dysfunctional Affordable Care Act website. The website has been called "the worst disaster zone" in the Obamacare’s roll out," by the Washington Post's Ezra Klein.

That's because the state's website cost $43 million ($1.7 million over budget) and hasn't been able to sign up a single person. Worse still, it might not be working until after the March 31 deadline for enrolling in health care. So said the Oregon executive responsible for the state's rollout, Rocky King, in a hearing last week, as reported by Blue Oregon's Kari Chisholm.

Cover Oregon board member Ken Allen blasted Oracle at the hearing, saying:

This is their failure. ... Their dates have shifted and shifted and shifted. ... The Cover Oregon staff are tremendously dedicated folks who have worked really hard ... All of that good will and support from the business community is being frittered away because Oracle didn’t get it online. It’s 98% Oracle’s screw up.

Meanwhile, Oregon hired 400 temp workers to process paper applications by hand, so that people who apply for coverage by December 15 will have coverage by January 1, Allen said.

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley blasted Oracle on television, too.

When NBC's Chuck Todd asked him on Friday if he could explain the problems with Oregon's health care rollout, he answered  "Yes. Oracle."

And he let that word hang in the air until Todd asked him for details. Then Merkley said:

Oracle was contracted to write the exchange. They promised it would be fully delivered on time, it would be beautiful and do more than any other exchange in the country, and it's in complete dysfunction. So we had to return to paper applications.

The irony of this situation is that Oracle is one of the Silicon Valley companies that the Obama administration has called in to help fix the disastrous federal website.

We asked Oracle if it had any response, or explanation for Oregon's website's problems. Oracle had no comment.

Watch Sen. Merkley blame Oracle (at 5:05):

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Oracle will report its quarterly financial results at the close of the stock market on Wednesday. Analysts are expecting flat revenues but we're hearing that there could be a couple of bigger items of interest:

• A reorganization of the U.S. sales force, which may be announced only internally, not publicly.
• A big new agreement with former-partner-turned-bitter-rival, Hewlett Packard.

Both of those tidbits come from Wall Street analyst Pat Walravens, director of technology research for JMP Securities, one of the analysts who closely follows Oracle and breaks a lot of news about the company.

Walravens tells us that the reorg could be taking place in the current quarter and that people inside Oracle expect to be called into a meeting "to announce the change later this week." There may also be news about a restructured hardware business.

Oracle declined comment when reached by Business Insider.

Most analysts are expecting less-than-stellar financial results from Oracle. The consensus is 67 cents a share on sales of $9.2 billion. That's flat revenues from the year-ago quarter, and slightly improved profits.

Walravens expects software sales to be flat, and hardware revenue to be worse than expected, diving 13%. Oracle has said hardware revenue will be down 1% - 11%. Oracle's hardware sales have declined heavily for 11 quarters in a row.

So a reorg of the North American sales force could be good news.

As we've previously reported, Oracle president Mark Hurd has been systematically overhauling the sales force for more than two years, but so far, his changes haven't sparked the kind of growth analysts would like to see.

When he began, we started hearing stories about how some of the company's more experienced salespeople were quitting because the atmosphere had become too cutthroat and stressful.

A few weeks ago, we talked to one salesperson who quit the company less than a year after joining. This person told us that, under Hurd, the sales territory was less than 20 square miles of a metropolitan area and included so few companies that it would have been very difficult to earn the quota Oracle expected, about $2 million in annual sales.

"My territory was extremely small. The amount of business I could call on, I exhausted that in the amount of time I was there. They wanted you to keep calling those same companies. I'm not the kind of sales rep that's going to call on the same company over and over," this person told us.

Walravens is hearing similar stories. As he reported in his research note, an Oracle reseller told him that in one territory alone Oracle had "16 reps just [selling] on the database. I don’t know how they make a living."

We're told that the North American sales teams to be restructured report to Matt Mills. These could be the teams that included top North American sales guy Anthony Fernicola, who moved to Salesforce.com. (Correction: The story originally said Mills took over for Fernicola. We've since been told that this is not correct.)

On top of all that, Oracle may have patched up its relationship with HP.

Walravens understands that HP has signed a $150 million contract to renew its Oracle licenses, a contract that may or may not be announced. HP has always been a big Oracle customer, and for decades was a close partner who helped sell Oracle technology. But their relationship went south after Oracle bought Sun and started competing head-to-head in the hardware market with HP.

Oracle also hired Hurd after HP asked him to resign as CEO, which lead to a lawsuit that was ultimately settled. Then Oracle said it would stop making its database software for HP's flagship Itanium computer servers. That lead to another lawsuit, which HP won.

Given its lack of overall growth, Oracle may have decided it needs HP again. Given Oracle's lackluster hardware sales, HP may have decided that Oracle isn't much of a threat. "Sun is a lot smaller than when Oracle bought it," Walravens points out.

If that's the case, the companies may announce a big kiss-and-make-up partnership, similar to the one Oracle signed last summer with another friend-turned-rival, Salesforce.com.

But that's just speculation at this point. Sources close to HP tell us that they haven't heard about a new contract or partnership with Oracle.

HP also had no comment.

SEE ALSO: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH: It's Crunch Time For Oracle And Mark Hurd

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Oracle just reported its second quarter earnings and there's lots of good news to behold.

Oracle reported non-GAAP revenue of $9.28 billion and adjusted earnings per share of 69 cents. That's a beat on profit.

Analysts expected Oracle to report adjusted earnings of 67 cents a share, up from 64 cents in the year-earlier quarter and revenue basically flat at $9.18 billion.

New software licenses and cloud software were essentially flat, and that's not good.

But hardware, Oracle's problem child, did relatively well, shrinking only 3%. Some analysts were expecting hardware to decline as much as 13%. Oracle had said that it would shrink between 1% and 11%.

It's good that Oracle exceeded expectations this quarter because it missed revenue expectations for the previous three quarters in a row. Oracle president Mark Hurd has been rejiggering Oracle's famous sales force for more than two years now, doing things like changing sales territories and hiring college grads to increase sales. So far, these efforts haven't stirred the hoped-for growth, so this is a good sign.

Here's the relevant parts of the press release.

SEE ALSO: Source: Oracle Is Quietly Reorganizing Its Sales Force And Signing A Huge Agreement With HP

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On Wednesday, Oracle president Mark Hurd got a couple of questions from Wall Street analysts about the state of Oracle's salesforce.

During the company's quarterly conference call, he categorically denied that another reorganization was taking place.

"We don't have any salespeople changing territory, changing accounts. We're not reorg-ing anything. If anything, we're actually really happy with the model we're in," he said.

And he had the numbers behind him: On Wednesday, Oracle had its first beat-the-street quarter, after three whiffs in a row. That's a hopeful sign.

Changes to Oracle's North American sales force and/or its hardware unit were rumored to be quietly under way, Wall Street analyst Pat Walravens, director of technology research for JMP Securities told Business Insider earlier this week.

It's all part of a never-ending stream of stories from current and former salespeople complaining that Hurd's sales plan isn't working. (Oracle has a massive, thousands-strong salesforce, so it's not particularly surprising that some of them are grumblers.) About two years ago, Hurd began restructuring Oracle's legendary sales force, hiring thousands more sales people, shrinking territories and asking salespeople to specialize in particular products.

As Oracle CEO Larry Ellison described it on Wednesday's call:

"Mark has emphasized that we haven't made any changes and that's absolutely true. A while ago though, we decided we had to line up an HCM [Human Capital Management software] sales force directly against Workday. That's all they think about every day. We have another [team] that competes against Salesforce.com ... another team that focuses on SAP. "

Oracle is no longer hiring, Hurd said on Wednesday, and its sales team is fully staffed.

Revenue was up 2% from the year-ago quarter, to $9.28 billion. That's healthy but not stunning: All of it was from software license renewal contracts and product support contracts (which covers things like tech support). That revenue came from existing customers, not new software, cloud or hardware sales.

On the analyst call, CFO Safra Catz was asked if Oracle was going to continue to remain one of the most profitable tech companies ever. She said that depends on the sales force:

"What you can see in our numbers right now, year over year, the difference is that we've invested in sales capacity right now compared to last year, and we expect that to pay off."

Josh Olson, technology analyst for Edward Jones, told Business Insider that Oracle has about two more quarters to show that Hurd's overhaul is working.

"Oracle is right on cusp of a potential breakthrough, but keeps kind of teasing us," Olson said. "We’ve been looking for an inflection point and it keeps getting pushed out and pushed out. If we don’t see it in the next few quarters, our concerns would be heightened."

Salespeople have told Business Insider that under Hurd's plan their territories are too small, and there are too many of them all hitting up the same customers. The revenue increase, however, suggests those criticisms may not be seeing the bigger picture.

Meanwhile, Oracle's management insists it's got a line-up of new products that enterprises are eager to buy, including new cloud computing products, new hardware designed to run its apps, and a new database, the 12c. The database market is Oracle's bread-and-butter. The 12c database was created for cloud computing and runs at "ungodly" speeds, as Ellison once described it.

"We've seen more interest in 12c than any database version in recent memory," Ellison said on Wednesday. He predicted that the company would see "very rapid uptake" in sales of this database in 2014 and 2015.

Olson says that if Oracle doesn't deliver on those promises and posts "another big miss" in its fourth quarter, the one that ends in June, that means the "rumors of the sales force being disgruntled" could be true. Or it could mean that enterprises are starting to use new, rival database technologies like Hadoop or noSQL databases.

Olson is bullish that Oracle will do well, and the changes in the sales force will pay off. Edward Jones has reiterated its buy rating for Oracle, he said.

SEE ALSO: The 22 Best Tech Companies To Work For, According To Employees

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Oracle announced today that it will buy software company Responsys for $27 per share, the equivalent of about $1.5 billion.

Responsys makes marketing software. Its product will be integrated in Oracle's own marketing product called the Oracle Marketing Cloud.

Here's the press release from Responsys:

December 20th, 2013 is an exciting day in the history of Responsys. We’ve announced that Responsys has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Oracle.

As a part of the Oracle Marketing Cloud, we’ll be able to accelerate our vision of giving marketers across all industries the most advanced platform for orchestrating customer experiences over time and across channels. We couldn’t be more thrilled about what this means for our customers and employees.

The proposed transaction is subject to Responsys stockholders tendering a majority of the outstanding shares and vested equity awards, certain regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the first half of 2014. 

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Last week, after Oracle announced it was buying a company called Responsys for $27.00 per share in cash, investors turned around and drove up the price of Responsys to $27.40.

And the stock today is still trading today above $27 (at about $27.24).

What's going on? Rumor has it that SAP, or some other tech firm, could swoop in and make a competing offer.  SAP was also bidding on the company before it chose Oracle, the Wall Street Journal's Shira Ovide reported.

Some say that the deal, valued at about $1.5 billion is a relative bargain for Oracle. It means Responsys is selling at about eight-times revenue from the prior 12 months, Ovide reports, or 5.6-times its anticipated 2014 revenue, says Wall Street analyst Pat Walravens from JMP Securities, who closely follows Oracle and the enterprise software industry.

That compares to the 11 times recurring revenue which Oracle paid for Eloqua, according to Goldman Sachs estimates.

Walravens even went so far as to increase his target price for Responsys to $33, after the $27/share deal was announced. He wrote in a research note:

We are raising our price target because we would not be surprised to see a competing bid from another vendor like SAP ... IBM or Microsoft. SAP, in particular, has apparently been in recent partnership discussions with Responsys, has previously paid higher multiples for other SaaS solutions (8.1x for SuccessFactors, 7.1x for Ariba and reportedly a similar multiple for privately held Hybris) and would have little to lose, in our view, by putting in a higher bid, thereby either forcing a competitor to pay more for an asset or acquiring a business that would be a very nice fit for its SaaS and retail businesses.

Reponsys has a cloud service that helps companies with marketing campaigns like sending offers via email, Web ads or mobile ads.

Oracle wants Responsys to help it do battle with its old frenemy, Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com founder, Marc Benioff, who studied at Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's knee, wants to dominate what looks to be the next big trend in enterprise IT.

Companies spend nearly $4 trillion a year on technology, mostly through their IT departments. But Benioff believes that by 2017, the chief marketing officer will buy more tech than the chief information officer. So he's building out his marketing tech offerings to grab that business, something he calls "Marketing Cloud."

Oracle wants the CMO's business, too, and, ideally, to prevent Salesforce.com from winning it. Responsys will be combined with another huge Oracle acquisition, Eloqua, for something that Oracle also calls "Marketing Cloud."

That's not too subtle is it?

SAP's interest in Responsys could indicate that SAP is getting ready to make this a three-way war for the Marketing Cloud.

And that's why, days after the announced acquisition, Responsys investors are hopeful that they'll get more than $27 a share.

We're not holding our breath that SAP or another player will really will swoop in and disrupt Oracle's deal. There are several other players in this market SAP could grab if it wanted to, like Marketo.

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Oracle has bought New Jersey-based Corente for an undisclosed sum and that purchase should make Cisco stand up and take notice.

With this acquisition, Oracle has declared it will be competing in a young market that gravely threatens Cisco.

There is a movement to replace traditional, expensive network hardware sold by companies like Cisco and Juniper (mostly Cisco) with software. It's a concept known as software-defined networking (SDN). Companies still need hardware, but less of it and less expensive versions.

Corente offers a technology that replaces traditional network hardware with a combination of hardware and software. Companies use Corente's tech to connect remote offices together or connect offices to the Internet and to other cloud computing applications. It's the part of networking called wide-area networks (WAN).

Plus, companies don't have to buy the Corente equipment themselves. They can order it as a cloud service and pay for it on a monthly subscription.

With Corente, and Oracle's acquisition of Xsigo last year, Oracle will compete in the SDN market it says in the documents announcing the acquisition:

Oracle and Corente are expected to deliver software-defined networking offerings that create cost-effective, secure networks, spanning global deployments. Together, Corente and Oracle are expected to deliver a complete technology portfolio for cloud deployments with SDN offerings that virtualize both the enterprise data center LAN and the WAN.

Cisco already has to look over its shoulder at its close partner VMware, which is leading the charge in the SDN market. Soon, it will have fierce competitor Oracle to contend with too.

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Even though Salesforce.com signed a huge contract last summer to keep using Oracle's products, and there was a public kiss-and-make-up session between Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and his mentor, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, the two companies are still big rivals.

That was never more clear than in the remarks Benioff made to a group of reporters Wednesday evening, following a one-day Salesforce.com roadshow event in New York.

Benioff set a 2013 goal for himself of closing more deals with large enterprise companies, reports InformationWeek's Doug Henschen. He wanted to hire Oracle's top sales guy, Keith Block, and had tried to recruit him for 10 years, Benioff said.

"But I couldn't get him until [Oracle president] Mark Hurd relieved him of his duties ... I think the biggest mistake Mark Hurd ever made was letting Keith Block leave Oracle, because he's probably the best sales executives the enterprise software industry has ever seen."

Block actually didn't join Salesforce until he had been gone from Oracle for about a year. Sources close to Oracle tell us that Hurd wasn't the only one involved in the decision to let him go.

Block left Oracle after a controversial bunch of instant messages and e-mails from him surfaced during a lawsuit between Oracle and HP.

In the messages, Block bashed Sun hardware, saying things like "We bought a dog. Mark wants us to sell the dog. ... Nobody wants to sell Sun." In another exchange, he bashed Hurd for creating "lots of noise, not much results.", according to MarketWatch.

Meanwhile, Oracle has been struggling to find growth under Hurd's plans to revamp. Also, Salesforce.com has gotten tight with HP.

HP has become a big Salesforce.com customer and, more recently, a partner. The two have jointly created a project called the Superpod, in which large global companies can use Salesforce.com's cloud on HP hardware in a private area of Salesforce's data center.

Oracle declined to comment.

SEE ALSO: The 22 Best Tech Companies To Work For, According To Employees

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Oracle Corp CEO Larry Ellison played down concerns on Wednesday about possible government snooping in his business customers' private data.

At an industry conference in San Francisco, an audience member asked the Oracle co-founder what to tell potential Oracle cloud-computing clients who worry that the National Security Agency could access their information.

"To the best of our knowledge, an Oracle database hasn't been broken into for a couple of decades by anybody," Ellison replied. "It's so secure, there are people that complain," he added.

Oracle, Salesforce.com and other major Silicon Valley companies are increasingly offering Internet-based business services for things like human resources, accounting and sales management, in a trend known as cloud computing.

Entrusting software and data management to cloud services can save companies the expense of maintaining their own servers and other IT infrastructure.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's revelations about U.S. government surveillance have increased companies' concerns about privacy and may cost U.S. technology vendors billions of dollars in lost sales, analysts say.

David Litchfield, an established security expert and frequent speaker at top hacking conferences, disagreed with Ellison's comments and said he regularly sees Oracle systems being compromised.

"Of all of the commercial databases, Oracle is the least secure," he told Reuters by email.

The roots of Ellison's software company go back to 1977, when the Central Intelligence Agency contracted him and two co-workers to design a database, codenamed Oracle. The same year, Ellison and his colleagues founded the database company that would eventually be renamed Oracle.

In an interview with CBS News' Charlie Rose in August, Ellison said he believed the NSA's widespread surveillance was essential to preventing terrorism.

(Additional reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Matt Driskill)

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