Oracle CEO sees no tech spending pickup in coming months

SAN DIEGO: Larry Ellison, the normally opinionated co-founder and chief

executive of No. 2 software maker Oracle Corp., on Tuesday passed on predicting

when corporate technology spending is likely to pick up, but said he was

assuming things wouldn't get better in the next three months.

"My Chinese friends tell me that predictions are very dangerous,

especially when they pertain to the future. I predicted the end of this

recession three months ago ... you saw how good that was," Ellison joked at

Oracle AppsWorld 2002, the company's user conference running through Wednesday

in San Diego.

Last month, Oracle posted earnings that came in slightly below its previously

optimistic forecast on new software revenues that fell by nearly one-third from

the year-earlier quarter ended Feb. 28.

Ellison and company, however, have not been alone in botching their

forecasts. In recent days, company rivals PeopleSoft Inc. and International

Business Machines Corp. have warned that results from their recently completed

quarter would come in lower than expected.

"Businesses are still being very cautious with their capital

spending," Ellison said. Meanwhile, Oracle has cut prices on its software

and begun offering fixed-priced installations and upgrades in an effort to drum

up more business, he said.

Silicon Valley-based Oracle on Tuesday also became the latest high-profile

company to fire Arthur Andersen LLP as the auditing firm grapples with the

fallout from the collapse of energy trader Enron Corp. More than 100 firms have

dropped Andersen in the wake of a criminal charge, which alleges that the

auditor obstructed justice by destroying Enron documents.