甲骨文的问题到底出在哪？

    如果你的公司是行业翘楚，但所在的行业却江河日下，你该怎么办？

    这就是甲骨文公司（Oracle）现在面临的困境。这家公司一度曾是整个商业软件市场上最让竞争对手恐惧的企业。上周，甲骨文公司公布了截止到2013年5月31日的最近一个财年财务业绩。它的收入增长至372亿美元，比上一财年的371亿美元略有上升。甲骨文虽然仍在增长，但增长幅度已是十分勉强。

    过去10年里，甲骨文的股价表现依然十分抢眼，从后互联网泡沫时代的每股8美元，增长到了两年前的36.50美元的高位，增长了四倍多。一直到今年三月份，甲骨文的股价还高达36.34美元。不过由于有迹象显示，企业科技市场依然不景气，因此最近甲骨文的股票也稍有下跌。

    上周，甲骨文的股票跌至每股30美元以下。上周三，这家公司发布的收益报告显示，它第二季度的软件销量继续低于分析师预期，甲骨文的股票闻风跌至每股29.86美元。一般说来，客户们如果在甲骨文买了软件，意味着他们还要长期接受甲骨文的维护服务。不过甲骨文在最近的一次收益电话会议上表示，很多客户要么推迟了软件交易，要么缩小了交易规模。

    高盛集团（Goldman Sachs ）分析师海德•贝利尼在一份报告中表示，造成这种局面的原因“很可能更多是由于宏观因素导致的，而不是由于该公司的特定原因”。他同时还指出，“虽然它的业绩一般（和业内其他大公司差不多），但是这种表现是这家公司很少经历过的情况”，尤其上个季度历来还是一年中销量最强势的季度。如果甲骨文不能继续延续过去的卓越表现，这对行业其他公司来说也不是个好兆头。

    甲骨文疲软的财务业绩使关于一个老问题的争论再次尘嚣尘上：甲骨文目前的问题在多大程度上与其参与的一些国外市场的宏观经济放缓有关——比如欧洲、拉美和亚洲现在都成了全球经济的疲弱点。另外，它与云计算的兴起有多大的关联。

    二者的区别是：经济周期是有周期性的，但是云计算的兴起是非周期性的，而且它可能意味着甲骨文的立身之本，也就安装和维护软件套装这种高利润的业务模式可能将一去不复返了，取而代之的是更加实用的、即用即付费的云计算业务模式。

    What do you do when you are the best company in your industry, but your industry is mired in a slump of mediocre performance?

    That's the dilemma faced by Oracle (ORCL), the enterprise software giant that has long been the most feared player in the competitive market for business software. Last week, Oracle reported that revenue grew to $37.2 billion in its fiscal year ended May 31, 2013. That was up from $37.1 billion in the previous fiscal year. Oracle is still growing, but just barely.

    Oracle's stock has had an impressive run over the past decade. After a post-dot-com low of $8 a share, the stock rose more than fourfold to a high point of $36.50 two years ago. Even as recently as this March, Oracle traded as high as $36.43. But amid signs that the enterprise tech market remains stagnant, Oracle's stock has been declining of late.

    This week, Oracle's stock traded back below $30 a share. On Wednesday, shares traded at $29.86 in the wake of an earnings report that showed software sales fell short of analyst expectations for the second quarter in a row. Software sales at Oracle tie customers into long-term maintenance deals, but the company said in an earnings call that customers are delaying software deals or opting for smaller ones.

    Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini said in a report that the disappointments "were likely more macro driven than company specific," noting that "while results were mediocre at best (in line with peers), this is a performance not typically experienced by the company," especially in what is usually its strongest quarter of the year. And if Oracle isn't excelling as it used to, that doesn't bode well for the rest of the industry.

    Oracle's financial performance reignited a debate over how much of Oracle's problems are tied to a macroeconomic slowdown in many of the global markets it's involved in -- Europe, Latin America, and Asia have all been listed as global weak spots -- and how much is caused by a shift to cloud computing.

    The big difference is this: Economic cycles come around in time, but the secular shift to cloud computing may mark a permanent move away from the high-margin business model that Oracle built its fortunes on (installing and maintaining suites of software) to the more utility-like, pay-as-you-go service model of most cloud-software sellers.