Amazon, Microsoft stealing Oracle’s business: JPMorgan

Amazon and Microsoft are outperforming computer software giant Oracle in both technology and cloud services, according to JPMorgan.

In a note to clients on Thursday, JPMorgan analyst Mark Murphy downgraded Oracle to neutral from overweight as a survey of chief investment officers revealed that not only were companies going to spend less on Oracle’s products, but also that the company was becoming less critical to their IT functions.

“The change in rating … [reflects] our view that ORCL is losing its significance in Enterprise IT and that its cloud transition is going to be slow and choppy,” Murphy said.

Only 6.5% of vendors voted for Oracle as being indispensable to their operations. At the same time, Amazon’s importance to CIOs showed material improvement, “creating the appearance of a ‘sucking sound’ out of Oracle,” Murphy said. CIOs noted they were also migrating Oracle databases to both Microsoft and Amazon.

When it comes to the company’s cloud presence, Murphy said Oracle “is nowhere close” to industry leaders, including Microsoft, Amazon and Google.

Shares of Oracle plunged on Thursday, following the release of the note.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
ORCL	ORACLE CORP.	194.10	+3.34	+1.75%
AMZN	AMAZON.COM INC.	200.73	-2.15	-1.06%
MSFT	MICROSOFT CORP.	413.89	-0.77	-0.19%

The stock is down nearly 2% so far this year.

Murphy also lowered his price target for Oracle to $53, from $55.