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By Sonya Rabbitte, 16 January 2002 16:55

NEWS Oracle's ASP business has had a rather disappointing start in Europe, with only ten new customers signing up over the past year. At the AppsWorld conference in Amsterdam today, the company admitted that it had expected greater interest in Oracle.com - the hosted software service launched last year. In contrast, 1,200 European customers have opted for an offline upgrade to the 11i application suite. But despite Oracle.com's poor take up in Europe, Oracle said it intends to migrate 50 per cent of customers to hosted software within the next four to five years. Speaking today at the conference, Sergio Giacoletto, Oracle's executive vice president of EMEA, blamed the disappointing European performance on a 'slow' market. The US has shown more of an interest in Oracle.com, with Giacoletto claiming some issues beyond its control hampered progress in Europe. "Telco costs may be going down, but speed of connectivity and infrastructure still needs to be addressed in Europe," he said. But on the bright side, Giacoletto believes the market is showing signs of picking up and remains confident the company will meet its five-year target. While many of the dot-coms who fueled the initial ASP hype have disappeared, Giacoletto claimed traditional companies and governments are now showing an interest in hosted services. "There are signs from clients that they are accepting the fact they have to use internet enabled applications and that it is better to use standardised software rather than to keep customising their own applications," he said. But Katy Ring, research director with Ovum, is less confident that Oracle will meet its target, calling it a 'very bold statement'. "There is a cultural resistance from customers, but it's a mixed bag. Oracle makes a lot of money from services and system integration fees. If they do succeed they're going to lose all that revenue," she said.