Oracle names new Business OnLine president

Oracle today named a returning employee as new president of Oracle Business OnLine, the company's software hosting business.

The database giant said Timothy Chou will take over the job, abruptly vacated last week by Chris Russell, who led the division for about a year.

Oracle did not comment on Russell's departure.

Chou returns to Oracle after a stint as chief operating officer at Internet services firm Reasoning.

Prior to joining Reasoning, Chou worked at Oracle, where he helped lead development of Oracle8 database. Chou also spent nearly 15 years at Tandem Computer in strategic planning, business development, product management, and product marketing.

Since the launch of Business OnLine in November 1998, Oracle has made a big push in the application hosting market. The company joins pure play ASPs, or application service providers, such as Corio and USinternetworking, as well as business software makers SAP, J.D. Edwards, and PeopleSoft, that are also slowly offering more hosting options to their customers.

Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison has said his goal is to sign on 10,000 users by the end of this year. The goal for next year is 100,000.

The market for application hosting and rentals is expected to grow rapidly. International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that the applications service provider (ASP) market--which includes hosting of e-commerce, email, and other business applications--will grow to $2 billion by 2003, representing a 91 percent annual growth rate.