Jeff Henley"s role as the first speaker at Oracle Open World in San Francisco was brief: he welcomed the crowd, announced the morning"s keynote speakers and exited stage left. But Henley took time for an interview session with Hong Kong and New Zealand reporters later in the day.

After serving as Oracle CFO for 13 years, Henley was recently promoted to chairman. He addressed the inevitable questions about Oracle"s ongoing attempt to take over PeopleSoft in a positive manner, declaring that "If we don"t acquire PeopleSoft, we"ll be just fine."

Henley commented on China"s recent moves towards favoring local software vendors. "In the short run," said the Oracle chairman, "it"s not a problem. But in the long term, it"s not in China"s interest."

Henley added that he felt the mainland should be more open in its thinking. "As China continues to grow," he said, "they will be acquisitive over the years. China needs to get out of this protectionist thinking."

"I"m bullish on China," declared Henley. "My prediction is the same thing that happened in Japan will happen in China, (which is) still in stages of explosive growth."

Speaking on the company"s products, Henley added that Oracle has been targeting SME business with new products like Oracle One, "aimed at 1-2 processors [and] priced like SQL Server." He predicted that it would prove popular due to initial positive reaction, but added that ultimate success depends on Oracle;s partners, and that the scheme is still in its early stages.

According to Henley, Oracle started targeting SMEs about years ago.

"We had to make our product simpler," he said, "people didn"t need all the bells and whistles, but they do want lower TCO." He added that he felt there was lots of growth left in the SME space. "We"re not going to grow our traditional market at 30-, 40-, 50-percent as we have in the past, said Henley. "In the database space we are already highly penetrated, so growth opportunities are limited."