After unending streams of bad news about the economy, Oracle's robust first-quarter report and Gartner's bullish PC forecast are heartening. Software license growth in the quarter, which tends to be seasonally weak, was the strongest the database giant has posted in 10 years. And since Wall Street always looks to the future, the solid guidance for the second quarter cheered investors, and more importantly, is ea After unending streams of bad news about the economy, Oracle’s robust first-quarter report and Gartner’s bullish PC forecast are heartening. Software license growth in the quarter, which tends to be seasonally weak, was the strongest the database giant has posted in 10 years. And since Wall Street always looks to the future, the solid guidance for the second quarter cheered investors, and more importantly, is early evidence that the crisis in the credit markets is not (or at least, not yet) putting a hit on IT spending plans. By the way, I mentioned in an earlier post this week that Wall Street doesn’t get the open-source business model. It’s also true that some on Wall Street don’t get Oracle. So it’s no surprise that a number of analysts and commentators fretted over the report. Even so, the stock jumped a very healthy 4.4% today, setting a new 52-week high at $21.31 a share. In a conference call with analysts, the company emphasized that it is not going to follow rival SAP by pursing sales to smaller companies. The big reason: Margins. Going “down market” is expensive and that hurts profits. Instead, Oracle, which has broadened its offerings via a multi-billion dollar acquisition binge is selling into its installed base, a much cheaper, and therefore higher margin strategy, notes Cowen analyst Peter Goldmacher. You may remember that when Oracle purchased PeopleSoft there was lots of noise in the IT community to the effect that customers would defect and that Oracle would let the acquired company’s products languish. . But it hasn’t happened. Indeed, “As a great example, over one-third of the acquired PeopleSoft installed base is now in the process of upgrading to PSFT 9, said Citigroup analyst Brent Thill. (You can see details of the quarterly report at InfoWorld’s sister site.) Turning to another high-tech bellwether, the PC market, Gartner analysts predicted that worldwide PC shipments will grow 12.3 percent this year, dropping slightly to 11 percent growth in 2008. “The ongoing global economic turbulence will most likely have little effect on PC shipments in the months to come,” said Gartner’s George Shiffler. Is high-tech crunch proof? Obviously not, and Shiffler advised PC makers to be sure they have flexibility in their supply chains should the downturn spillover. Still, these are two welcome data points that bode well for IT spending — and perhaps hiring — over the next few months. I welcome your tips, comments and ideas. Write to me at bill.snyder@sbcglobal.net. Technology Industry