When it comes to the technology sector [XLK] many investors have a tendency to applaud a company’s ability to announce at least one software-related, hardware-related, or cloud-related service launch within a 12-month period. However, when a company such as Oracle [ORCL]announces a plethora of service launches that encompass all three of the above mentioned areas, investors need to shift gears and offer up a standing ovation especially since the company’s latest set of roll outs could mean much higher earnings growth over the next several years.

Company Overview

Headquartered in Redwood City, California, Oracle Corporation develops, manufactures, markets, hosts, and supports database and middleware software, application software, cloud infrastructure, hardware systems, and related services worldwide.

Performance & Trend Behavior

As of Tuesday's close, shares of ORCL, which have been fairly flat on a year-to-date basis, possess a market cap of $169.63 billion, a P/E ratio of 16.02, and an annualized dividend yield of 1.25% ($0.48). Based on their closing price of $38.28/share, shares of ORCL are trading 5.24% below their 20-day simple moving average, 5.55% below their 50-day simple moving average, and 3.19% below their 200-day simple moving average.

Based on their recent trends these numbers indicate both a short-term and mid-to-long term downtrend for the stock, which generally translates into a selling mode for most near-term traders and many long-term investors. With that said, I strongly believe we could see its trend behavior reverse course on the heels of its latest set of services-related updates.

Recent Services-Related Updates

In an effort to improve upon its most recent top-line performance, which has weakened in the wake of poor hardware and database-related sales, Oracle announced a plethora of services-related offerings on Tuesday, September 30. These service-related offerings can be broken down into the following three categories:

Hardware Service-Related Launches: 1) The FS1, which is a hybrid flash/disk storage system featuring software that tries to optimize price/performance through "fine-grain autotiering" of various storage types. 2) A new Exalytics In-Memory Machine that delivers large performance/memory improvements. 3) A database recovery appliance said to deliver "zero data loss protection" for live databases.

Software Service-Related Launches: 1) Updates to Oracle's cloud ERP, HR, and CRM apps. The HR apps (which face competition from Workday and SAP) have been given design changes meant to appeal to casual users, and the CRM apps now integrate BlueKai's data management platform. 2) New features for Oracle's Fusion middleware meant to improve data integration for cloud services and mobile apps. 3) A new release for the open-source MySQL database (which has currently been losing ground to MariaDB).

Cloud Services: 1) The company announced 6 new services for its cloud app platform (which finds itself playing catch-up against both Microsoft and Salesforce). 2) A Business Intelligence Cloud Service that joins Oracle's Analytics Cloud portfolio. 3) Mobile app development services meant to allow non-technical users to build apps.

Conclusion

If Oracle can successfully launch all nine of the above mentioned services-related developments across its three major platforms, then I strongly believe that not only will its recent trend behavior reverse course and begin to move in an upward direction, but its full year earnings for both 2015 (in which analysts are calling for the company to earn $3.04/share on revenue of $39.58 billion) and 2016 (in which analysts are calling for the company to earn $3.31/share on revenue of $41.37 billion) should have no problem surpassing analysts’ expectations.