John Lamb's Week: Cry England for St George and Larry

Making the point you can prove anything with statistics, the firm claims that while a quarter of respondents don't know St George is the patron saint of England, 70 per cent would like the day as a public holiday anyway. I'll drink to that.

On Tuesday, Oracle will be outlining its latest push in customer relationship management (CRM). A recent study by The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) reveals that Oracle CRM products are most used by American companies.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison will no doubt also be encouraged by the news last week that Siebel's sales force automation service, Sales.com, folded. Ellison has an interest in the rival online service salesforce.com. The CRM business is not looking very healthy at present with profit warnings or actual losses from Microstrategy, Cognos and Epiphany. Hyperion reports on Tuesday, although the word is that the company will be in the black

In the meantime, Oracle is getting ready to start delivering its Oracle 9i database in June. It is designed for web-based activities, particularly those of ASP companies. Visitors to Oracle's website would be forgiven for thinking the product was already available. Good to see that Oracle is keeping the old smoke and mirrors polished.

Online bookseller Amazon has become a talisman for the new economy. Famous for never making a profit and for having staff work at desks made from doors, it is unlikely that the company is going to do anything to jeopardise its loss making reputation when it reports on Tuesday.

However, there has been some excitement recently that key indicators are moving in the right direction. In other words the company is losing less than it used to. The question is how long shareholders will continue to support the pioneer of online retailing - they seem to have a lot of patience.

Will Amazon fail? Unlikely since it would be tantamount to writing off ebusiness as a sales channel. silicon.com will be grilling Amazon's UK MD on Wednesday.

From Wednesday to Thursday you'll be able to get a peek into the hot topic of corporate portals at a Butler Group jamboree in London. Also known as enterprise portals and - in the dim distant past - as intranets, speakers will be talking about how internal websites can be used to get expertise and information flowing around a company. Further information from tgavin@europrgroup.com.

Worried about how economic conditions might affect investment in technology? You are not alone. On Thursday, US publication InformationWeek will unveil the results of a survey of 894 multinational companies at the Webcom 2001 show in London.

The Global IT Strategies Study says that while over a third of international companies are concerned about the weakening of national economies, three quarters plan to spend more on IT this year than last. Other issues highlighted in the research are worries about lack of leadership and poorly defined company strategies. Nothing new there then.

If past experience is anything to go by, an economic slowdown will result in investment decisions being postponed, concentration on projects with a clear return on investment and a cutback on overall IT spend. In addition, global companies will seek to consolidate and standardise on company-wide systems. Further information about Webcom can be found at www.web-com.co.uk.

For all the economic uncertainty, visiting CEOs are now thronging to these shores as thick as swallows. This week you can catch Ben Adams of internet translation management company Uniscape, Claudio Vaccarella from billing firm Smarten, Ruann Ernst, founder of web-hosting outfit Digital Island, and Amnon Landon, from website performance monitoring company Mercury Interactive. The last two will be paying a visit to the silicon.com studios on Thursday.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison features in silicon.com's Agenda Setters 2001. To find out more, visit http://www.silicon.com/as2001