Oracle Professional

Oracle Database Book and eBook Published: Boost Performance with the Oracle Database 11gR2 Performance Tuning Cookbook

2012-01-24T10:10:00.001+01:00

Packt Publishing, one of the world’s leading Publishers of Oracle Training material, is pleased to announce the publication of Oracle Database 11gR2 Performance Tuning Cookbook, a new book and ebook aimed at newcomers to the Oracle Database seeking to solve performance problems faster and in a rigorous way.

Birmingham: Packt Publishing, one of the world’s leading Publishers of Oracle Training material, is pleased to announce the publication of Oracle Database 11gR2 Performance Tuning Cookbook, a new book and ebook aimed at newcomers to the Oracle Database seeking to solve performance problems faster and in a rigorous way.

Written in a cookbook style by Cirol Fiorillo, Oracle Database 11gR2 Performance Tuning Cookbook is filled with real recipes offering solutions starting from application design and development, through the implementation of well-performing applications, to the details of deployment and delivering best-performance databases. Readers will learn to implement fast and scalable SQL and PL/SQL code, and choose the correct structures to store the data and access them.
Each recipe in the book is based on a script/procedure explained step-by-step, and is aimed at software developers, software and data architects, and DBAs who work with the Oracle Database.
Packt Publishing has developed and published many books on the Oracle Database, and some of the recent titles include:

Oracle Information Integration, Migration, and Consolidation
OCA Oracle Database 11g: SQL Fundamentals I: A Real World Certification Guide (1ZO-051)
Oracle 10g/11g Data and Database Management Utilities
Oracle Database 11g – Underground Advice for Database Administrators
Mastering Oracle Scheduler in Oracle 11g Databases
And many more. All Packt’s Oracle books can be found on the Oracle books page.

Source: http://www.prweb.com

Ellison’s son is an Oracle of movie hits

2012-01-02T07:47:00.000+01:00

When “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” topped the box office last weekend, it was a surprising outcome to many.

But for the 28-year-old son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, the film’s success was a vindication of his early support for the project that led him to finance half of its $145 million budget.

The latest “Mission: Impossible” film is just one of several movies being co-financed by Paramount and Skydance, the production and financing company started by Larry Ellison’s son, David.

Skydance gives Paramount a way to share the risk on big-budget films or movies with uncertain commercial prospects.

When Skydance finalized its deal with Paramount in 2010, the studio had been without a long-term financing partner since 2008. In the interim, the studio had been relying on various companies like Spyglass.

But Paramount still had a strong track record at the box office, which, along with the fact that the studio seemed to be looking for a strategic partner, appealed to David Ellison.

A source close to the deal says the studio reached an agreement with Ellison in part because execs discovered they and the Oracle scion had very similar tastes.

But another source familiar with the situation indicated that the fact that David was Larry Ellison’s son made Paramount feel like he was a reliable investor.

Indeed, Larry Ellison supplied an undisclosed amount of the $150 million in equity Skydance raised. Skydance also put together $200 million in a revolving -credit facility led by JPMorgan.

Paramount offers films it wants Skydance to co-finance to Ellison’s company early in their development. The percentage of the budget Skydance finances depends on the film.

The partnership has provided Paramount with a way to hedge their bets on risky movies like the Coen brothers’ Western, “True Grit”; Skydance financed 50 percent of its $38 million budget.

More recently, Skydance stepped in to help finance Paramount’s reportedly pricey zombie film, “World War Z.”The deal also gives Paramount an option to distribute movies that Skydance develops.

Source: HILARY LEWIS @ http://www.nypost.com/

Oracle, Cisco crow new database flash dash record

2011-12-19T14:57:00.003+01:00

Best 2-CPU server result ever - with Violin's chips. Oracle claims a world-record TPC-C result with its database running on a Cisco server and not an Exadata system, although doesn't mention that two Violin memory flash arrays were needed.

A Cisco UCS C250 extended memory server with two six-core Xeon X5690 processors, 384GB of DRAM, and two Violin Memory flash arrays (5.3TB V-3205 and 16.3TB V-6000) ran Oracle's 11g database on Oracle Linux, and scored 1,053,100 transactions per minute (tpmC), with a cost per transaction of $0.58.

This was the third lowest cost-per-tpmC ever, only being beaten by the $0.49/tpmC and $0.51/tpmC of two four-processor HP Proliant systems running SQL Server. The $0.51/tpmC result used six Violin Memory V3200 flash arrays, each with with 2.6TB of flash.The $0.49 HP result used flash as well; HP P2000 array with 128 300GB SAS disk drives and D2700 enclosure with 256 120GB SSDs.

Oracle says its tech "delivered more performance, and cost nearly 11 per cent less per tpmC than the nearest competition on a configuration using identical Intel processors and memory capacity", referring to an HP result of 1,024,380 tpmC and $0.65/tpmC with a ProLiant DL380. This server featured 81 400GB SSDs plus 104 disk drives.

Both Cisco's and Oracle's canned quotes somehow forgot to mention the Violin arrays, which was somewhat surprising as the Violin storage represented the vast majority of the $602,316 bill for the tested configuration.

Kevin Closson, a technology director and performance architect in the Data Computing Division of EMC, tweeted about the result, saying: "Style: Get world record result and don't mention key storage technology that made it possible. See the word Violin?"

He also said that Violin doesn't mention Oracle on its benchmark result page, which is not quite true; the Violin page has a hot-link to the Cisco UCS tpmC result which does mention Oracle.

Source: Chris Mellor @ http://www.theregister.co.uk

Oracle CEO's beautiful Woodside farm

2011-12-14T07:07:00.001+01:00

Have a look at this interesting business news article:

Oracle CEO's beautiful Woodside farm - Rediff.com Business
Passionate about buying land, Ellison, co-founder and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation, has acquired some of most beautiful houses and land since the 1990's. | Oracle CEO's beautiful...

Read entire article >

Cheers,
Ondrej Kubes

Oracle JRockit is Free – Learn All About it with Packt's Oracle JRockit Book and eBook

2011-12-12T11:26:00.001+01:00

Oracle JRockit is a high performing Java Virtual Machine which, earlier this year, was made free and publicly available by Oracle Corporation. Now is the time for Java Developers to learn all about JRockit using: Oracle JRockit: The Definitive Guide – a book and eBook from Packt Publishing.

Oracle JRockit is a high performing Java Virtual Machine which, earlier this year, was made free and publicly available by Oracle Corporation.
Now is the time for Java Developers to learn all about JRockit using: Oracle JRockit: The Definitive Guide – a book and eBook from Packt Publishing.This book helps Java Developers gain in-depth knowledge of Java from the JVM’s point of view. It explains how to write code that works well with the JVM to gain performance and scalability. Starting with the inner workings of the JRockit JVM and finishing with a thorough walkthrough of the tools in the JRockit Mission Control suite, this book is for anyone who wants to know more about how the JVM executes Java applications and how to profile for better performance.

Written by two of the core team members of the JRockit team – Marcus Hirt and Marcus Lagergren – this book will be a valuable addition to the bookshelves of anyone seeking to work with a high performance JVM. The book is available in print, ebook, kindle and select library formats.

About Packt Enterprise. Packt Enterprise is one of the world’s leading publishers of Oracle Fusion Middleware information. Titles in recent years have included: Oracle ADF Enterprise Application Development—Made Simple Getting Started with Oracle BPM Suite 11gR1 – A Hands-On Tutorial Oracle Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1 Developer's GuideAnd many more.

Packt is committed to serving the informational needs of all Oracle professionals and has launched its own in-house library platform: PacktLib.The Oracle collection on PacktLib allows web access to all Packt’s Oracle titles, and users are free to print, copy, and paste. The library costs $120 per year, and contains more than sixty titles. Source: http://www.prweb.com

SAP Targets Salesforce.com, Oracle With SuccessFactors Buy

2011-12-05T13:48:00.001+01:00

SAP is paying $3.4 billion, whichis a lot of money for SuccessFactors, in order to gain some real cloud computing clout versus rivals Salesforce.com and Oracle. Should SAP AG (NYSE:SAP) consummate its $3.4 billion offer to acquire Web-based human resources software maker SuccessFactors (NASDAQ:SFSF) , it will give the enterprise application giant some much needed credibility in cloud computing versus rivals Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) and Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL).

SAP certainly showed that it needs the clout, paying $40 per share, or roughly a 52 percent premium over the company's Dec. 2 closing price of $26.25 and a multiple of 10 times the company's expected 2011 run rate of $300 to $330 million. That's a lot of money for an unprofitable company that provides performance management and other tools human resource managers use to keep companies humming along.
Forrester Research analyst Paul Hamerman said SAP inked the deal for a couple key reasons. For one, its cloud strategy, led by its Business ByDesign product, has been slow grow in the market.For another, while SAP's existing on-premise HR management software has over 13,000 customers, the company's learning and talent management applications are only used by a few thousand of those clients.

The apps just haven't been on par with rivals' products, which means fewer opportunities to on-board new and existing customers to its own human capital management software. That weakness has set up a scenario with big-time SAP customer Siemens AG uses SuccessFactors' talent management apps for its 400,000-plus employees.

"By acquiring SuccessFactors, SAP puts itself into a much stronger competitive position in human resources applications and reaffirms its commitment to software-as-a-service as a key business model," Hamerman wrote in a blog post Dec. 3.

Indeed, SAP will gain SuccessFactors 15 million active seats spread across not only Siemens AG, but 20th Century Fox and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, among its more than 3,500 customers.

SAP's bid for SuccessFactors advance the growing trend of larger companies snapping up smaller providers of enterprise application software delivered through a Web browser.
Earlier this year, Salesforce.com landed on Radian6, reconstituting the concern's social monitoring software into its Social Marketing Cloud just last week.

Oracle acquired Web-based customer relationship management (CRM) software provider RightNow Technologies in October to better compete with Salesforce.com. SAP's bid for SuccessFactors shows it wants to be an active participant in the burgeoning cloud market.

Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdry called SAP's bid for Success Factors timely in the wake of Oracle's bid for RightNow and the database software giant's impending Oracle Public Cloud suite.

"As we have said before, now that every company has a cloud strategy including products and services - cloud computing is not an industry but a necessary feature offering," Chowdry wrote in a Dec. 3 research note.

Chowdry believes Salesforce.com and SAP have much to fear from Oracle's Public Cloud, which Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has described as virtualization software.

Source: Clint Boulton @ www.eweek.com

UK Oracle user groups partner to build stronger network

2011-12-02T16:45:00.001+01:00

Aims to grow influence on Oracle with combined membership of 38,000. The UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) has announced a partnership with the UK Oracle Community Network (UKOCN), to build on the strength of the Oracle community in the UK.

The organisations will work together to ensure that their members have access to relevant resources, as well as forming a larger independent voice to have greater influence on Oracle at a strategic level. Established for more than 25 years, the UKOUG has more than 8,000 members, while UKOCN – a free-to-join, online community that started two years ago – has 30,000 subscribed members.

James Haslam, general manager of UKOUG, said: "UKOUG and UKOCN are very different Oracle community bodies. UKOUG focuses on face-to-face events, networking and lobby activities."While we both operate in the Oracle space, we are not competing organisations." He added: "The Oracle community can only benefit from a partnership between the two organisations, which will inevitably lead to a louder, more vibrant, better informed community.The partnership will begin with UKOCN promoting UKOUG events to its membership and partners, starting with the UK OUG Conference in Birmingham next week.Meanwhile, UKOUG will promote UKOCN's online services and benefits to its membership base.

The annual UKOUG conference is taking place at the ICC in Birmingham from 5 to 7 December.

Source: http://www.computerworlduk.com

Alight Planning Announces Oracle Gold Partnership

2011-12-01T12:00:00.001+01:00

The developers of the first application that set the standard for Enterprise Planning software today announced that Alight has achieved Gold Partner status in the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN). Alight is committed to delivering Agile Planning™ solutions to Oracle users, that add value at both the business unit and corporate levels. Alight LLC, developers of the industry-leading Alight Planning financial planning and reporting software, today announced that it has joined Oracle’s partnership program at the Gold level.

As the leader and industry spokesperson for budgeting and enterprise planning solutions, Rand Heer, Alight’s CEO was delighted to be selected as an Oracle Gold Partner. Rand, who founded Pillar, the first enterprise planning software package, reflects on some important history to frame this partnership, “In 1994, Hyperion acquired Pillar. With over 2,500 customers purchasing Hyperion Pillar, the deal proved to be one of the great cash cows of the decade. Ironically, though in 2007, Oracle acquired Hyperion and finally killed Pillar which was replaced with Hyperion Planning. Some Pillar users did not make the move to Hyperion Planning including Apple Computer which is still using Pillar at the time of our partnership because Pillar had some beautiful functionality especially around unit rate amounts.”
Jeffrey Walker who built Oracle's applications business and was also CFO at Oracle was pleased to learn of the partnership, “Looking back on it, it’s too bad we at Oracle didn’t pick up on Pillar and Rand’s vision before Hyperion. You can see the Pillar foundations for enterprise planning today in offerings from Oracle, IBM, and SAP. With Alight, Rand advances his vision to new heights and makes his planning tools accessible to companies of all sizes—not just big players with deep pockets. I expect the partnership with Oracle will lead to big things for both parties.”

The news of the partnership is quite exciting to finance and IT teams who are already working with both Alight and Oracle. Mark Brinkerhoff, VP Finance with Ultradent, is eager to reap the benefits of this new relationship, “Before Alight was selected as an Oracle Gold Partner, I have been able to get our financial data out of Oracle Financials and into Alight. We have a complex chart of accounts so we leverage Alight’s logfiles feature which gives us complete visibility if something slips during an import. While data integration from Oracle to our spreadsheet model often took several days, we can get our Oracle data integrated into Alight in about one business day. With Oracle Gold Partner status, Alight's import process with Oracle Financials is on track to get even better in 2012."In addition to Ultradent, dozens of companies who use both the Alight Planning solution and Oracle/Hyperion applications should benefit from this new partnership including mid-sized companies such as Atronix and larger organizations such as Siemens PLM Software.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com

Oracle holds “Oracle Day” in Amman to inspire customer innovation

2011-11-30T12:35:00.001+01:00

As part of its ongoing EMEA Oracle Day roadshow, Oracle today held “Oracle Day” in Amman, Jordan to share with local customers and the local IT community the latest innovations unveiled at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 event in San Francisco, California, earlier this month.

Held under the headline “More Expertise. More Innovation. More Insight”, the Oracle Day event was a powerhouse combination of C-level, functional, and technology tracks, all dedicated to one goal: showing Oracle customers and prospects how the power of simplicity can change IT to a force that drives business innovation.

Among the key unveilings of Oracle Open World which were highlighted during the event in Amman was Oracle Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine, the industry’s first in-memory hardware and software system engineered to run analytics faster than ever, provide real-time speed-of-thought visual analysis, and enable new types of analytic applications.

With Oracle Exalytics, organizations will be able to extend their business intelligence initiatives beyond reporting and dashboards to modeling, planning, forecasting, and predictive analytics. Planning applications can be scaled across the enterprise with faster, more accurate planning cycles.

The event in Amman also focused on Oracle Public Cloud, the only public cloud offering that provides customers with truly flexible deployment by enabling them to run the exact same business applications in the cloud and on-premise.

Oracle Public Cloud is a broad set of best-in-class, integrated services that provide customers with subscription-based, self-service access to Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database, all completely managed, hosted and supported by Oracle.

Source: http://www.albawaba.com

Atos and Oracle join hands for TAM for Oracle

2011-11-29T13:37:00.001+01:00

To deliver test & acceptance management services for Oracle Fusion TechnologyIT services provider Atos announced that it was working with Oracle to deliver test & acceptance management (TAM) services for Oracle Fusion Technology.

This new solution would offer customers in all industries a flexible and cost efficient way to manage their testing requirements. The complete solution reportedly reflects the combination of Atos' innovative approach, which facilitates end-to-end traceability based on business process, functional tests case management, and Oracle's technology.

TAM for Oracle, it is said, covers full lifecycle management including deployment of Oracle Fusion Applications in heterogeneous Information Systems.Atos senior vice president business development & innovation François Gruau said that they were delighted to offer IT acceptance testing services for Oracle Fusion Applications.

Oracle vice president product strategy and business development Sushil Kumar said Oracle Application Testing Suite provides the most comprehensive testing technologies for Oracle Fusion Applications.

Source: http://enterpriseapplications.cbronline.com

Bessemer Picks EIR from Oracle

2011-11-28T10:18:00.001+01:00

Bessemer Venture Partners, a global investment firm, has appointed Jeff Epstein as an executive in residence (EIR). He will be working along with the investment team to evaluate a broad range of opportunities in areas including cloud computing, Internet advertising technology and consumer Internet. In addition, he will help the firm’s portfolio companies with strategic initiatives, planning and operational excellence.

Epstein joins Bessemer from technology company Oracle, where he was executive vice president and CFO. He is currently a member of the board of directors of Priceline.com, the audit and compliance committee of the Stanford University Hospital and the management board of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Source: http://www.institutionalinvestor.com

Zensar Bags Deals For Oracle, SAP Solutions

2011-11-24T13:35:00.001+01:00

Zensar Technologies, the offshore outsourcing company has announced a surge in its Enterprise Application business encompassing Oracle and SAP Solutions. The overall values of these deals are close to 25 million USD with significant new wins in key geographies.

These deals have firmly embedded Zensar as a leading system integrator for Oracle Fusion Middleware (FMW), E Business Suite and Business Intelligence solutions delivering business value and enabling enterprises to create and run agile, intelligent business applications while maximising IT efficiency through full utilisation of modern hardware and software architecture.

In the US, Zensar has just bagged a multi-million dollar contract with the world’s leading provider of Conflict Management and Dispute Resolution Services, to develop and integrate its Case Management System and related business process to various end systems using FMW technology. The Company has also bagged the FMW implementation and support contract from the leading global interactive entertainment software company in the US that develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems. In the UK, the Company has implemented a FMW and Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition at a leading High Street and On-Line Fashion Retailer. The solution deployed is one of the first few implementations globally involving Retail Data Model.

Zensar has also reported on a number of new wins in the Oracle Retail Practice in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.Zensar continues to do well in Process and Discrete Manufacturing winning new deals Oracle Implementations in the US and Middle East. Zensar's manufacturing vertical offers repository of business solutions which allows for readily available frameworks to be adapted to a dynamic environment. In the domestic market, Zensar recently bagged the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company to implement SAP's enterprise resource and planning software as part of over Rs 50-crore deal. The deployment will cut across all activities of the corporation such as finance, metering, human resources.“We have seen steady, high value wins in the ERP business given our own evolution toward being the next-generation Enterprise Application Services provider. This creates exciting new opportunities for revenue and services, while integrating legacy technologies to offer consumers a rich, reliable service experience. Our capabilities in integrating disparate technologies and helping customers’ reduce operating costs and bring new services to market quickly and cost effectively has helped us in bagging these multi-million dollar contracts in key markets,” said Nitin Parab, Chief Executive and Global Head - MRM (Manufacturing, Retail and Media).

These wins reinforce Zensar’s capability in its focus verticals of Manufacturing, Retail, Insurance, Healthcare and Media and the company expects Enterprise Applications as well as Infrastructure Management, to be the drivers of growth in each of these verticals.Source: http://biztech2.in.com

Oracle Continues to Develop PeopleSoft HCM

2011-11-16T13:04:00.003+01:00

With a new feature pack for PeopleSoft Human Capital Management 9.1, Oracle brings a more consumer-like feel to its core software for human resources processes.
Six years after one of Oracle’s biggest acquisitions, users of PeopleSoft Human Capital Management software continue to receive updates to their core HR package, as they did again late last week with the release of a new feature pack for Oracle PeopleSoft HCM 9.1.

    Under its “Applications Unlimited” program, enterprise software purveyor Oracle has vowed to support a raft of applications it has acquired during a multi-billion-dollar spending spree that dates back to the middle of the last decade. Early in 2005, Oracle closed its vigorously contested, $10 billion takeover of leading human capital management software vendor PeopleSoft, a move that cemented the HCM component of Oracle’s E-Business Suite. Later that year, Oracle went on to swallow Siebel Systems, which substantiated the ERP vendor’s CRM credentials.

    Late last week, Oracle released Feature Pack 2 for the 9.1 version of PeopleSoft Human Capital Management, an update that Oracle said delivers a “consumer-like self-service” experience to HR personnel and business users. Embracing the “consumerization of IT”—the trend of imbuing enterprise software with the fluid user experience found on smartphones and tablets—Oracle has added a search-based navigation function that allows users to perform quick lookups from any page to receive contextual results. A department manager might type a worker’s name into the search function, Oracle said in a statement, to pull up documents on that employee’s performance, salary, career planning, and related activities.

    In an effort to improve the user experience in the HCM software, Oracle also added pagelets into the latest version of PeopleSoft, a feature said to deliver a more personalized experience through fewer clicks. Meanwhile, managers can customize the new PeopleSoft Manager Dashboard to display key data on their reports, unit, and projects, and can use drag-and-drop technology to customize the page to their needs.

    Also new in the second 9.1 feature pack is PeopleSoft Talent Summary. “Administrators can select the content of pagelets that will appear on the Talent Summary based on the organization’s priorities,” Oracle said, “and managers personalize the page based on their preferences for presentation layout and areas of emphasis.”

    As Oracle continues to develop its core HCM software, PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield, who left the company when Oracle took over in 2005, continues to grow SaaS HCM vendor Workday. The vendor has recently added adjacent cogs of functionality to create a more robust suite of enterprise software, bringing it into competition with Oracle and other ERP vendors.

Source: Chris Chiappinelli at http://www.managingautomation.com

Oracle kills off one of the world's oldest domain names

2011-03-17T10:24:00.003+01:00

Oracle will pull the plug on one of the oldest Internet domain names and shut the Sun.com site

Sun.com was the the page of Sun Microsystems and was one of the first dot-com domain names to be awarded.

According to one of Oracle's developer bogs, the site will disappear on June 1.

Most of the content that was on BigAdmin, OpenSolaris.com, and some sections of SDN of the site has been migrated to the System Admin and Developer Community of the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) already.

Oracle's engineering team is apparently working porting the much used Hardware Compatibility List which was also on the site.

The content in blogs.sun.com will remain available. A blogging platform similar to blogs.sun.com is in the works at Oracle so that blogging can continue as before.

However one thing that will be killed off is the huge database of papers. Oracle said it does not generally archive out-of-date and unbranded papers. It plans to rescue a limited number of classics, but most of the old blueprints will disappear.

Some of this can be found on mirrors such as http://www.filibeto.org/sun/lib/blueprints/sun-blueprints-archive.html.

Sun com was registered four years after Scott McNealy, Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy, and Vinod Kosla founded the outfit and was one of the first 100 dot-com domains. It went live 24 years ago.

Oracle bought Sun last year and for the last year has been killing off the Sun's corporate operations and online presence. It has also been losing control of Sun's Open Sauce projects.

Read more: http://www.techeye.net/software/oracle-kills-off-one-of-the-worlds-oldest-domain-names#ixzz1Gqal4Icl

Oracle unveils latest version of Oracle GlassFish Server

2011-03-03T21:15:00.002+01:00

Business software and hardware systems company Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) said yesterday that it has released Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1 and an update to the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 6 software development kit distribution through the latest release of the Java EE 6 Reference Implementation.

The latest release offers new high availability features in the areas of load balancing, failover, state management and centralised administration.

Oracle GlassFish Server complements Oracle WebLogic Server 11g, which is designed to run the broader portfolio of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g and large-scale enterprise applications.

Source: http://it.tmcnet.com

The Consensus Opinion on Oracle: Slightly Bullish

2011-02-27T13:21:00.005+01:00

Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) has a market cap of $170 billion and more than 370,000 customers in more than 145 countries. It will surprise exactly no one that the company attracts a lot of institutional and retail investor interest. What did surprise me, though, was that last year, it was the No. 13 most-owned stock by investment clubs, as measured by the folks at Better Investing. If retail investors were high on the stock, it got me to thinking: What's the consensus sentiment view on Oracle?

Turns out the view is slightly bullish. Let's have a look at a few of the key sentiment drivers.

1. Analyst opinion
Analysts love Oracle. Data from Capital IQ captures their collective feeling: Thirty-two analysts have either a "buy" or an "outperform" rating on the stock -- by far the majority sentiment. With nine neutral "holds" and a lone "sell," we'll classify analyst sentiment as bullish.

2. Insider buying
Next we'll look at insider buying and selling. Here, the picture isn't as rosy. Over the past year, Oracle insiders have sold $1.9 billion (that's billion, with a b) worth of their company stock. During the same time period, insiders bought $81,000 worth of the stock. (Data from Form4Oracle.)

Even though $1.89 billion of net insider selling is but a small sliver of Oracle's $171 billion market cap, and although insiders sell stock for a whole host of reasons -- to pay for a house or tuition, to diversify assets, and so forth -- it'd sure be nice to see less insider selling. It'd also be nice to see it balanced out by more insider buying. For purposes of this exercise, we'll classify insider buying/selling as bearish.

3. Guru buying
Next, we'll look at "guru" ownership of the stock, according to GuruFocus.

In the quarter ended Dec. 31, two investing gurus were buying Oracle shares: George Soros and Chris Davis. However, four gurus were reducing or eliminating their Oracle stakes in the quarter, among them John Hussman and Ruane Cunniff. In the previous quarter, six gurus were trading Oracle: three buyers, three sellers.

It's close, but the consensus action has been "sell," so we'll classify guru buying sentiment as bearish.

4. Retail-investor community sentiment
For retail-investor community sentiment, I turn to Motley Fool CAPS, our proprietary stock-rating system. CAPS generates ratings on a one- to five-star scale, with five stars as the highest ranking, an indication that the Fool community believes in a stock's future. That's mostly the case for Oracle: The stock has a four-star rating.

5. Short-sellers
Next we'll look at whether short-sellers are circling the stock. There are 25 million Oracle shares sold short, according to Capital IQ. As a percentage of shares outstanding, that's a short interest of 0.5%. That's not at all high, and so for determining sentiment, we'll classify the low short interest as bullish.

6. Does Buffett own it?
This is the "cherry on top" test, and in this case, it's a no: Berkshire Hathaway does not own shares of Oracle. That's no surprise, though, given Warren Buffett's famous aversion to technology stocks.

Adding it up
The consensus opinion on Oracle is "slightly bullish." Analysts love the stock, and the CAPS community believes in it. In another bullish sign, short sellers are staying away. But insiders have been selling in huge quantities, and gurus have been selling more than they've been buying. Berkshire's not a holder, either.

Of course, you can't base an investment philosophy on who likes or dislikes the stock you own, and even a consensus bullish opinion can sometimes be a scary thing. Quoting Buffett: "A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful."

The purpose of this series of articles isn't to make a definitive buy-or-sell call on Oracle. Rather, by looking at a stock's sentiment, the goal is to help you place your own opinion of it in a broader context.

Source: By Brian Richards @ www.fool.com

HP or Oracle announces intention to acquire Brocade by Dec. 7?

2009-10-05T20:09:00.001+02:00

The latest tech company to hit the M&A rumor mill is Brocade (BRCD), a manufacturer of data center equipment ranging from blade server modules to storage-area networking gear. Reports in the financial press say that the company has put itself up for sale, and prospective buyers include tech heavyweights Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Oracle (ORCL). However, the Wall Street Journal, citing "people familiar with the matter," said that "no deal is imminent."

Oracle has been on an acquisition spree recently, with deals involving Sun and HyperRoll. HP's acquisitions include EDS and Colubris.

Prediction: By December 7, 2009, either HP or Oracle announces its intention to acquire Brocade Communications Systems. The deal does not need to be accepted, approved, or closed by this date, but one of the companies involved must make an announcement or have the news confirmed in a major financial or technology news publication by Monday, December 7, 2009.

Source: http://www.thestandard.com

Oracle Fixes Highly Exploitable Flaws

2009-07-15T07:28:00.002+02:00

While Oracle's latest quarterly critical patch may fix fewer flaws than previous quarterly patches, today's release is notable for the number of flaws that can be exploited without credentials, according to Amichai Shulman, CTO of Imperva and a former member of the security center of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Two vulnerabilities rated a 10 on the CVSS scale, on which 10 is the highest possible risk, because they allowed an attack on the system without authentication. Being able to exploit a flaw without valid database credentials make these flaws extremely important. Those critical vulnerabilities are in the BEA JRockit application and in Oracle Secure Backup.

BEA JRockit is Oracle's Java technology, and the critical vulnerabilities affect the latest versions of the software, R27.6.3 and earlier (JDK/JRE 6, 5, 1.4.2). A user can exploit them to do damage without having the necessary credentials.

Oracle also issued patches for the following other BEA products: Oracle Complex Event Processing and Oracle WebLogic Server.

Oracle also issued two fixes for flaws in Oracle Secure Backup, one of which is a critical flaw rated a 10 on the CVSS. A user can exploit it to do damage without having the necessary credentials. The other is rated 9 because although it also allows a complete takeover of a PC, it requires valid credentials.

Oracle's most popular software, Oracle Database, received 10 fixes today. Some of the patches applied to the new 11g product. Oracle said that three of those fixes rate and can be exploited without a user name and password and one rates a 9 on the CVSS on Windows (but a 6.5 if Oracle is running on Unix or Linux). This flaw enables the complete takedown of a database on Windows and partial takedown on Unix or Linux.

Shulman said that the flaw was likely related to networking components, such as the Oracle Listener component, rather than to the core of the database itself. In April, Cisco released a proof of concept attack on the Oracle Database Listener designed to work on Windows because it attacked a specific DLL (define) file. The flaw that Cisco demonstrated has been fixed.
Lower rated fixes still pose risks

The two fixes issued to Oracle Application Server were rated a 5 out of 10, but both could be exploited without user credentials. Of eight new fixes to Oracle Applications Suite, five could be exploited without user credentials, but none were rated higher than 6. Two new fixes for Oracle Enterprise Manager Suite were not rated higher than 5.5 and were not exploitable without credentials.

Of three new patches for the PeopleSoft and JDEdwards Suite, one fixed a flaw that could be exploited without user credentials, but none was rated higher than 5.5.

One fix was issued for the Oracle Siebel Suite and although it could be exploited without user credentials, it was rated only 3.

But Shulman said that the low CVSS scores may understate the risk. "Using very simple tools like a text editor and a Telnet program (define), available on every PC, I can bring down a production database server," he said. "Oracle follows the CVSS scoring standard and these flaws score relatively low but in reality that's a pretty big security risk," he said.

Author: Alex Goldman @ www.internetnews.com

Oracle to cut 1,000 European jobs

2009-07-03T07:31:00.002+02:00

Oracle plans to lay off up to 1,000 workers in Europe, or about one per cent of its global staff, as the recession erodes the giant software compans earnings, it emerged yesterday. The world’s second biggest listed software maker would be one of the last major technology companies to undertake significant layoffs in this economic downturn.

Source: http://www.cityam.com

National Bank of Cambodia to implement Oracle Flexcube

2009-07-01T07:16:00.001+02:00

National Bank of Cambodia is to implement Oracle's Flexcube core banking package as it bids to modernise the country's antiquated financial system.

The central bank will use the system to automate operations across deposits, loans, foreign exchange, money markets, securities, funds transfer and asset management.

Thai Saphear, head of the governor's office, National Bank of Cambodia, says: "We see technology as a key enabler in the modernisation of our financial system and are taking steps to deploy a core banking system that provides a platform for effectively and efficiently managing growth."

Supported by the Asian Development Bank, the implemenation project will be led by Oracle in association with local companies interFlex and Neeka.

InterFlex will provide National Bank of Cambodia with environmental software and implementation services for the core banking implementation. Neeka, part of the Thakral Group of Companies, will provide the hardware infrastructure and support services for the project.

Source: http://www.finextra.com

Why Oracle will continue to win

2009-06-29T07:35:00.002+02:00

I was somewhat shocked by the stellar results Oracle recently reported, considering the sorry state of the economy. I even called an analyst friend to find out if maybe there was some house of cards ala Computer Associated that explained the consistent rise in revenue and margin. But I was reminded of two simple facts explaining why Oracle remains dominant:

1. Applications drive database sales
2. Oracle owns pretty much everything

Oracle's acquisition streak has given the company an enormous breadth of offerings (say what you will about quality of the software) and the attempt at offering it's own Linux variant gives it an OS that's passable if not meaningful. But, I don't know that owning the operating system is important to the growth of sales in applications or databases. (Note: Matt Asay wrote a very good post about why Ubuntu should be Oracle's Linux of choice.)

Oracle applications and databases have to run on an operating system, but the operating system doesn't necessarily drive software sales, or sell databases. The OS may be a point of influence, but doesn't drive the dollar values that you get from software.

Meanwhile, Oracle has amassed such a wealth of software that it can not only drive it's own database sales through upgrades and replacements (JD Edwards or Siebel running on DB2 seems unlikely) but it can up-sell databases to customers of BEA or any of the other myriad applications it now owns.

Add MySQL into the equation and Oracle can sell you a database pretty much anytime for any purpose, to support any application (which you can probably buy from them too.)

This leads into some questions regarding Cisco's strategy, based on the idea that hardware should sell applications, as well as IBM's strategy, where services have often sold software and hardware. The future is of course a mix of all of these strategies, but it's not clear that another company is as well positioned as Oracle.

While certainly not unstoppable, Oracle's execution has been very impressive, especially in a down economy.

Author: Dave Rosenberg @ http://news.cnet.com

Oracle's Earnings: A Good Omen for Tech?

2009-06-24T07:38:00.002+02:00

Fiscal fourth-quarter results from the software behemoth fueled optimism that a rally in tech stocks may continue. Wall Street took heart from a report showing better-than-expected earnings from Oracle (ORCL), the Silicon Valley software giant. Technology stocks have been on a roll this spring, and investors eyed Oracle's fourth-quarter report on June 23 for signs the rally might continue.

Sales, profits, and new software bookings for Oracle's fiscal fourth quarter ended on May 31 exceeded Wall Street's forecasts. That sent shares of Oracle up 2.7% in extended trading, after closing on June 23 down 10¢, or 0.5%, at $19.87. The shares have gained 8.8% in the past three months.

Profits declined 7% and revenues fell 5% in the period, though results would have been better if not for the effects of translating overseas sales into a rising U.S. currency. On Wall Street, analysts said Oracle's recurring revenues from technical support contracts and prudent control of expenses during the quarter helped offset currency-related declines. "Oracle continues to be a high-quality investment," says Andy Miedler, a senior technology analyst at Edward Jones who rates Oracle a "buy."

Pickup in Software Sales

Investors are lifting the shares of tech outfits including IBM (IBM), Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), and Adobe Systems (ADBE) that reported relatively healthy results during the recession by taking advantage of companies' need to buy products that can boost productivity, Miedler says. "Investors see tech companies posting fairly decent results in this environment, and they're rewarding them for it," he says. The Nasdaq composite index has risen 13.4% since Mar. 24, outpacing other indices.

Oracle executives told Wall Street analysts in a conference call that customers are beginning to buy more software, and pointed to deals closed during the quarter with Wal-Mart (WMT), American Express (AXP), Vodafone Group (VOD), and Perry Ellis (PERY). "The sense of panic and deer-in-the-headlights kind of feeling" has subsided, said Oracle President Charles Phillips.

For the fourth quarter, Oracle earned $1.9 billion, or 38¢ a share, compared with $2.03 billion, or 40¢ a year earlier. Excluding stock compensation and one-time charges, earnings were 46¢ a share, exceeding Wall Street analysts' estimate of 44¢. Revenues were $6.9 billion, vs. $7.2 billion a year earlier. Analysts had expected sales of $6.47 billion. Sales of new software licenses, a closely watched measure of future revenues, were down 13%, to $2.7 billion, but also exceeded analysts' expectations.

Weathering the Recession

Looking ahead, investors are still waiting for more clarity from the company about how quickly it can cut costs after its $7.4 billion acquisition of computer and software maker Sun Microsystems (JAVA) closes this summer, and whether it will keep Sun's server and storage business.

Keeping lower-margin hardware operations would be a strategic departure for Oracle, which generates healthy margins from sales of database, middleware, and business applications. Oracle executives indicated during the conference call with analysts that they will take a run at the hardware business. Oracle has spent more than $30 billion on 55 acquisitions since 2005 to compete with SAP (SAP) in applications software, and with IBM in the market for application-connecting middleware.

The company has withstood the worst effects of the slow economy because of recurring revenues from support contracts. Excluding stock compensation and charges for acquisitions, Oracle's operating margin was 51% during the quarter. Annual fees paid by customers for the rights to new versions of Oracle's software and for technical support accounted for 44% of Oracle's fourth-quarter revenue, and the contracts are considered highly profitable. "The margin story has to do with our enormous installed base of customers who renew their agreements with us every year," Oracle President Safra Catz told analysts.

The company's profit margin will undoubtedly fall after the Sun deal closes, but analysts say the expected declines are reflected in Sun's stock price, and that investors view the acquisition as a positive. "Oracle is a pretty boring story without Sun," says Yun Kim, an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech (BPSG), who has a buy rating on Oracle's stock.

Sun's Hardware Business is Promising

Catz told analysts to expect a decline in sales of 1% to 4% for the first quarter that ends in August, and earnings of 29¢ to 31¢ per share. Oracle also declared a dividend of 5¢ per share payable on Aug. 13.

Brent Thill, director of software research at Citigroup (C), who also rates Oracle a buy, told clients in a June 22 research note that although investors usually fear a "seasonal drop-off" in sales during Oracle's traditionally slow summer quarter, prospects of an economic recovery and the imminent closing of the Sun acquisition "will outweigh those issues." When Oracle announced the deal on Apr. 20, it said Sun would add at least 15¢ per share to its non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) income in the first full year after closing.

Despite calls by some investors for Oracle to sell Sun's hardware business and keep its software products, Oracle executives said they have the opportunity to deliver products that combine Sun computers with Oracle software in a way that gives information technology departments more confidence that the hardware and software will work well together. To underline the point, Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison spent half his speaking time on the conference call talking up the virtues of a product called Exadata that runs Oracle's database on Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) hardware.

Ellison's willingness to jump further into the computer hardware market by buying Sun has deep roots, says John Wookey, an executive vice-president at SAP, who left Oracle early in 2008. Ellison used to personally fix errors in programs running on old IBM mainframe computers, according to Wookey. "Larry likes hardware," he says.

If he demonstrates that affection by keeping Sun's hardware assets, investors will focus on whether he can run a hardware business as well as the software juggernaut he's assembled.

Author: Aaron Ricadela @ http://www.businessweek.com

Why Oracle Wants Solaris

2009-06-16T20:12:00.002+02:00

With its future apparently secure, the benefits of Sun's operating system become compelling. Oracle praised the Solaris operating system when it agreed to acquire its creator, Sun Microsystems, but the actual beauty of this fine piece of engineering was left unexplained. Here's a look at the advantages of Solaris for business computing and insights into what Oracle's long-term intentions may be for the operating system.

No matter what your attitude is toward Oracle's products, management style and strategy, anyone running a large or small data center should breathe a sigh of relief now that the long-term viability of Solaris is assured. Without an acquisition by Oracle or Cisco ( CSCO - news - people ), Solaris might have been put on the proverbial shelf, a tribute to what the fine engineers at Sun could do back in the day. But now that Solaris will receive the marketing support that it deserves, information technology staff should be taking a close look at the operating system for the following reasons.

Superior virtualization: In the Linux world, virtualization is performed by multiple parties. One organization or company does the hypervisor (Xen, VMware ( VMW - news - people ), Citrix, Parallels), the virtual layer on top of the hardware. Another organization (the Linux community) adapts the operating system to better support virtualization. What Solaris offers IT is a top-to-bottom engineered approach to virtualization where the hardware, the hypervisor, the OS and the ZFS file system are all designed to deliver optimal performance and manageability. Solaris Containers are a lightweight but powerful virtualization option with very low processing overhead (2% vs. about 20% for a hypervisor). Linux will get there but at a slower pace as the multiple parties involved negotiate with each other. Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) also offers a unified virtualization stack but it remains to be seen if Windows can ever achieve as wide adoption in the server space.
Scalability for Large Scale Multiprocessing: Benchmarks shows that Linux stops providing benefits at four processors. You can add more, but performance won't get much better. Solaris has been engineered to support massive multiprocessing. If you need to scale a single box, you can add dozens of processors, and Solaris boosts performance accordingly. Solaris also has the most scalable networking support of any operating system on the market.

Reliability: Linux has long been successful in data centers because it is less error prone than Windows, which frequently requires machines to be rebooted. Solaris takes reliability to a new level. A feature called predictive self-healing allows failed hardware components to be swapped out without rebooting.

Security: The security in Solaris benefits from the same engineering quality as the rest of the operating system. Sun's security DNA comes from its experience supporting financial services computing and e-commerce. Solaris was designed for secure networking and provides many security features, including role-based access control, a firewall and secure out-of-the-box settings.

Administration: Solaris has administration functions that allow mass changes to be made to many instances of an operating system at once and features that allow one master machine to be replicated to many other machines running a copy of the operating system. The administration capabilities have been expanded to cover the challenges of running a large number of virtual machines.

Flexible Deployment: Solaris is offered both as a fully supported commercial product and as OpenSolaris, a leading-edge open source version where the latest features are tested. Solaris 10 can run Solaris 8 and 9 apps in containers. Further, Solaris runs on a huge range of hardware from x86 Intel platforms to high-end RISC servers. Solaris can run on any hardware platform, not just on Sun hardware.

Green IT: As they say at Sun, "You can't be green without the Sun." While that may not be always true, it is true that Sun's SPARC chip set and its servers are among the most energy efficient on the market, in some cases qualifying for utility rebates. Performing a server consolidation using Solaris and Sun hardware provides an easy way to lower carbon footprint but maintain high performance.

With Sun at the helm, you could easily get the idea that Solaris was created as a public service. Sun has never seemed like it was in business solely for the money. At Oracle, green is always a top priority, as it should be, and Larry Ellison is swooning about Solaris because he sees it as key to a new kind of offer to Oracle's customers. But what is that offer?

My guess is that the "Industry in a Box" vision mentioned by Charles Phillips, Oracle's co-president, will actually become the next wave of cloud computing. In a previous column, I recommended that Google ( GOOG - news - people ) get into the appliance business. My guess is Oracle will follow this path with a vengeance. Solaris will power Oracle's cloud offerings, but through appliances, Oracle will bring the cloud to the data center.

Remember that Google, the leading provider of large-scale computing services in the cloud, does so by building its own hardware and software that is integrated and optimized for the task. I believe that Oracle recognizes that there are limits to the amount of enterprise IT that can be put into the cloud. Problems such as security, disaster recovery and moving huge amounts of data are significant barriers to cloud migration. But many of the same economic and operational benefits of the cloud can be achieved through remotely managed appliances that integrate software and hardware in one box. Oracle can run these over the Net using the Smart Services model I wrote about in Mesh Collaboration. The customer gets all the benefits of the cloud without having to move data off premise.

With the acquisition in place, the installed base of Solaris will grow as more companies discover the brightly shining benefits of this operating system.

Author: Dan Woods

Dan Woods is chief technology officer and editor of Evolved Technologist, a research firm focused on the needs of CTOs and chief information officers. He also consults for many of the companies he writes about. For more information, go to www.evolvedtechnologist.com.

Oracle Launches Asia Pacific Virtual Tradeshow

2009-06-11T07:22:00.001+02:00

Oracle Corporation is inviting everyone to join the interactive conversations at Oracle’s Applications Unlimited Experts Live! virtual show.

The action-packed day kicks off in high gear on June 16, 2009, 10AM to 4PM with a compelling keynote from Ed Abbo, Oracle’s Senior Vice President of Applications Development.

This FREE virtual show provides convenient access to valuable product updates and the chance to learn more about the trends and technologies that can help companies gain competitive edge in today’s uncertain times. Drop in and attend what interests you, when you like, without leaving your desk.

During this one-day virtual show, attendees can visit Oracle Applications booths, interact with Oracle experts, experience the latest product demos and network with peers.

Attendees can expect to get a better understanding of how Oracle Applications can benefit their organizations through customer case studies featuring companies in the Asia Pacific region such as Maruti Suzuki, LG Electronics, Australian Vintage, VicUrban, Sinosteel, Yarra Valley Water, HPCL and STX Shipbuilding.

Relevant presentations for both the regional and local market include the value of business process outsourcing (BPO), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and customer relationship management (CRM) on Demand in the region.

For more details, please visit www.oracle.com.

Oracle Insurance introduces Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance

2009-06-09T18:02:00.002+02:00

Oracle Insurance today introduced Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance, providing insurers the robust billing capabilities necessary to deliver streamlined, convenient billing, payment and collections processes, and improve service to customers and distribution channels.

Oracle's new solution enables insurers to meet the market demand for multi-channel strategies and increased cross-selling abilities by providing comprehensive and consolidated billing management capabilities.

The solution also helps insurers to improve enterprise revenue management, while efficiently supporting diverse lines of business on a single platform to reduce cost of ownership.

Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance is part of the Oracle Insurance solution footprint ? a complete, end-to-end offering that includes support for core insurance operations, distribution channels, corporate operations, IT and enterprise performance management.

Oracle will demonstrate Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance this week at the IASA Educational Conference & Business Show, booth 1011.

Built on an open, standards-based architecture, Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance minimises the manual back-office activities required to process bill inquiries and bill adjustments. It also easily integrates with existing policy administration, financial accounting and payment solutions to streamline business processes while incurring minimal costs.

The solution enables consolidated billing, providing a complete view of customer billing interactions to enable easy cross-policy adjustments that drive better customer satisfaction and retention.

Comprehensive Account Current and Group Bill Processing capabilities enable strong support for distribution channels and easy reconciliation for group bills, allowing faster cash realisation and lower write-offs.

Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance provides configuration-driven business rules that enable business users to quickly and easily implement changes to the billing system ? minimising the cost of bringing new offerings to market.

Web-based self-service and e-billing capabilities give customers, agents and brokers improved access to information and a choice of channels for conducting business with insurers ? helping to reduce the overall number of billing inquiries and bill adjustments, and increase overall customer satisfaction.

The solution provides comprehensive support for call centre operations. It gives call centre agents easy access to customer information, minimising average service call times. In addition, the application includes access to online help resources and scripts that model best practices, helping to lower training costs for call centre staff.

The system incorporates built-in business process management tools to ensure consistent interaction with customers and accelerate billing reconciliation.

Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance supports continued business growth for insurers by providing the scalability to handle customer bases ranging from a few thousand to millions in size.

In today's competitive insurance market, insurers must balance multiple challenges, including the need to improve revenue management and reduce IT total cost of ownership, while providing enhanced customer service that is critical to developing and maintaining long-term customer relationships and satisfying the agents and brokers that manage these relationships,” said Chuck Johnston, vice-president, Strategy and Alliances, Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit. “Oracle Revenue Management and Billing for Insurance delivers a robust and flexible solution that helps insurers to expand and optimise use of distribution channels while supporting diverse lines of business on a single, cost-effective billing platform. As important, the solution supports delivery of universal, best-in-class service that today's customers demand.”

Source: http://www.itweb.co.za

Sun investors to vote on Oracle on July 16

2009-06-08T19:12:00.002+02:00

Tune in on July 16 to see whether Oracle actually becomes the new parent of Sun Microsystems.

Sun's board of directors has set up a special shareholder meeting for that date to vote on the proposed merger with Oracle, according to a statement Sun released Monday. Sun's board, which has already okayed the merger, is urging stockholders to approve the deal--a majority vote is needed to push it through.

Shareholders can vote on the merger in person, at Sun's Web site, or through a proxy card received by mail. Assuming approval, it expects the merger to be completed over the summer.

The company has sent a proxy statement dated June 8 with full disclosure to all shareholders. Besides providing details on the vote and stockholder meeting, the statement reveals other interesting tidbits.

Severance pay
No details have been revealed about what will become of Sun management, though the proxy statement does discuss potential severance packages for Chairman Scott McNealy, President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz, and other high-ranking execs. If termination were to occur in August, McNealy would receive $9.5 million in total compensation, including severance, health benefits, and equity, while Schwartz would walk away with $12 million.

The courtship of Sun
The proxy statement also reveals blow-by-blow details of the battle to buy Sun, with other suitors besides Oracle in the mix. IBM had been widely rumored as a likely buyer of Sun, but the proxy material doesn't mention any suitors by name.

On November 6, 2008, the CEO of a Sun competitor, known in the statement as "Party A," approached Schwartz about a possible business combination. After initial discussions with Party A, Sun started shopping for other potential buyers, including "Party B." Sun continued its discussion with Party A, entering into a confidentiality agreement and permitting Party A to investigate Sun's finances.

By late December, Sun was serious enough about a potential merger to hire Credit Suisse as its financial adviser to help it consider different offers. On January 28, Party A proposed acquiring Sun for $8.40 to $8.70 a share. In early February, Sun discussed the proposal with its legal and financial advisers.

But by February 12, 2009, Party B was back in the picture as Sun resumed discussions with its other suitor, signing a confidentiality agreement and permitting due diligence for Party B to check into Sun's finances. On February 20, Party A boosted its offer for Sun to $10 a share, predicated on exclusive negotiations between the two companies.

By February 23, Oracle had entered the picture. McNealy spoke with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison about a possible transaction. Between February 22 and 26, Sun's board was busy setting up special meetings to discuss the proposal from Party A and the interest from Party B and from Oracle. Further conversations were held between McNealy and Ellison. But by February 26, Sun had decided to enter into an exclusive agreement with Party A and end discussions with all other companies.

Over the next month, Sun held lengthy meetings with Party A. But negotiations dragged on, and there was talk of ending the exclusivity agreement with Party A and resuming conversations with Party B and with Oracle. On March 12, Oracle sent Sun's board a letter expressing an interest in a limited takeover of certain Sun assets. However, Sun management opted to continue its agreement with Party A.

On March 29, Party A reduced its bid to $9.40 a share. After review, Sun management was worried about Party A's offer for various reasons, especially antitrust issues. Concerned about the price and terms of the agreement, Sun decided on April 4 to reject the offer from Party A.

By April 6, the board was back discussing potential deals with Party B and with Oracle. But on April 8, Party A jumped back into the ring, still interested in Sun. Now the board was at work again to discuss offers from all three companies.

By April 10, Sun and Oracle had entered into a confidentiality agreement, and the two met soon thereafter to hash out a possible transaction. On April 17, Party B opted out of the race. On the same day, Oracle sent Sun a draft merger proposal for $9.50 a share.

After the price per share became a sticking point between Sun and Party A, Sun's management finally approved a merger agreement with Oracle on April 19.

Now it's in the hands of the stockholders.

Author: Lance Whitney @ http://news.cnet.com

With Virtual Iron, Oracle Bought a Big Loss

2009-05-26T07:13:00.002+02:00

Did Oracle recently buy Virtual Iron, a maker of virtualization software, for its talent? Perhaps so, because the company certainly hasn’t been selling a lot of software, according to financial documents obtained by The Times.

The documents indicate that Virtual Iron had just $3.4 million in revenue last year. That’s a big rise over $1.5 million in 2007. But Virtual Iron sure spent a lot of money to get that revenue.

Its sales, marketing, research, development and administrative costs were $17.7 million last year, up from $13.6 million in 2007. So, in 2008, Virtual Iron posted a loss of $15.3 million.

Last January, Virtual Iron raised $20 million, hiking its total funding up to $65 million. Highland Capital Partners, Matrix Partners, Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital and SAP Ventures all funded the company.

Oracle has declined to reveal how much it paid for Virtual Iron, but with the revenue in 2008 sitting so low, it seems pretty clear that the investors lost out on this start-up — that is, unless Oracle was willing to pay many, many times Virtual Iron’s revenue. (The company did report $17 million in cash and equivalents in 2008.)

With the addition of Virtual Iron, Oracle has a crowded stable of virtualization products. Virtual Iron’s software will join Oracle’s own virtualization software, and soon enough Oracle will inherit even more virtualization software when it completes the purchase of Sun Microsystems.

The funny thing about these various software products is that they’re all based on the open source Xen project. So Oracle will own three products with the same guts.

Each company has made its own tweaks to Xen, leading to some differences among the products. Wim Coekaerts, Oracle’s vice president of Linux and virtualization engineering, said last week that the addition of Virtual Iron would let Oracle’s customers “more dynamically manage their server capacity and optimize their power consumption.”

Even with three sets of virtualization software on its side, Oracle has a long way to go to catch up with the market leader, VMware. Last year, VMware posted revenue of $1.9 billion.

Author: Ashlee Vance @ bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Swiss America’s Cup Team Says Oracle Employed a Spy in Europe

2009-05-13T09:13:00.002+02:00

The tradition of spying in the America’s Cup is apparently alive and well. Jean Antoine Bonnaveau, an employee of the American team BMW Oracle Racing, is under investigation by the Swiss and French police for taking photographs last month at Alinghi’s base in Villeneuve, Switzerland.

The investigation became public when the Swiss yacht club that Alinghi represents, the Société Nautique de Genève, included a copy of a police report concerning Bonnaveau with an affidavit it filed this week. The affidavit was submitted for a hearing on Thursday at the Supreme Court of the State of New York related to the still-unresolved terms of the next Cup.

“A spy from BMW Oracle was spotted trying to gather illegal information from the Alinghi boatyard in Villeneuve,” Paco Latorre, a spokesman for Alinghi, said in a telephone interview.

The BMW Oracle spokesman Tom Ehman played down the incident and accused the Swiss team of engaging in diversionary tactics.

“Société Nautique de Genève (S.N.G.) is once again trying to avoid the Court’s clear judgment by making trumped-up allegations that have nothing to do with the matter at hand,” Ehman said in a statement. “Legal observation of competitors is common practice in the America’s Cup and other major sporting events.”

The Cup, the most visible event in sailing, has long generated controversy and legal fees. Spying and claims of nautical espionage are not new. During the 1992 Cup in San Diego, Bill Koch, the owner of the victorious America, employed scuba divers to examine competitors’ hull designs. During the 2003 edition, the American challenger OneWorld was penalized for being in possession of proprietary design information that belonged to rival syndicates.

Syndicates routinely use chase boats to examine other teams’ yachts and tactics during training. When BMW Oracle launched its new 90-foot trimaran last year in Anacortes, Wash., Ehman said there were Alinghi employees on site observing and analyzing the yacht. He added that Alinghi representatives were also present when the trimaran was based in San Diego.

But Latorre said Bonnaveau’s behavior was of a more invasive nature than usual in Villeneuve, the Lake Geneva town where Alinghi is building its new multihull yacht behind closed doors. Bonnaveau is suspected of violating Swiss privacy laws.

“It should not be confused with what Alinghi did in San Diego,” Latorre said. “Observing and watching a boat that is public and that has been launched in front of everybody cannot be put in the same category as illegal espionage.”

Alinghi and BMW Oracle, the team based in San Francisco and owned by the American billionaire Larry Ellison, have been engaged in a protracted legal dispute since shortly after Alinghi successfully defended the Cup in June 2007 in Valencia, Spain.

Last month, after a series of appeals, BMW Oracle won the right to become the challenger of record for the next Cup. The decision dislodged the Spanish yacht club Club Nautico de Vela, which had been Alinghi’s initial choice to be its principal challenger.

But Alinghi and BMW Oracle officials are still haggling over the particulars of the competition, including the dates, which is the reason for Thursday’s hearing in New York.

After BMW Oracle’s victory in court last month, negotiations between the teams about the possibility of staging a traditional multiple-challenger event using monohulls off Valencia quickly broke down. They are now all but certain to face each other in massive multihull yachts in a best-of-three series next year.

BMW Oracle officials say that the next Cup should respect the latest court ruling and be held in February 2010, 10 months after the final appeal was resolved. But Alinghi officials have insisted on May 2010, arguing that the Cup’s governing document, the Deed of Gift, does not permit racing in the Northern Hemisphere before May 1.

Bonnaveau, a 50-year-old Frenchman, is suspected of beingin Villeneuve on April 28 and 29 attempting to gather information on Alinghi’s multihull in progress. Alinghi officials videotaped him and his vehicle when they spotted him, and he was later questioned by the French and Swiss police in the southern French city of Nîmes.

In the police report — a transcript of a hearing May 1 — Bonnaveau said that he worked as a sail analyst for BMW Oracle at a salary of $13,600 per month. He said that he had been sent to Villeneuve by BMW Oracle’s racing team designer, Manolo Ruiz de Elvira, and that such information-gathering missions were “routine” in the Cup world.

“I was officially authorized by my company to carry out this reconnaissance,” Bonnaveau said in the transcript. “In fact, I am part of the design team, but the entire staff can provide useful information, particularly on opposing teams. We call that a ‘recon cell’ for reconnaissance.”

Author: CHRISTOPHER CLAREY @ www.nytimes.com

Oracle Aims to Be the Apple of Data Center Hardware

2009-05-12T08:34:00.002+02:00

Oracle's recent US$7.4 billion bid for Sun Microsystems could turn Sun's ailing hardware business into a boon for data-center managers. But industry analysts question whether the software firm can turn Sun's hardware platform back into gold.

Oracle has done well in past acquisitions, buying and quickly integrating large software companies such as BEA Systems, PeopleSoft, and Siebel Systems. But the purchase of Sun, and its large hardware business and SPARC processor platform, is a whole different beast, says George Weiss, VP of server and operating system trends at Gartner.

"The nature of this acquisition (for Oracle) is different than anything that has preceded it," Weiss says. "Oracle has to carve out an opportunity in a market where Sun was pretty vulnerable and threatened."

In statements posted online, Oracle argues that its planned purchase of Sun Microsystems will give IT managers better, more integrated enterprise appliances for the data center. But Weiss worries that the acquisition could leave Oracle facing the same quandary as Sun: Decreasing hardware revenues for a minority SPARC platform.

Sun's revenues for its servers and storage products have fallen quickly in the past year. In 2008, the company made $153 million less on its computer system and storage products as compared to the prior year.

And, in its most recent quarter, which ended on March 29, Sun's product revenue fell even further, down $434 million compared to the same quarter in 2008, according to its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Companies that compete against Sun's SPARC architecture question whether Oracle would be better served staying with the proprietary platform or increasing its adoption of Intel's Nehalem architecture. Intel announced the Xeon 5500, its first enterprise processor family which uses Nehalem, in March.

"Do they really need to stay on a SPARC-based system and what are the advantages of cost?" asks Jeff Hudgins, VP of marketing for NEI, which builds designs and builds enterprise products for other companies based on Intel's architecture. "Sun is leveraging a lot of x86 technology already. They have a Nehalem strategy as well."

When Oracle announced the acquisition on April 20, the company immediately tried to assuage the fears of Sun hardware users by committing itself to increasing its support of the SPARC processor architecture. "After the closing, Oracle plans to be the only company that can engineer an integrated system where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves," the company states in a FAQ posted on its Web site. "Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up."

Oracle declined to comment on the acquisition beyond the statements posted on its Web site, but in a posted interview, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison likens his strategy to Apple's creation of the iPhone.

"If a company designs both hardware and software, it can build much better systems than if they only design the software," Ellison said in the interview. "That's why Apple's iPhone is so much better than Microsoft phones."

If Oracle can deliver on the promise, data-center managers would stand to benefit. And an Oracle-Sun combination could threaten giants such as IBM, says James Kobielus, senior analyst for data warehousing and advanced analytics at Forrester Research.

"IT managers will have a one-stop shop of hardware and and software needs in the data center, in terms of both the servers and the storage, the databases and the business intelligence," Kobielus says. "This is clearly a shot across the bow of IBM, who long offered one-stop shop advantages."

IBM declined to be interviewed for this article.

Creating well-tuned appliances for the data center will not be anything new for Oracle, Kobielus adds. The software company already does just that for its data warehousing product line.

"Oracle will be able to scale economies, which will give everyone else in this area a run for their money, which will lead to an era when data managers can get a cheap out-of-the-box experience," Kobielus says.

Author: Robert Lemos @ www.computerworld.com

Sun shareholders look to block Oracle sale

2009-05-11T08:10:00.002+02:00

Sun shareholders are fiercely resisting the company's projected sale to Oracle. In the last month. there have been three separate lawsuits attempting to stop the sale, according to a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission from Sun.

The suits, filed in California, name Sun, some of its officials and Oracle as defendants. All three actions are aimed at blocking the US$7.4(£4.9) billion sale, alleging the price tag is "unfair and inadequate." They also allege "claims for breach of fiduciary duty against the individual defendants and for aiding and abetting a breach of fiduciary duty against the corporate defendants," the filing states. The defendants have yet to file answers to the complaints.

Sun also said in the filing that it may have broken the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act during fiscal 2009. The law is meant to stop companies from bribing foreign officials. Sun said it has started an independent probe into suspect activities in a "certain foreign country" and "took remedial action," as well as made a voluntary disclosure to US authorities.

Meanwhile, Sun has decided to put the brakes on an effort to consolidate its database infrastructure into a single global ERP system.

Sun has "experienced a number of challenges" during the project that have affected operations, according to the filing.

"During the next six months, we have decided to delay the implementation of the remaining phases of the project while we evaluate alternatives," Sun said.
A Sun spokeswoman said the company "intends to respond appropriately to the lawsuits" but otherwise declined comment.

An Oracle spokeswoman declined to comment on the suits, but provided a statementsaying that Sun had disclosed its potential violations of the FCPA prior to the acquisition agreement.

Author: Chris Kanaracus, IDG news service

Oracle upgrades BI offering

2009-05-07T12:43:00.002+02:00

Oracle has launched Business Intelligence Applications Release 7.9.6, which includes improvements and integrations with other Oracle software, as well as a pair of new tools, Project Analytics and Loyalty Analytics.

The release adds a number of new human-resources dashboards, such as for talent management, recruiting and absenteeism. The vendor's procurement and spend-analytics BI module gets a number of updates, including a new employee-expenses dashboard and a "spend analyser."

In addition, Oracle has integrated its JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financial Management application with its financial analytics BI software.

Meanwhile, the new Project Analytics module is aimed at governments, construction companies and services companies that want to analyse the costs of their projects. It includes a number of pre-built dashboards tuned for both private and public-sector organizations. Loyalty Analytics enables users to determine the success of marketing campaigns at both the customer and partner level.

Oracle's announcements reflect the fact that it's getting tougher for vendors to further evolve their underlying BI platform's capabilities, since the technologies have matured, according to Forrester Research analyst Boris Evelson.
"All the core functions have really been addressed," he said. "The real difference is in the applications."

The pre-built tooling in applications like Loyalty Analytics will likely have more appeal for smaller enterprises, which are interested in getting software up and running quickly or may not have a core competency in a particular area, Evelson said. A customer might say, "'We're a small bank, we know everything about banking, but not CRM. We're going to trust Oracle."

But large enterprises tend to shy away from such an approach, preferring to build out specialized BI applications themselves to gain a competitive advantage, he said. "There's no way anybody there is going to say, 'I'm going to trust Oracle to lead the way of how I should analyze my customers.'"

Meanwhile, the new project-analytics module could prove attractive to companies as the world attempts to emerge from an economic recession and government stimulus spending ramps up infrastructure projects and related activities.

There have always been plenty of choices for project portfolio management software, including the technology Oracle acquired last year by buying Primavera. But there is probably room in the market for advanced analytics that ride on top of such applications, Evelson said.

Author: Chris Kanaracus, IDG news service

Coca-Cola, Oracle, Intel use Cayman Islands to avoid US taxes

2009-05-06T08:51:00.002+02:00

Seagate Technology, the world’s largest maker of hard disk drives, is headquartered in Scotts Valley, California. Yet the documents it files with the Securities and Exchange Commission list its address on South Church Street in George Town, the capital of the Cayman Islands.

Seagate is just one of the companies that may be affected by President Barack Obama’s proposal Monday to raise about $190 billion over the next decade by outlawing techniques used by US companies in offshore locations to avoid paying taxes. While the US corporate tax rate is 35 percent, Seagate paid an effective tax rate of 5 percent in the year ended June 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The Caymans have no corporate income tax for companies incorporated there. The Caribbean island has helped scores of US companies, including Coca-Cola Co. and Oracle Corp., to legally avoid billions in tax payments to the US government, says US Senator Byron Dorgan.

“Our Main Street businesses are working hard during this economic downturn to pay their fair share of taxes,” says Dorgan, 66, a North Dakota Democrat. “Some of the country’s largest corporations are using these loopholes to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. It is my hope that the Congress will quickly take action to pull the plug on tax breaks that subsidize runaway plants that move US jobs overseas.”

One quarter of the 100 largest contractors with the US federal government, including Altria Group Inc. and Tyco International Ltd have had subsidiaries in the Caymans, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office. At least 10 of the 30 companies listed in the Dow Jones Industrial Average have had units with addresses in the Caymans.

As of November 2007, 378 US publicly traded companies had at least one significant subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, a GAO study found. Altria, Tyco, Coke and Oracle still have subsidiaries in the Caymans, according to their most recent SEC filings. Seagate lists its headquarters in Grand Cayman.
One of the Dow 30 companies using offshore sites to reduce its US taxes is Santa Clara, California-based Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker.

Intel’s then vice president of tax, licensing and customs, Robert Perlman told the US Senate Finance Committee in March 1999 that Intel would have been better off incorporating in the Cayman Islands when it was founded in 1968.

“Our tax code competitively disadvantages multinationals simply because the parent is a US corporation,” Perlman testified.

Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said Monday his company is rethinking its tax strategy. “We’re studying the Obama proposal,” Mulloy said. “Particularly with taxes, the devil’s in the details.”

Seagate spokesman Brian Ziel said Monday that his company incorporated in the Caymans to reduce its taxes. “The competitive benefits relate both to taxes saved on certain income earned outside of the United States and the ability to efficiently deploy assets around the globe to remain competitive,” he said.

Eighty-five percent of Seagate’s employees work outside the US and more than 70 percent of the company’s revenue comes from sales overseas, Ziel said.

“Officially, our administrative headquarters is in the Caymans,” Ziel said. “That’s how it’s listed in our annual report.”

Altria spokesman Bill Phelps said his company is in the process of dissolving its Cayman subsidiary. Coke spokeswoman Kerry Kerr said, “We don’t comment on tax strategies, for competitive purposes.”

Tyco’s Paul Fitzhenry and Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman didn’t return calls requesting comment.

A five-story office building on South Church Street in the Caymans serves as the official address for 18,857 corporations. That building, called Ugland House, is listed in SEC filings as Seagate’s headquarters. About half those Cayman companies had billing addresses in the US, according to a 2008 GAO study.

President Obama referred to Ugland House Monday.

“On the campaign, I used to talk about the outrage of a building in the Cayman Islands that had over 12,000 businesses claim this building as their headquarters,” Obama said. “And I’ve said before, either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam. And I think the American people know which it is: The kind of tax scam that we need to end.”

Maples and Calder, the law firm that occupies all of Ugland House in Grand Cayman, said Obama is mistaken.

“I’m sorry to disappoint anyone, but our office is neither the largest building in the world nor a center of financial misconduct,” said Charles Jennings, joint managing partner of Maples and Calder.

“Having a registered office address in the Cayman Islands is driven by commercial considerations, not by tax avoidance,” Jennings said. “It allows companies to raise capital and conduct global business.”

The firm, which provides services for the corporations that use its address, has incorporated more than 6,000 new companies over the past five years. Back in 2004, the building served as home to 12,748 companies using the same address in the Caymans, a British crown colony 150 miles south of Cuba.

Del Monte Fresh Produce Inc., whose corporate headquarters is in Coral Gables, Florida, lists another address -- Walker House on Mary Street in George Town, Grand Cayman -- in its SEC filings. That’s around the corner from Ugland House.

Del Monte’s effective tax rate for 2008 was 3 percent, up from 1 percent the year before. Del Monte spokeswoman Vidya Samsundar had no immediate comment on why the company is incorporated in the Caymans.

Author: David Evans @ http://www.caribbeannetnews.com

Oracle upgrades collaboration tool to take on Microsoft

2009-05-05T08:27:00.002+02:00

Oracle has announced enhancements to its recently launched Beehive collaboration software. The company has also slashed its entry-level price for Beehive by more than half, while announcing prices for a cloud-based version.

Oracle announced Beehive at last September's OpenWorld conference. It replaces the Oracle Collaboration Suite.

According to independent analyst Peter O'Kelly, Beehive represents Oracle's fourth attempt to crack the collaboration market, which has been long dominated by Microsoft and its Exchange and SharePoint products, and IBM with its Lotus Notes and Domino software.

Last updated in 2005, Collaboration Suite "failed to put a dent in the universe," O'Kelly wrote in a blog at Beehive's launch. SharePoint, meanwhile, has 100 million licensed users, according to Microsoft.

Despite its late entrance to the market, Oracle's senior vice president of collaboration technologies David Gilmour asserts that things will be different for Beehive.

"The market leaders are groupware products that have grown up," he said. "Collaboration was layered on after the fact, not designed that way in the beginning. Beehive is almost the complete inverse of that."

Gilmour was CEO of collaboration vendor Tacit Software. Tacit offered a cutting-edge "expertise location" platform that tracked employees' usage to build a profile of their expertise that could be found by other employees. Tacit was acquired by Oracle in November.

Oracle did not mentione an expertise location feature today. However, new features announced include "web-based team workspaces," which include wikis, team calendaring, file sharing and others built with enterprise-grade security and compliance, enhanced web and teleconferencing, and expanded compatibility with non-Oracle desktop tools, such as Microsoft Outlook email.

Not only can end users employ existing mail or IM clients of their choice with Beehive, but IT managers can continue to use Microsoft Exchange in conjunction with Beehive, Gilmour said. That can smooth over one of the difficulties associated with persuading large enterprises that have invested years and millions of dollars in Microsoft or IBM to migrate to Beehive.

Also, while "people hate switching, there are immediate hard dollar savings," Gilmour said. He reitierated that Beehive, which stores all data in an Oracle database, is more scalable than competitors.

"It is just way better when you're living in a real database," he said. "Everything is pretty complicated and brittle in Exchange. With Beehive, there are no hidden, strange 1GB store limitations."

SharePoint uses Microsoft's SQL Server, while Exchange uses the Jet database, which some users have criticized for not scaling well.

Oracle previously set Beehive's price for a one-time licence at $120(£80) per user, plus an additional 18 percent of that license per year for maintenance. In its announcement, Oracle cut the entry-level price to $50 per user. Components such as messaging and team collaboration, however, cost an additional $30 per user.

Companies can also deploy Beehive as a cloud-based service for $15 per user per month with as many features as they want, Gilmour said.

Author: Eric Lai, Computerworld (US) @ http://www.techworld.com

Oracle introduces Oracle Retail Data Model

2009-04-29T09:32:00.002+02:00

Industry-specific schema embedded with retail-specific analytics to help retailers gain intelligence into their business operations.

Oracle has introduced the Oracle Retail Data Model, a standards-based data model for Oracle Database, to help retailers accelerate their design and implementation of an enterprise data warehouse.

According to Oracle, the data model features a retail industry-specific schema complete with embedded retail-specific analytics to help retailers gain intelligence into their business operations, which is built for the Oracle Database platform including the HP Oracle Database Machine and HP Oracle Exadata Storage servers.

Oracle claims that the model helps retailers make better decisions by providing advanced analytics such as forecasting out-of-stock situations, understanding hidden patterns for loss prevention, contribution and market basket analysis, product affinity, customer clustering and segmentation, halo impact and promotional lift.

Oracle has said that the model is designed to start data warehouse and business intelligence initiatives helping retail organizations realize a return on investment by reducing implementation time and costs. Furthermore, the solution's open, standards-based model allows for better integration with existing retail applications further reducing integration costs and complexity.
Ray Roccaforte, vice president of data warehousing and analytics at Oracle, said: "The Oracle Retail Data Model is the culmination of our efforts in combining Oracle's deep retail industry and data warehousing expertise and technologies into a comprehensive, pre-built and tuned solution for retailers. Oracle Retail Data Model offers customers a solution designed for rapid, predictable deployment and integration with existing investments to help customers save time, effort and costs."

Source: http://appdev.cbronline.com

The Oracle open source credibility gap

2009-04-28T10:41:00.002+02:00

Paula says open source executives are suspicious, and the unscientific poll I did here confirms it.

Oracle has an open source crediblity gap.

(Harry Shearer and Michael McKean, right, with David Lander, were part of a radio comedy troupe dubbed The Credibility Gap early in their careers. It must be true, I read it on Wikipedia. They are now touring as Unwigged and Unplugged with Christopher Guest.)

Fact is that many in the open source movement distrust Oracle’s motives in buying Sun and taking over such blue-chip open source names as Java, mySQL, Open Solaris and OpenOffice.org.

The fear that Oracle will seek to destroy these projects is real. And as with the swine flu, fear has consequences.

Just as Mexico is being pummeled because people fear a bug that has (as of yet) killed no one in this country, so Oracle is hurt by its open source credibility gap.

When Oracle bought proprietary vendors like Seibel Systems it could easily make up the $5.8 billion cost on the backs of Seibel’s customers. Their code, and support for their code, disappeared into the Oracle maw and, since most were fairly scaled, they had no choice.

Oracle can’t do that with mySQL. Any attempt to change the license or kill it through non-support would be immediately followed by a community fork, which in turn would probably be followed by entrepreneurs grabbing former mySQL committers and selling support for the fork.

Things would be even tougher with OpenOffice. A good alternative, OpenOffice Symphony, is supported by IBM, which even has a viable business model for the office suite.

Java was proprietary until a few years ago, yet dozens of companies had versions of it. Making it open source was necessary to tear down that Tower of Babel. And Glassfish?

Point is, Oracle is already being hurt by this community distrust. Where CEO Larry Ellison can feel it, in the wallet.

So long as Oracle does not make its intentions clear, and so long as fear exists that it intends to do Sun’s open source projects harm, support for those projects is going to diminish. The assets are like ripening fruit.

Until Oracle makes clear that it intends to fully support Sun’s open source projects, and by extension the open source movement itself, the value of those assets will be degraded.

Author: Dana Blankenhorn @ http://blogs.zdnet.com

Naked CIO: Oracle and Sun - good luck

2009-04-27T09:17:00.002+02:00

Integrating IT can make or break a merger or acquisition, says the Naked CIO. Here's how to get it right.

Inspired by Oracle's recent bid to purchase Sun and mumblings about the difficulty to integrate their product sets, I recalled the challenges IT had in several companies I worked for when trying to integrate systems as a result of mergers and acquisitions.

Firstly, I recall the frustration I had as an executive running IT that I was not included in the 'need to know' circle when the consideration of the merger or acquisition was being discussed. Inevitably, once the deal was pretty much final, IT would be brought into the loop and then be perceived as party poopers when rightly we would identify considerable challenges and costs to integrating services, applications and data into one seamless environment.

In my experience streamlining and creating synergies between platforms and applications of two companies can take a considerable amount of time, often years, to do right.

When the board looks at the upside of a merger or acquisition, they almost always leap to the conclusion that services, products, applications and information will be seamlessly integrated from day one. Even those that have been through the exercise before are often still believers that Santa Claus will come down and make everything work perfectly.

Secondly, the challenge when integrating two companies' IT platforms and indeed strategies is attaining business alignment. It is almost always the case of a square peg in a round whole - and trying to understand what to compromise is very difficult.

Additionally, it's hard to decide, with two often-divergent strategies coming together, which one or which hybrid is the right one. Don't ask the board, as in my experience they rarely have thought that far ahead.

So in most cases integrating IT platforms in these circumstances is a wait-and-see exercise propagated by naïve executives and pawned off on unsuspecting IT professionals to make right - and to be accountable for if it goes wrong.

There are many ways in which companies can mitigate some of these unfortunate events. Having a CIO or IT executive on the board in the first place is an excellent start. Evaluating the IT integration opportunities even before due diligence would be beneficial. Understanding these costs and challenges prior to any agreement is a must especially if IT integration is a key aspect of the success of the whole initiative, which is predominantly the case.

When acquiring another organisation, it is critical to have a plan that encompasses all aspects of the integration process right from the beginning. This will allow you to ensure that benchmarks and expectations are managed properly. Quite often you can achieve some form of synergy quickly through establishing a data warehouse that can take multiple source system data and allow for analysis and manipulation while you wait for application synergies and development in order for operation platforms to work in unison.

Even though you, the IT executive, may be the bad-news bearer, never over promise in terms of mergers and acquisitions. Instead always err on the side caution. Why? Because the unknowns in these circumstances always have a negative impact on the plan.

Most of all, convince your company that if it is planning to acquire another company, IT needs to be a key player from the start. This will help with the integration efforts and provide valuable information on the true cost of a merger.

Author: Naked CIO @ http://management.silicon.com

Will OpenOffice survive the Oracle-Sun takeover?

2009-04-24T09:47:00.001+02:00

The last week has seen a lot of speculation about the future of Sun’s open source projects now that the company has been absorbed by Oracle. Most of the fallout from Oracle’s latest acquisition falls outside my realm of expertise or even interest. Some of my university readers are certainly going to be curious (OK, some university IT folks and even the occasional K-12 shop that has invested in Sun technologies are downright nervous). However, I have to say that the only bit of Sun technology that I actually care about at this point is OpenOffice.

Sure, Solaris was becoming quite a platform for virtualization and Sun had made real strides in terms of bring cross-platform virtualized applications to the desktop. They donated time, money, and expertise to a variety of educational pursuits. We all know the open source projects they had in their stable. I just can’t get fussed about anything, though, except OpenOffice.

Mostly this is because I’m convinced that MySQL will live on; it’s simply embedded in too many places to die and has already been forked, so I’m not overly concerned. VirtualBox is great, but there are other virtualization products that will do the trick if it dies. OpenOffice has forked as well, but Go-oo.org lacks the brand recognition or credibility of OpenOffice. It is also Windows and Linux only; Macs need to rely on OpenOffice or NeoOffice, the former of which is fully cross-platform.

Why do I care about OpenOffice so much? Because it saves our schools a lot of money. More importantly, it saves our students, parents, and community members a lot of money. It means that any student with a computer can have a fully-functional, mature office productivity suite without paying hundreds of dollars or settling for the Works suite that might have come with their computers.

Can OpenOffice do a mail merge as well as Office 2007? No, not quite. Are its spreadsheet functions as easy to use? Close…very close. Aside from that, though, is there anything that most students, faculty, or staff would be looking for in an Office suite that can’t be satisfied for free with OpenOffice? The simple answer is no.

What this means is that OpenOffice must live on beyond Sun. Maybe Oracle will get behind it; I’m not so sure and I’m not alone. However, whatever rebranding of Go-oo needs to happen should happen and we should make sure that our students and schools still have access to the highest quality, free office suite available.

Author: Christopher Dawson @ http://education.zdnet.com

Fitch Affirms Oracle's Ratings at A/F1 on Merger

2009-04-23T08:31:00.002+02:00

Fitch Ratings has affirmed the ratings of Oracle, following the announcement that Oracle will purchase Sun Microsystems.

The ratings are affirmed as follows: --Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at 'A'; --Senior unsecured debt at 'A'; --Short-term IDR at 'F1'; --Commercial Paper (CP) at 'F1'.

The Rating Outlook is Stable.

The affirmation follows the announcement that Oracle will purchase Sun, for approximately $8.7 billion, including $1.3 billion of assumed debt ($5.6 billion net of cash and debt acquired). The Board of Directors of Sun has unanimously approved the transaction, which is anticipated to close by the summer of 2009, subject to Sun stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

The affirmation incorporates Fitch's expectations that Oracle will fund the acquisition with a mixture of cash, CP borrowings and long-term debt issuance, with the majority being funded with debt, given that most of the company's cash is located outside the U.S. While credit protection measures are expected to deteriorate as a result of this transaction, Fitch believes Oracle retains solid financial flexibility at its current ratings, which incorporate total leverage of approximately 1.5 times (x) given the company's current operating profile. Fitch anticipates Oracle will continue to pursue an aggressive acquisition strategy, which could temporarily drive leverage outside of expectations. However, in line with past transactions, the company is expected to refrain from meaningful share repurchases and use significant free cash flow to reduce debt incurred in the transaction.

Fitch believes that materially weaker credit metrics over an extended period from a failed integration of Sun, a more aggressive financial policy, or a significantly worse impact of the weak macroeconomic environment, could result in negative ratings actions.

Concerns for the transaction center on greater integration risk associated with Oracle's purchase of Sun due to Sun's sizable employee base (33,000 at year-end 2008) and broad and diverse product portfolio, including a significant hardware segment. Additionally, uncertainty exists regarding potential segment/product divestitures, management structure and product strategy, particularly regarding open source software (e.g. MySQL). Positively, Fitch believes that Oracle can achieve significant cost synergies, primarily general and administrative expenses. Also, Oracle should be able to able to derive incremental benefits from Sun's sizable customer base and large intellectual property portfolio (e.g. Solaris and Java software platforms).

For the latest 12 months (LTM) ended Dec. 28, 2008, Sun generated total revenue, operating EBITDA and free cash flow of $13.3 billion, $1 billion (7.7 percent margin) and $8 million, respectively. Fitch estimates server systems, storage, software, and services accounted for approximately 39 percent, 17 percent , 5 percent and 39 percent of Sun's total revenue in the LTM period, respectively.

Pro forma for the recently initiated $1 billion dividend, Fitch estimates that Oracle's free cash flow for the LTM ended Feb. 28, was $7 billion, providing the company with significant financial flexibility for this transaction. Fitch said it believes that cash restructuring payments associated with the transaction and a pressured operating environment could have a slight impact on free cash flow in subsequent years, although the cash generating capability of the underlying business is expected to remain strong.

Oracle's credit metrics are expected to deteriorate upon the transactions close as Fitch estimates leverage could increase to approximately 1.4x from 1.0x from additional debt associated with the acquisition and interest coverage declining to approximately 12x from 18x, assuming 100 percent of the transaction is debt financed.

As of Feb. 28, Oracle's cash and cash equivalents were approximately $11.3 billion, of which approximately $10.1 billion was held by foreign subsidiaries. In addition, Oracle has an undrawn $5 billion CP program backed by a $3 billion revolving credit facility expiring March 2011, and a $2 billion 364-day facility expiring March 2010 (which the company entered into upon expiration of the previous $2 billion facility in March 2009).

Total debt as of Feb. 28, was approximately $11.2 billion and consisted primarily of $1 billion of floating- rate senior notes due May 2009, $1 billion of floating-rate senior notes due May 2010, $2.25 billion of 5 percent senior notes due January 2011, $1.25 billion of 4.95 percent senior notes due April 2013, $2 billion of 5.25 percent senior notes due January 2016, $2.5 billion of 5.75 percent senior notes due April 2018, and $1.25 billion of senior notes due April 2038.

Fitch's rating definitions and the terms of use of such ratings are available on the agency's public site, fitchratings.com.

Comments on this story may be sent to newsdesk@closeupmedia.com

Source: www.tmcnet.com

More thoughts on Oracle and hardware

2009-04-22T08:21:00.002+02:00

There are two explanations making the rounds for Oracle’s unexpected entry into the hardware business. Neither on its own is wholly convincing, but each hints at what is probably really going on here.

The first is the explanation that Oracle was putting about on Monday. This holds that vertical integration of all aspects of hardware and software is the next step being demanded by the customers of enterprise technology companies, who want one throat to choke when something goes wrong.

But it hardly feels as though customer expectations have changed enough to force Oracle to buy a deeply troubled server company to take on entrenched rivals like IBM, HP and now Cisco. Not does this explanation take account of the fundamental nature of the enterprise technology industry, which relies on deep technology and business partnerships.

The other explanation is that Oracle had to move quickly to outmaneuver the slow-footed IBM, so it was willing to take on the unappealing hardware business just to get its hands on Sun’s software assets. It then follows, according to this view, that Oracle will now turn around and unload the hardware side as soon as it can, perhaps in pieces.

To judge from the people we’ve spoken to, neither of these explanations quite gets to the bottom of what is going on.

One good pragmatic reason for assuming Sun’s struggling hardware business is that, for the arch cost-cutters at Oracle, this is where many of the biggest opportunities for expense savings lie. Oracle has promised $1.5bn in operating profits from the Sun deal in the first year. Slashing hardware costs is likely to be a quick way to get there - and if the economy turns, Sun’s highly cyclical hardware arm could even provide a pleasant surprise.

One person familiar with Oracle’s thinking suggests that the company will act quickly to narrow the focus of Sun’s hardware on a smaller number of high-end system designs. And a person close to the Sun camp admits that Sun itself simply failed to act aggressively enough to cut costs - though this person adds that a big acquirer like a Oracle also has many more opportunities to save money than Sun could have done on its own, for instance by combining salesforces.

Another pragmatic reason to take on the hardware business is that it offers Oracle a strategic hedge. In a world dominated by a handful of giant systems companies, life as a pure software company could become uncomfortable: what if big partner/rivals like IBM and HP become less enthusiastic about selling and supporting Oracle’s software?

Being able to offer its own hardware gives Oracle a fall-back, according to one person close to the transaction. The very existence of an Oracle hardware division changes the equation and removes a potential weapon in the hands of its enemies.

Of course, none of this changes Oracle’s main motivation for the Sun acquisition: getting its hands on Java, Solaris and MySQL. But it does help to explain why a software company with operating profit margins of 35 per cent is willing to take on a business that recently has had trouble making any money at all.

Author: Richard Waters @ http://blogs.ft.com

Oracle to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion

2009-04-21T07:42:00.002+02:00

Sun Microsystems Inc.’s scramble to find a suitor landed the slumping server and software maker in the arms of Oracle Corp., which agreed to pay $7.4 billion in cash for Sun in a startling marriage that would transform Silicon Valley and the computing industry.

The acquisition announced Monday illustrates how some of the biggest and richest technology companies are racing to become one-stop shops for corporate and government customers.

By picking up Sun and expanding heavily into hardware, Oracle would look much more like the company it beat out for Sun — IBM Corp., which appears unlikely to re-enter the bidding.

Heavyweights like IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co., Cisco Systems Inc. and now Oracle all want to offer a richer mix of technology products. The companies hope to find more hooks into customers and use those relationships to sell other kinds of stuff.

That setup, with a broad mix of services, software and hardware, helped Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM escape financial ruin in the 1990s and become one of the industry’s most profitable companies. IBM has forked out nearly $13 billion on 40 acquisitions since 2006 to expand its offerings. HP has followed suit, spending $13.9 billion for services provider Electronic Data Systems last year.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun lacked that kind of scale, especially after the tech meltdown of 2001 knocked the company off balance and led to a decade of financial pummeling.

Sun’s best sellers are computer servers and machines that store data on tape. But Oracle and IBM mainly had their eyes on Sun’s software.

The deal would give Oracle ownership of the Java programming language, which is a key element of the Internet and runs on more than 1 billion mobile devices worldwide. Oracle would get the Solaris operating system, which already has been a platform for Oracle’s products. And Oracle would get Sun’s MySQL database software, which has undercut Oracle and siphoned some sales away.

All these products are open-source, which means their underlying code is distributed freely on the Internet. To make money from the software, Sun sells support contracts alongside those programs. Like IBM before it, Oracle believes it can make money off those properties better than Sun can, partly by selling other products in package deals.

Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang thinks Oracle could keep MySQL to put pricing pressure on Microsoft, a longtime Oracle nemesis that sells a less-expensive database product.

“With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle is now able to make all of the pieces of the technology stack fit together and work well,” Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison said during a Monday conference call.

But unlike IBM, Oracle is a surprising suitor because it doesn’t make hardware. Although Sun wouldn’t be Oracle’s biggest acquisition during a four-year shopping spree that has cost about $40 billion, it may be the boldest.

Some analysts suspect Oracle might try to sell Sun’s hardware divisions if they turn out to be a drag.

“This is a really strange deal to me — Oracle buying all this hardware, I wonder what they’re going to do with it all,” said Jane Snorek, an analyst with First American Funds. “I don’t know what to think, frankly. It seems everyone wants to be IBM and have a mix. If it wasn’t the for the fact that Oracle is such a good acquirer, I’d be negative” about the deal.

Oracle shares sank 24 cents, 1.3 percent, to close at $18.82 in trading Monday. Sun shares jumped $2.46, 37 percent, to $9.15.

Oracle’s offer — which is valued at $5.6 billion when Sun’s cash and debt are taken into account — amounts to $9.50 per share. That represents a 42 percent premium to Sun’s closing stock price of $6.69 on Friday, and is about twice what Sun was trading for in March, before word leaked that IBM and Sun were in negotiations.

While Sun wouldn’t be Oracle’s most expensive acquisition, it will be the largest in terms of the people involved. Sun employs about 33,500 workers, far more than the roughly 12,000 that PeopleSoft had when Oracle bought that company in 2005 for $11.1 billion — the biggest outlay during Oracle’s expansion.

Sun has campuses in Broomfield and Colorado Springs.

Oracle, which already has roughly 86,000 workers, didn’t specify how many people will lose their jobs after it takes control of Sun. The cuts might not be as dramatic as they would have been in an IBM acquisition because Sun and Oracle have fewer overlapping products.

The smaller overlap also could keep Oracle from facing the antitrust objections that IBM likely would have prompted with Sun. Indeed, one of the sticking points in the IBM-Sun negotiations was the level of assurance Sun sought that IBM would see the deal through a regulatory review. Regulators figured to look closely at the way that swallowing Sun would expand IBM’s lead over Hewlett-Packard in certain markets for servers and data storage.

Oracle already says the Sun acquisition, which it expects to close this summer, will add at least 15 cents per share to its adjusted earnings in the first year after the deal closes. The company estimated Sun will contribute more than $1.5 billion to Oracle’s adjusted profit in the first year and more than $2 billion in the second year.

With former investment bankers Charles Phillips and Safra Catz steering things as the company’s co-presidents, Oracle has been able to hit its financial targets in all its acquisitions during the past four years.

That helped enable Oracle to earn $5.5 billion on revenue of $22.4 billion in its last fiscal year. Investors have enjoyed some of that prosperity too, with Oracle’s stock rising about 35 percent since the PeopleSoft takeover was completed in 2005. Oracle recently decided to pay a dividend for the first time.

But Oracle’s emphasis on increasing profits will likely raise concerns in its new role as the steward of Sun’s open-source software.

“This gives Oracle the keys to the crown jewels of the open-source movement,” said Wang, the Forrester analyst.

Ellison said Oracle intends to invest more heavily in Java than Sun has been able to afford as its fortunes waned. While Sun still has big sales — $13.9 billion last year — its profitability has been hit and miss. Earnings last year were $403 million, but from 2002 through 2006 Sun lost more than $5 billion.

Source: http://www.dailycamera.com

Oracle, IBM sued over database patents

2009-04-20T11:23:00.002+02:00

Giant computer corporations IBM and Oracle have been dragged into a Texas district court over an allegation that their database software breaches existing patents.

Vasudevan Software Inc (VSI) started the case against Oracle and IBM and is seeking a jury trial and damages over two patents.

The first, US patent 6,877,006 B1 describes an invention called “Multimedia Inspection Database System (MIDaS) for Dynamic Run Time Evaluation.” That patent was granted on the 5th of April 2005.

The other patent, US 7,167,864 B1 covers a similar invention. VSI claims that IBM uses these patents in its Websphere Information Integrator and other products. Oracle is alleged to have infringed these patents in its Oracle Data Service Integrator and other products.

Author: Mike Magee @ www.tgdaily.com

Potential Acquirers for Sun: Oracle or Cisco?

2009-04-16T08:28:00.002+02:00

Could Oracle (ORCL) or Cisco (CSCO) be potential acquirers for Sun Microsystems (JAVA), as talks between it and IBM are fading?

CSCO recently got involved into the computer server business, while ORCL has long been a close partner with Sun-- which specializes in making the kind of servers large companies use to run Oracle database software. With a huge cash pile of $29.5 billion, CSCO is a favorite among pundits looking for alternatives to IBM. Cisco could jumpstart its way into new computer hardware and storage businesses with Sun. Dell (DELL) or HPQ are very unlikely to express an interest in JAVA, since they're both committed to selling so-called industry-standard servers that run on microprocessors made by Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

IBM originally was talking to Sun about paying $10-$11 per share to buy Sun, but reportedly cut its offer to between $9.10 and $9.40 after due diligence, leading Sun to walk away. Currently at 6.50/share, JAVA must be feeling the pressure of having backed away from a lucrative deal with IBM. Moreover, JAVA's executive board members owe shareholders an explanation as to how their company is worth north of 10/share.
Depending on your level of patience tolerance, purchasing the shares at the current level of 6.50 and writing the May strike 5,6, or 7 may be very rewarding. If you're ultra-conservative, the "deep in the money" May strike 5 calls at 1.97/contract still offer an intrinsic value of .35/share, according to last Friday's close. That isn't an anemic return coupled with nearly 1.95/share downside protection!?

Let's examine May strike 6 and 7 for those who desire to earn more premiums on their contracts while having less downside protection to their underlying shares. At 6.50 /share, the May strike 6 calls are offered at 1.30 /contract for an intrinsic value of .90/contract. If the underlying shares get "called away" by option expiration (the third week of May), the investor would pocket .90/contract. If the shares remain below the strike price of 6, then the investor will keep the entire 1.30 /contract plus the shares. However, holding JAVA below 6/share provides the perfect bargain opportunity to accumulate additional shares and dollar cost-averaging. If IBM liked the Java at 9.33, wouldn't they be salivating to resume talks at 6 or below.
Similarly, the "out of the money" May strike 7 at nearly .80/contract provides the holder a juicy premium of .80/share as well as an .80 pullback.

Author: Jack Haddad @ http://seekingalpha.com

Oracle Financial introduces new enterprise application

2009-04-15T08:26:00.002+02:00

The new application helps centralize exposure management across the entire spectrum of offerings. Oracle Financial Services Software has introduced Oracle Flexcube Enterprise Limits and Collateral Management, an enterprise application that enables banks to achieve a holistic view of their exposure by helping them to centralize collateral management, limits definition, and tracking and measurement of exposure across the institution.

Customers using Oracle Flexcube Enterprise Limits and Collateral Management can centralize exposure management across the entire spectrum of offerings including loans, trade finance, treasury and overdrafts, said Oracle Financial.

The application is process-driven and designed to deliver capability that helps banks to deploy it centrally. It leverages the Oracle Industry Reference Model for Banking to help standardize business processes and replicate best practices across the enterprise.

Oracle Flexcube Enterprise Limits and Collateral Management enables efficient limits monitoring across the institution with centralized online tracking and monitoring of multi-currency limits for all transactions across all branches or entities - in countries as well as regions.

The system helps banks make informed credit decisions with accurate credit information, by customer and segment, while also helping to improve exposure management with collateral pooling and contribution controls, added Oracle Financial.

NRK Raman, managing director and CEO of Oracle Financial Services Software, said: "Oracle Flexcube Enterprise Limits and Collateral Management is a comprehensive, standards-based solution that enables banks to centralize their processes as well as monitor, control and report their exposure to key stakeholders and regulators. To meet the needs of customers, the application is designed to co-exist with a bank's current application environment to minimize the resources and costs associated with getting these processes streamlined."

Source: http://enterpriseapplications.cbronline.com

Oracle sticks to guns over maintenance fees

2009-04-14T13:07:00.002+02:00

It has become a regular ritual during Oracle's quarterly earnings conference calls. Company executives point to the vendor's lucrative revenue stream from maintenance - paid annually by customers as a percentage of their license fees - and bask in the approving glow of the financial analysts on the line.

Maintenance revenue is particularly crucial to software vendors during a recession, when many customers are holding back on buying new licenses.

Oracle reported $2.9 billion (£1.8 billion) in revenue for "software license update and product support" in its third quarter and incurred just $256 million in expenses against that total, for a roughly 90 percent profit margin. In contrast, the vendor logged about $1.5 billion in new license sales in the quarter, which it reported last month.

It's no surprise, then, that Oracle isn't budging an inch on maintenance fees as it works to finalise new contracts by the end of its fiscal year on May 31, say analysts and consultants.

"People have gotten different concessions initiated by maintenance or around maintenance, but I wouldn't say they're getting discounts on maintenance," said Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang.

For example, a customer's contract may include a clause that allows for the customer's maintenance bill to be adjusted each year according to the Consumer Price Index, a key measure of inflation.

Some users are managing to get Oracle to relent on this, said Eliot Arlo Colon, president of Miro Consulting, a Fords, New Jersey, company that advises Oracle customers on contact negotiations.

Wang echoed Colon. "I've seen this happen recently with a lot of deals, including Oracle," he said.

This particular concession may be more possible now because the CPI has been anemic so far this year.

Miro clients are also letting maintenance lapse on less mission-critical applications, according to Colon.

Meanwhile, Oracle's willingness to discount new licenses has been "roughly the same" as last year, Wang said.

Instead, the company is trying to give customers more bonus items, he said: "They're assisting you with installation, adding training, adding other products and tools that can help the application succeed."

These non-discount areas can actually be more valuable to a client than a price discount, according to Wang.

But for some users, such as those who "need a lot of hand-holding" or are rapidly expanding their use of the software, maintenance fees may well be justified, Wang said.

Oracle also spends billions each year on research and development, reinvesting with help from maintenance revenue, Wang added.

Indeed, some Oracle customers say they aren't troubled by the vendor's fees.

Zebra Technologies has adopted Oracle widely, moving away from a previous strategy that employed a lot of custom development and a legacy ERP system.

The Lincolnshire, Illinois, printing and labelling company now has an enterprisewide license agreement with Oracle, and has hired "key people" to work in-house instead of paying outside consultants, said Jeffrey Hand, director of IT.

As a result, from an integration standpoint, Zebra is saving about 60 percent over the old model, he said: "We're getting out of the software business."

Wind River Systems, which sells products and services for optimising device software, is planning to buy Oracle BI (business intelligence) software to run against its financials application, said vice president and CIO Scott Fenton.

While he has "been very successful" at garnering significant license discounts from the vendor, Fenton takes the cost of maintenance in stride.

"Paying maintenance is like getting a tuneup on your car," he said. "Oracle is top-notch. It's best-in-class support. It's a valuable service and part of doing business."

Author: Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service @ www.techworld.com

Oracle Offering Gadget Wizard for Google Apps

2009-04-09T08:33:00.002+02:00

Oracle announces the release of Oracle Gadget Wizard for Google Apps and says Oracle Siebel CRM applications can now interact securely with the Google cloud platform through Google Secure Data Connector, allowing multitenancy support for accessing corporate data behind firewalls. Together, the new developments will allow even mobile enterprise users to interact securely with the cloud, Oracle says.

Oracle made several announcements on April 7 centered on products designed to interact with Google Apps, including Oracle Gadget Wizard for Google Apps with support for Google SDC.

Google marked the first birthday of the Google App Engine cloud computing solution at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, offering newly added Java support for the Google App Engine platform along with additional features including a database import tool and the Google Secure Data Connector, a development tool for building applications that give users access to secure corporate data even when they are working with Google Apps outside the firewall.

In addition to Oracle Gadget Wizard for Google Apps supporting Google SDC, Oracle is rolling out Siebel CRM support for Google Apps and Oracle Gadget Wizard for Google Apps.

Oracle Gadget Wizard for Google Apps allows users to construct gadgets without prior programming knowledge. These gadgets can make use of Oracle CRM.

The Siebel CRM applications utilize the Google SDC to interact with the cloud in a secure and flexible way, allowing for SAAS (software as a service) applications that can access corporate data behind the enterprise firewall, Oracle said in a news release.

Siebel CRM support of the Google Secure Data Connector "provides customers choice by helping seamlessly integrate existing [on-premises] investments with on-demand services," according to the company.

"There's an opportunity now to provide miniapplications or even applications that can be based, in part or in whole, on using Siebel CRM," Mark Woollen, vice president of Social CRM for Oracle, said in an interview. "You can take the code you built on middleware and port it directly to the Google App Engine. From there you can run it up into the cloud and use Google Apps accounts to get at the data behind the firewall."

With the new solutions in place, a brand owner could provide a gadget for deal registration, for example, sparing channel sales people from having to visit a company portal; instead, a salesperson could log on to a secure Google site to review and accept leads, interacting with the cloud without exposing the company's data in an insecure way.

Oracle has been updating or rolling out a number of new solutions as of late. On April 7, the company announced Oracle Transportation Management 6.0, a solution that provides improved oversight for transportation networks, the first update since Version 5.5 in May 2006.

And in March 2009, Oracle released Oracle Sourcing on Demand, a SAAS solution designed to make enterprise procurement of supplies a more efficient and cost-effective process by letting a company's experts collaborate online.

Author: Nicholas Kolakowski @ www.eweek.com

Oracle launches new version of tax-specific software application

2009-04-08T09:41:00.002+02:00

The application enables tax and revenue authorities to optimize revenue collection process. Oracle has announced the availability of Oracle Enterprise Taxation Management 2.2.0, the newest version of the tax-specific, commercial off-the-shelf software application that enables tax and revenue authorities to optimize revenue collection.

Providing a configurable alternative to custom-built systems, the application enables local tax collection authorities to optimize all aspects of the revenue collection process and respond to tax law and regulatory changes, said Oracle.

According to the company, the Oracle Enterprise Taxation Management 2.2.0 provides tax authorities with an integrated system to enable near-term functional improvements, while providing the adaptability and flexibility needed to address future challenges as well. It is built on Java Enterprise (J2EE) and service-oriented architecture industry standards.

John Andrus, vice president and general manager for Oracle tax global business unit, said: "Oracle Enterprise Taxation Management 2.2.0 demonstrates that tax authorities no longer need to rely on costly custom systems. Its standards-based platform and pre-built integrations allow for easy configuration to meet unique requirements and helps ensure the application will meet the needs of tax authorities today and in the future."

Source: http://enterpriseapplications.cbronline.com

Oracle wins America's Cup case

2009-04-03T10:39:00.001+02:00

A New York court has cleared the way for a possible one-on-one showdown in ultra fast 90-foot trimarans between the San Francisco-based BMW Oracle Racing team and the Swiss Alinghi syndicate, the sailing team that has won the last two America's Cups.

After nearly two years of litigation, Thursday's unanimous ruling by the New York State Court of Appeals sets up the potential for a high-stakes grudge match between software tycoon Larry Ellison and pharmaceutical magnate Ernesto Bertarelli, if they can't agree soon on rules to involve additional challengers.

It is still unclear where and when the boats will compete for the oldest trophy in international sport - one that dates to 1851. But race organizers point to next year off Valencia, Spain, or elsewhere.

"The right to act as trustee of the America's Cup should be decided on the water and not in a courtroom," the court wrote in a 6-to-0 decision. Ellison and Bertarelli should "work together to maintain this noble sailing tradition as 'a perpetual challenge cup for friendly competition between foreign countries.' "

The court ruling was a victory for Ellison's BMW Oracle team, whose lawyers argued that Bertarelli had attempted to host the 33rd America's Cup with rules rigged to the Swiss team's advantage.

The ruling could also benefit fans of extreme sailing. The gargantuan trimarans designed and built in the past year by BMW Oracle and Alinghi are extremely fast, terribly difficult to race, outright dangerous and vulnerable in heavy winds and seas.

Eighteen teams from 11 countries had reserved a spot to begin cup trials in Valencia next spring in high-tech sailboats with only one keel.

Ellison's team chose court instead. His lawyers argued that Alinghi had formed a Spanish yacht club that had never held an offshore regatta. Although the club was the first to file a challenge, Ellison's lawyers argue that it was a bogus challenge designed to ensure Alinghi's preferred rules for the next race.

Bertarelli's lawyers countered that Ellison was attempting through litigation to eliminate other cup contenders and become a finalist in a one-on-one race with Alinghi, something that Ellison's team had never achieved on the water. Bertarelli said his rules would make the regatta more affordable to other teams.

The appellate judges reinstated a lower court ruling that had declared BMW Oracle the official "challenger of record" for the next regatta.

Ellison's team launched its 90-foot trimaran last fall and has been training on it. Bertarelli's team has yet to reveal its secret, multihull design.

"We're hoping that Alinghi will come back and renegotiate for the benefit of all the challengers," said Norbert Bajurin, a San Francisco mechanic and staff commodore of the Golden Gate Yacht Club, BMW Oracle's sponsoring organization.

But, he added, if the rules cannot be agreed upon, the original "deed of gift" for the America's Cup calls for a two-boat duel between rivals to be held within 10 months.

Author: Jim Doyle at jdoyle@sfchronicle.com

Oracle man to head up ECI Europe

2009-04-02T08:47:00.002+02:00

ECi Software Solutions has named former Oracle Corporation executive Kees Vogelesang as SVP Operations for its European division, effective 1 April 2009. Most recently Kees served as Head of Business Operations – COO for Oracle‘s Strategic Accounts Sales division serving Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

In his new role, he will be responsible for all operational activities for ECi Europe across its three locations in Amsterdam-Holland and Cambridge and Lincoln.

CEO ECi International Tom Kapp says: "We are very fortunate to have someone of Kees‘ calibre on board. Kees has a strong background in the IT Industry — most recently his 10-year run with Oracle — that includes leadership positions in both business and sales operations on a global scale. Among other initiatives, Kees will focus on strengthening both customer support and the ECi product set, which includes Progress-Bridge, Vision and EasyOrder.

Kapp also thanked recently departed ECi Europe CEO Ron Wotherspoon. He says: "Over the past 20-plus years, Ron and his team built Interactive Products into the leading software provider for the European office products industry. We wish Ron the very best in the next chapter of his life. He has been a good friend and has left a lasting impression on both ECi and the industry."

Wotherspoon also served for two years as Chairman of the BOSS Federation and in 2004 was presented with the BOSS Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition for his dedicated service.

Source: www.channelinfo.net

Sabrix Leads Transaction Tax Management Industry With Successful Integrations to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12

2009-04-01T08:24:00.002+02:00

Fortune 1000 Companies Extend Value of Oracle E-Business Suite and Enjoy Greater Financial Control. Sabrix, Inc., a leading provider of transaction tax management for companies of all sizes, today announced that the Sabrix Application Suite is in production at multiple customer sites using Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12. Sabrix customers, which include Fortune 1000 companies spanning construction, grocery, manufacturing, and energy and utilities markets, are fully exploiting the value of the latest release of the Oracle ERP platform and are leveraging Sabrix's tax solution to assure improved tax accuracy and compliance with confidence.

"Sabrix has a proven history of being first to market -- whether supporting the latest technology advances, like the Oracle 12 integration, or ensuring timely and accurate compliance with new tax legislation," said Stephen James, principal and international tax technology practice leader at Ryan, a Sabrix partner. "Their early commitment to support the latest Oracle 12 platform in June 2008 has now come to fruition in real production instances at enterprise-scale companies, reinforcing the fact that Sabrix is a proven and trusted vendor for customers considering tax automation in Oracle 12 environments."

Sabrix's customer deployments follow the general availability of Sabrix Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, which was announced last June (see New Release of Sabrix Application Delivers End-User Benefits to Tax Professionals as well as Integration to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12). Sabrix customers on Oracle 12 have successfully implemented the Sabrix Application Suite to support accounts receivable (AR), order management (OM) and accounts payable (AP) modules. The integration provides a direct, point-to-point integration with Oracle 12, eliminating the need for a separate application server or middleware, lowering maintenance costs and simplifying the IT environment. IT and tax professionals no longer have to configure and maintain tax requirements in Oracle, speeding deployment, minimizing risks to the overall ERP project, and shortening time-to-value.

"Our proven integration experience with Oracle 12 ensures the highest level of service, reliability, and support for companies migrating to the Oracle 12 platform," said Pam Kostka, senior vice president of corporate marketing at Sabrix. "Our own in-house team of Oracle experts has spent the past year developing and testing, then implementing and supporting our solution for Oracle 12. The opportunity to be first to market and to gain tangible experience in enterprise-grade implementations ensures that customers and prospects will be able to enjoy the lessons learned that only practical experience in real world environments can teach."

About Sabrix

Sabrix, Inc. is a leading provider of transaction tax management for companies of all sizes, enabling finance, tax, and IT professionals to achieve accurate, timely, and cost-effective compliance for sales tax, use tax, Value Added Tax (VAT), excise tax and industry-specific taxes and fees. The Sabrix Application Suite™ serves global enterprises such as Amazon.com, BASF, Cisco, DTE Energy, IBM, QUALCOMM, Sportsman's Warehouse, and York International. The Sabrix Application Suite seamlessly connects to all financial applications requiring the determination, calculation, and recording of transaction taxes. The company also offers the Sabrix Managed Tax Service™ (MTS), an outsourced transaction tax compliance service that helps finance departments of small-and-medium-sized businesses eliminate the hassle, control their audit exposure, and reduce the total cost of sales tax, use tax, and VAT compliance. Sabrix MTS seamlessly integrates with a company's existing accounting and e-commerce systems, and, similar to outsourced payroll services, operates as a trusted extension of a company's finance department to address tax compliance from start to finish: address validation, tax rate maintenance, tax determination and calculation, returns preparation and filing as well as audit research and documentation. For more information, please visit www.sabrix.com.

Sabrix, Sabrix Application Suite, Sabrix Managed Tax Service and Sabrix MTS are trademarks of Sabrix, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Source: www.marketwire.com

Endeavors Technologies Ramps Up with Application Jukebox Support for Oracle Beehive

2009-03-30T09:01:00.001+02:00

Endeavors Technologies, a provider of application streaming and virtualization technology, announced that Application Jukebox, the company's next-generation application streaming and virtualization platform, now supports Oracle Beehive - a unified collaboration platform built for the enterprise.

Application Jukebox, the company noted, delivers a unique form of configurable virtualization. Without the need for any redevelopment, existing desktop applications are delivered on-demand in a SaaS environment. For Oracle's 30-day trial, Application Jukebox has been provisioned to deliver the Oracle Beehive client applications with an "Express Launch" capability. With one click, Thunderbird, Pidgin, and the Oracle Beehive integration for Outlook clients are delivered on-demand to a user's desktop. The applications are automatically configured for a 30-day trial account and ready to use, enabling users to save time and simplify the Oracle Beehive trial experience.

"We see enormous potential in the application on-demand market," said Paul Hacker, CEO at Endeavors Technologies. "Application Jukebox is the ideal solution to provide software vendors the ability to deliver existing desktop applications on-demand via the Internet. We are delighted to provide the Express Launch option for the 30-day trial for Oracle Beehive." "With Oracle Beehive, users have the flexibility to communicate and coordinate through familiar client software, standards-based clients or a variety of mobile clients," said Marten den Haring, Senior Director, Collaboration Technologies, Oracle. "With Application Jukebox, organizations taking advantage of Oracle's 30-day trial can benefit from an Express Launch option for their preferred desktop client software." Endeavors Technologies is a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork.

Source: www.tmcnet.com

Oracle, SITA to build GenNext reservation system

2009-03-27T10:40:00.001+01:00

Oracle and aviation IT specialist SITA have signed a unique 15-year agreement to develop the most 'open and agile airline reservations system' using service oriented architecture (SOA) and advanced computing techniques.

Francesco Violante, Sita CEO, said the company' s strategic technology partnership with Oracle was a major milestone in the development of its Horizon passenger management portfolio and will have a profound impact on the airline industry.

"It is putting the most advanced technology stack available at the service of our industry for the first time. Advanced technology is essential to the modernization of the airline reservations systems of our 138 airline customers and we expect many others will be attracted to Horizon by the success of the project."

The partnership is already set to bear fruit with the launch next month by Sita of Customer Journey, a Horizon feature providing real-time access to airline bookings for business intelligence applications and rapid retrieval of customer journey records across multiple search criteria.

Loic Le Guisquet, Oracle executive vice president for EMEA, said: "This is a tremendous opportunity for Oracle and Sita to work together on one of the biggest IT modernization projects ever, implementing top quality design on a state-of-the-art architecture."

"This project will demonstrate Oracle’s capacity to provide a full technology stack to modernise legacy applications in order to produce true SOA-enabled applications with very high transaction-processing capabilities, he noted.

“Sita is a strong strategic partner for Oracle and will be represented on the Oracle CIO advisory board and customer advisory board with access to Oracle Labs and the Oracle Excellence Centre for co-innovation programmes.”

Sita is making its largest-ever single project investment in the further development of its Horizon platform which involves a team of 400 software engineers and designers - including off-shore resources - spread across the globe.

The implementation approach favours gradual migration of standard industry processes and selected innovative enhancements.

Source: www.tradearabia.com

THERESE POLETTI'S TECH TALES: Has Oracle run out of companies to buy?

2009-03-26T09:30:00.002+01:00

Last week, Oracle Corp.'s first dividend payment in the company's nearly 30-year history was a signal to many on Wall Street that the software giant is slowing down its acquisition frenzy.

Either that, or Chief Executive Larry Ellison is trying to get some cash for a new sailboat. He could also be making improvements on his Japanese-style compound in tony Woodside, Calif. As one of the company's biggest shareholders, Ellison stands to earn $230 million if Oracle pays its 5-cent-per-share dividend every quarter for the next 12 months.

But let's set talk of that aside, and take a look at Oracle's track record for a minute. After completing its $8.9 billion acquisition of business software developer PeopleSoft in 2004, Oracle then embarked on a major spending spree, seeking to build a solid base to grow into new software arenas.

The company laid the groundwork by first buying large-scale, infrastructure-like software firms, like PeopleSoft for human resource systems. A year later, it bought Siebel Systems, a developer of customer-relationship software used by sales teams to keep track of customers.

Oracle's spree kicked into high gear in 2006, when the company bought 18 firms. However, it appears to be slowing down, with 13 deals in 2007 and 10 last year. The company's last major deal was BEA Systems in late 2007 for $6.8 billion. Since then, Oracle's last 12 purchases were considered too small or immaterial to require disclosure of the price.

Enough building blocks

Like a spoiled teenager who has gone on a major clothes-shopping spree, Oracle realizes it now has enough building blocks for a new wardrobe, and needs to enhance its purchases with some targeted shoes and accessories.
"The theme was to buy broad groups of technology applicable to numerous industries and now they are narrowing the focus," said Brenon Daly, analyst with tech-merger consultant The 451 Group in San Francisco. Oracle has focused on several areas where it can provide specific industries with software packages, tailored to their unique needs.

And it is a diverse group of industries. For instance, it bought Retek, 360Commerce, ProfitLogic and Advanced Visual Technology for retailing. In health-care systems, it announced a deal to buy Relsys. And for telecommunications, it bought Portal Software, Net4Call and HotSip.

"The large pieces are in place for Oracle," Daly said. "Now they are looking at the really nitty gritty things."

Daly says the company's strategy of getting into the applications business, and then selling other products on top of that is working.

"You take that incredibly efficient machine, and you slap a bunch more applications in there," he said. "You are selling to a pharmaceutical company. Do you need some content management stuff? What about HR stuff? We have this stuff from PeopleSoft. Maybe you might even sell a database license too."

Steadily integrated

So far, Oracle has steadily integrated all these companies, with the smaller ones obviously easier to meld into its growing operations.

And even though the climate for deals has withered on the vine, Oracle is a name that keeps coming up on the rumor mill. The company had nearly $11.3 billion in cash and marketable securities as of Feb. 28, and may still have the desire to keep buying, albeit at a slower, more targeted pace.

Take Red Hat Inc. Rumors surfaced again this week that Oracle was interested in the Linux distributor and services company. The reports sent Red Hat shares higher, but some on Wall Street quickly discounted the idea, at least for now.

"While we think an Oracle purchase of Red Hat is eventually highly likely, we think it's premature, in part because of IBM's highly publicized interest in Sun Microsystems Inc. and the pursuant uncertainty around whether IBM would continue to be an advocate for Red Hat," Jeffries & Co. Inc. analyst Katherine Egbert said in a note to clients.

In addition to its cash, Oracle also has about $11.2 billion in debt. So the company likely will proceed cautiously when it comes to doing any more big deals, as opposed to recent media reports suggesting the opposite. Right now in this economy, the longer one waits watching its prey, the better the deal that can be struck.

Author: Therese Poletti @ www.MarketWatch.com

Oracle-Red Hat Acquisition Rumors Swirl After Reports Surface

2009-03-25T07:50:00.001+01:00

Oracle might be eyeing additional acquisition, and some analysts suspect that the IT giant might have its sights set on Red Hat. This week, a report surfaced that claimed an Oracle-Red Hat merger might “[make] sense.” Even as the note cautioned that the acquisition wouldn’t happen “now,” other reports have Oracle and Hewlett-Packard recently in unsuccessful talks to snatch up Sun Microsystems.

Oraclemight be gearing up for another of highly public acquisitions and this time the IT giant might have its eyes set on open-source innovator Red Hat. This week, an analyst suggested that an Oracle acquisition of Red Hat is "eventually highly likely."

Although Oracle and Red Hat are not speaking about these reports, it generated enough buzz to warrant stories and additional speculation. Stories about a possible IBM-Sun Microsystems merger also helped push the Oracle-buys-Red Hat story line.

"It would make sense for Oracle to own Red Hat ultimately," Katherine Egbert, an analyst with Jefferies & Co., wrote in a March 23 research report, "but given IBM's potentially pending acquisition of OpenSolaris and Oracle's history as a value buyer, the time does not seem right."

"While we think an Oracle purchase of Red Hat is eventually highly likely, we think it's premature," Egbert added, "in part because of [IBM's] highly publicized interest in [Sun Microsystems] and the pursuant uncertainty around whether IBM would continue to be an advocate for RHEL once they owned both AIX and Open Solaris development, and in part because Oracle does not have a history of purchasing still-fast-growing competitors."

Shares of Red Hat rocketed upwards on March 23, at least partially thanks to the rumors, only to fall off slightly on March 24.

Oracle seems to have been a buying mood lately. According to eWeek’s Storage Station blog, which quoted two "excellent sources," Oracle was recently ready to make a joint move with Hewlett-Packard to purchase Sun Microsystems for a combined deal worth somewhere between $6 and $7 billion.

For $2 billion of that, Oracle supposedly wanted Sun’s software library, including Java, ZFS, Glassfish, Solaris, OpenSolaris, and OpenOffice.org (HP would have paid $4 to $5 billion for Sun’s hardware). Sun, however, declined the offer.

Oracle has circled Red Hat before. Way back in 2006, the acquisition rumor mill geared up to a furious pitch after Oracle CEO Larry Ellison started making comments about stepping in to provide Red Hat’s support. At the time, analysts suggested that such a move would be unlikely, given Red Hat’s relative expense.

Speculation has continued since then, along with the assumption that a robust Red Hat would be a bit too large for Oracle to comfortably acquire, monetarily speaking.

Oracle has been displaying some robust health itself, despite the global recession, with its third-quarter fiscal 2009 earnings per share up 3 percent over the same quarter last year.

On March 23, Oracle announced the acquisition of Relsys International, which provides drug safety and risk management solutions with advanced analytics. The purchase allows Oracle to bolster its suite of software applications targeted at the health care IT field.

Even before that, analyst Katherine Egbert suggested that Oracle could acquire SMB (small midsized business) server virtualization specialist Virtual Iron Software, as part of a play that would allow it to effectively compete with VMware and Citrix Systems in the virtualization products arena.

Oracle purchased mValent in its first acquisition of 2009, gaining that company’s configuration management solutions for potential use within Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Author: Nicholas Kolakowski @ www.eweek.com

Oracle Announces Relsys Acquisition

2009-03-24T07:24:00.002+01:00

Oracle has signed an acquisition agreement with Relsys, a provider of drug safety and risk management solutions for the health sciences industry. The combination will support end-to-end drug safety processes across clinical development, post-market surveillance and patient care.

The acquisition will bring significant domain knowledge and experience to Oracle's health sciences global business unit, and is expected to extend Oracle's leadership in providing drug safety applications to the health sciences industry.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the first half of calendar year 2009, said a company statement.

"With the addition of Relsys, Oracle is uniquely positioned to help our customers improve drug safety by delivering a comprehensive software solution that enables our vision of integrated safety and risk management supported by advanced analytics," said Neil de Crescenzo, SVP and GM, Oracle Health Sciences.

Relsys provides solutions support for adverse event reporting, risk management, and data analysis for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, contract research organizations and medical device companies worldwide.

Source: www.cxotoday.com

Oracle Offering Scaled Down Version of Database Machine

2009-03-23T08:41:00.002+01:00

Citing customer demand, Oracle has unveiled a half-size version of the HP Oracle Database Machine, its competitor to high-end data warehousing products such as that sold by Teradata. Oracle claims strong demand for its Exadata product line but declines to offer numbers. The HP Oracle Database Machine was co-developed by Oracle and Hewlett-Packard and is part of Oracle's Exadata product line, launched to great fanfare at the OpenWorld conference last year. It initially was available as a rack filled with eight HP DL360 database servers, four Infiniband switches, a storage server grid with 14 servers, and various software products, according to a post made on Thursday to Oracle's Data Warehouse Insider blog.

But now, "due to popular demand, addressing smaller entry points with the same extreme performance on the same technology basis, Oracle is now introducing a smaller system," the blog states. The scaled-down version has four HP DL360 database servers, two switches and seven storage servers and "will provide similar scalability and performance characteristics as the full rack."

"We at Oracle, and our customers, are very excited about this new offering, as it provides a slightly lower entry point for an HP Oracle Database Machine, while still delivering extreme performance," the blog adds.

CEO Larry Ellison dubbed the Exadata line the company's most exciting product family "in many, many years," during an earnings conference call this week, and claimed that the system's performance has been trouncing competitors' products.

But while Oracle President Charles Phillips described the Exadata sales pipeline as "the largest [he's] ever seen in terms of a new product," neither he nor Ellison provided any definitive numbers.

While Exadata promises high-end performance, it has a considerable price tag as well. Oracle's official price list states that the half-sized machine's hardware costs $350,000 (about Rs.1,750 lakh) compared to $650,000 (about Rs. 3,250 crore) for the full version.

But analyst Curt Monash has calculated that once software licenses and likely database options are added to the equation, the list price of a fully loaded, full-sized Database Machine is more than $5.5 million (about Rs. 27.5 crore).

Despite that price tag, it's hard to draw conclusions about the product's success so far, Monash suggested.

While Exadata "is not winning many competitive deals yet," he said, "whether they are making sales into the Oracle loyalist base is a different matter."

Oracle's decision to release a half-sized version is an acknowledgment that in the data warehousing market today, "there's much more unit demand at lower database sizes," Monash said.

The full database machine has either 20TB or 45TB of storage, depending on the type of drives used, according to Oracle's blog post.

Meanwhile, "most specialized analytic DBMS installations run databases under 10TB in size," Monash said.

"Big enterprise data-warehouse integration projects are in some cases being deferred for economic reasons," he added. "Smaller, more tactical projects with rapid payback are less affected."

Oracle is hardly abandoning the type of enterprise that would need the full Database Machine, according to Monash.

"Their most important customers are the biggest and highest-end ones," he said. "For years, Teradata was the only vendor who routinely clobbered Oracle at the high end of the database market. Now Netezza and others are also threats. Exadata is Oracle's reaction. The last thing Oracle wants to do is sacrifice share at the top of the DBMS market. All other objectives are secondary."

Author: Chris Kanaracus @ www.cio.in

Oracle license sales fell in Q3

2009-03-20T08:38:00.003+01:00

Oracle on Wednesday said its third-quarter revenues were $5.45 billion, a 2 percent hike, but net income fell 1 percent to $1.3 billion.

New software license revenues -- a key indicator of business strength -- fell 6 percent to $1.5 billion compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

Cut straight to the key news for technology development and IT management with our once-a-day summary of the top tech news. Subscribe to the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. Also, while software license updates and product support revenues jumped 11 percent to $2.9 billion, services revenues dropped 8 percent to $1.0 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters predicted on average that excluding special items, Oracle would report earnings of $0.32 per share on $5.45 billion in revenue for the quarter.

Oracle slightly beat those expectations, reporting that excluding special items, earnings per share were $0.35 and revenue was $5.5 billion.

Oracle blamed foreign currency valuations for the drop in new license revenues.

"But for currency, we actually sold more new licenses in Q3 of this year than we did in Q3 of last year," CEO Larry Ellison said during a conference call.

Given the global recession, "that is a remarkable achievement," he added.

The quarter's pace of business was typical for Oracle, with many deals closing toward the end, said Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz. "Nothing about that was different," she said.

In typical fashion, Ellison talked up Oracle's position against competitors, characterizing Oracle as an unstoppable powerhouse amid an onslaught of harsh economic headwinds.

"We're better in applications than SAP. In database, we're taking share from Microsoft and IBM," he said. "We're competing more effectively across the board in all our product areas and that's the explanation for Q3, and reason for optimism moving forward." To that end, Oracle is prepping a pair of major new software releases for the coming months, including Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, said Oracle President Charles Phillips.

Copyright @ 2009 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.

Source: www.tmcnet.com

Earnings: Oracle profit beats forecast; company to pay 1st dividend

2009-03-19T08:20:00.001+01:00

Oracle Corp.'s profit and revenue from new software licenses dipped in the latest quarter, but the business software maker's results came in ahead of Wall Street's tepid forecasts. And in a rare sign of confidence these days, the company declared its first dividend.

Oracle's fiscal third-quarter results, reported Wednesday after the market closed, demonstrated that the company was able to sustain a better-than-expected pace of contract signings even as companies pull back on technology spending.

In the latest period, which covered December through February, Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle said it earned $1.33 billion, or 26 cents per share, versus $1.34 billion, also 26 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Total revenue was $5.45 billion, a 2 percent increase over last year, though Oracle said sales would have jumped 11 percent without currency fluctuations. Analysts predicted $5.42 billion in sales.

Nike Inc. said its profit slipped in its third quarter on charges related to its acquisition of Umbro PLC and on weaker sales.

The Beaverton, Ore.-based athletic apparel company said Wednesday its net income slipped to $243.8 million, or 50 cents per share, for the quarter ended Feb. 28, compared with $463.8 million, or 92 cents per share, in the same period last year.

Nike's revenue fell 2 percent to $4.4 billion.

New Oracle Enterprise Manager Cuts Down On Apps Management Cost

2009-03-18T07:38:00.002+01:00

Delivering on its commitment to help customers realize greater value from their application and infrastructure software investments and drive down I.T. costs, Oracle today announced availability of Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Release 5 (10gR5).

Oracle Enterprise Manager provides a comprehensive set of solutions to simplify the management of the full Oracle software stack. In addition to management enhancements across the stack, this release adds support for virtual environments.

Oracle's unique top-down approach to application management enables customers to reduce IT complexity and to increase efficiencies resulting in better performance and lower management costs for their enterprise applications.

"Customers are battling economic conditions that require a rigorous focus on delivering business operations and IT efficiencies at a lower cost,” said Richard Sarwal, Oracle senior vice president Product Development. “Oracle Enterprise Manager supports both endeavors through automated management of business workflows, processes and services, as well as supporting the full Oracle software stack through its unique top-down application management approach.”

Enhanced Applications Management With Support For The Latest Siebel CRM Release And More

The new application management enhancements in Oracle Enterprise Manager 10gR5 further support Oracle's Applications Unlimited strategy and help to provide a superior ownership experience to customers.

New certification with Siebel CRM 8.1.1 provides unique monitoring and diagnostics capabilities for Siebel business workflows, enabling higher availability and better throughput for business processes.

New Management Pack for Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management helps significantly reduce administration costs.

Additionally, the recently introduced Oracle Real User Experience Insight Accelerators for Oracle's Siebel CRM and Oracle E-Business Suite, simplify the process of deploying real user monitoring for these applications.

Increased Efficiency In Database Management Through Automation And Essential Tools

With this release, Oracle Enterprise Manager rounds out Oracle Database 11g management capabilities with tools that can enhance database administrator (DBA) productivity and reduce costs through increased automation, higher availability and improved compliance. Key new capabilities include:

o Real-time SQL monitoring and support for new Oracle Database 11g advisors;

o Deployment automation for highly available grid computing infrastructure;

o Enhanced support for Oracle Database Vault; and

o Automated database testing workflow that integrates database software provisioning, data masking, database workload capture and workload replay tasks.

Expanded Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware And Oracle VM

Featuring tighter integration with Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Beehive, Oracle Service Bus and Oracle Coherence, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10gR5 delivers the most comprehensive and complete management solution for applications built on Oracle Fusion Middleware. See related release dated today.

Further extending its top-down reach to virtualized environments, Oracle Enterprise Manager's new Oracle VM Management Pack provides customers a complete management solution for Oracle VM. See related release dated today.

For more information, visit www.oracle.com.

MSI-ECS Hosts Oracle Database Audit And Database Vault Seminar

2009-03-17T09:21:00.001+01:00

To assist businesses seeking to further mitigate security risks, satisfy compliance regulations, and protect their enterprise databases, MSI-ECS organized a seminar to select banks and insurance companies featuring Oracle Database Audit and Database Vault.

Oracle Audit Vault offered organizations a centralized auditing and activity monitoring solution for their Oracle and third party databases. Audit data is consolidated automatically into a secure, centralized repository built using Oracle's proven data warehousing software, and analyzed in real-time against enterprise-defined policies. Any unauthorized activities can be detected immediately using Oracle Audit Vault's alerts dashboard. Also, Oracle Audit Vault can be used to monitor privileged user activities as well as privileged user controls enforced by Oracle Database Vault, the industry's only native solution for real-time enforcement of preventive database controls. By using Oracle Audit Vault, Oracle Database Vault customers are further assured of the integrity of their preventive controls.

On the other hand, Oracle Database Vault is the industry's leading database security solution for addressing regulatory compliance and concerns over the insider threat. Oracle Database Vault helps address access control requirements associated with regulations such as PCI and Sarbanes-Oxley. Oracle Database Vault is available for Oracle Database 9i Release 2, Oracle Database 10g Release 2 and Oracle Database 11g Release 1. Oracle Database Vault has been validated with Oracle PeopleSoft Applications. Validation with additional applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite and Siebel, is currently underway. Using Oracle Database Vault, highly privileged database users can be prevented from accessing application data. In addition, access to applications, databases and data can be tightly controlled based on such variables as time of day, IP address or subnet. In summary, Oracle Database Vault provides the flexible, transparent and highly adaptable security controls required in today's global economy. For more information, about Oracle's business solutions, visit www.oracle.com.

Oracle expected to post gains despite slump

2009-03-13T08:23:00.002+01:00

Oracle Corp. is expected to post small gains in profit and sales when it reports fiscal third-quarter results next week, despite concern about the company's ability to drum up business amid a generally bleak winter for the high-tech industry.

Analysts on average estimate Oracle will post earnings excluding special items of 32 cents a share for the three-month period ended in February, on $5.47 billion in revenue, according to FactSet Research. That compares to earnings excluding special items of 30 cents a share and $5.35 billion in revenue in the same period year earlier.

In December, Oracle itself forecast earnings for the quarter between 31 and 33 cents a share and revenue growth between 1% and 4%, while attributing the results to a strengthening U.S. dollar likely to impact foreign sales.

Wall Street is bracing for the worst. Shares of Oracle have slumped more than 13% in the last month. The stock closed trading Thursday up nearly 2% at $15.63.

In recent weeks, a number of analysts have expressed concern that Oracle's sales of new software licenses - a key metric that reflects the company's ability to draw in new customers - have been undercut by the downturn.

Earlier this month, one analyst went so far as to predict the worst quarter for Oracle since the early 1990s. "The tone of the commentary from our industry sources regarding new license revenue is the worst we have ever heard," wrote Patrick Walravens of JMP Securities in a report, in which he scaled back his earnings estimates for the company.

Still, a number of analysts also point to the company's dependable stream of maintenance revenue from existing customers, while noting that it may well emerge from the downturn in a stronger position.

"The recent sell-off" in Oracle shares is "overdone," Barclays Capital analyst Israel Hernandez wrote in a note to clients earlier this week. While Hernandez said his research points to a "weak" third quarter for the company, particularly for its sales of applications software, it wasn't bad enough "to break [the] stock."

"Oracle remains well-positioned to consolidate share through [the] downturn," Hernandez wrote, though he lowered his third-quarter estimate for earnings excluding special items to 32 cents a share from 33, and revenue to $5.3 billion from $5.5 billion.
Oracle, which originated as a purveyor of database software, has expanded in recent years through a series of acquisitions to also become a powerhouse in business applications software.
That's drawn it into more direct competition with German rival SAP AG.

In January, SAP reported a 13% gain in fourth-quarter profit for the period ended in December, though it also announced it would be cutting over 3,000 jobs this year in an effort to lower costs. See related story on SAP's quarterly earnings.
Oracle has continued to buy other companies during the economic downturn. Last month, it snapped up closely-held mValent Inc. in an effort to bolster its applications business.

Author: John Letzing @ www.marketwatch.com

Terrazzo Group makes Oracle pay

2009-03-11T09:10:00.002+01:00

Terrazzo Management today announced having closed their annual accounts in record time, how the implementation of Oracle Applications had made the administration of their companies so much easier, with greater transparency, more effective controls and with smoother automation of their business processes.

Lave Malhotra, the General Manager of Terrazzo Group, said, 'Today, all our systems are now fully integrated enabling us to view information across the entire organisation. This means sharing of information is now real-time allowing our staff to reduce costs by working smarter. It also allows our management to track the progress of Terrazzo Group companies real-time and make decisions that will further improve the Group's diverse operations leading to possibly faster growth and greater success then what it has already achieved to date.'

'The Oracle implementation undertaken by Intelligent Corporate Solutions (ICS) has been a real success story, right from the go ICS has gone to great lengths to ensure the ERP implementation delivers tangible benefits that were identified at the initial stage of the project. The tangible benefits can now be seen,' he added.
Shumon Zaman, CEO of ICS, commented:

'At a time when the Global Economy is shrinking and doing business becomes harder. Companies that have access to real time information will be better informed and as a result will be able to make the necessary adjustments to their businesses and take advantage of the many opportunities that arise during a down-turn.'

He added, 'I am proud to say our association with the Terrazzo Group and its team, lead by some excellent and talented individuals has been one of mutual respect and high achievement. The speed and accuracy of the implementation has been a true inspiration for others to emulate.'

Terrazzo Group have now also awarded ICS with further implementations to ensure all their businesses are fully integrated with Oracle ERP.

Source: www.ameinfo.com

Emerging WiMax Solutions Provider Selects Oracle

2009-03-10T07:37:00.001+01:00

Wi-tribe Pakistan Ltd., a new entrant in the Pakistani communications industry with a major focus on providing WiMax solutions, has chosen Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management and key components of the Oracle Communications Service Fulfillment Suite, including Oracle Communications Network Mediation, Oracle Communications Service Activation and Oracle Communications Order and Service Management, to better manage its business from the onset of launching new WiMax services. The selected applications will help put wi-tribe in control of its business, allowing it to succeed in an increasingly competitive market while meeting changing consumer demands head on.

Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management will enable wi-tribe to track real time charges for data, voice, TV and other broadband value-added services. Oracle Communications Service Fulfillment Suite will help to automate the order-to-activate provisioning cycle and integrate key service-fulfillment processes, including back-office order orchestration, network and service inventory management, service activation and configuration management. Oracle Communications Network Mediation will help provide comprehensive data collection, aggregation and enhancement for upstream business critical systems like billing, reporting and analytics across the enterprise. To learn more about Oracle's business solutions, visit www.oracle.com.

Oracle prepping broad-based social-networking suite

2009-02-27T08:42:00.002+01:00

Oracle is developing an enterprise social-networking suite that employs technologies initially developed for internal use by the Oracle Asia Research and Development Center, according to a pair of official company documents.

The technology, titled Oracle Social Suite, has apparently not been formally announced by Oracle. It combines a wide range of social-networking features, according to an internal case study produced in September.

They range from the basics -- such as a blog system that uses Movable Type as a front end; bookmarking; tagging; and aggregated information feeds -- to more conceptual ideas, like Oracle Social Graph, which provides a visual map of the connections between users and content.

The suite also includes OpenSocial Container, which enables users to plug in applets that meet Google's OpenSocial standard.

An architectural rendering of the suite depicts it as a layer that sits on top of Oracle's database, middleware and search technologies, culminating in a top layer of "social-enabled" enterprise applications.

Oracle has already moved in this direction through its Social CRM (customer relationship management) applications, but the company is apparently hoping to make social technologies more pervasive.

The Social Suite project dates back several years at OARDC, according to the documents.

OARDC is a distributed division, with hundreds of employees working in nine cities and seven countries, across multiple time zones. Growing frustrated with sprawling e-mail volumes, repetitive meetings and high travel expenses, OARDC began adopting social tools, according to the documents.

The effort eventually became a beta project code-named "Shiji." Over time, the technology was pushed out to other Oracle business units, the documents state.

It is not clear when or if the Social Suite will become a commercially available product. Neither document provides a release date, although one states that Oracle is "actively recruiting" proof-of-concept customers in Japan.

Oracle may be wise to test the commercial waters slowly, given the saturation level in the social-networking market. Scores of companies are selling platforms for enterprise and outward-facing use, and not all are making it. An Intel-backed product called SuiteTwo, announced in 2006 to great fanfare, is being phased out.

Oracle's suite may have the most appeal for Oracle-centric shops, since it is built on top of many Oracle products.

Social Suite will also have to find a comfortable role alongside technologies like Beehive, Oracle's secure messaging and collaboration platform.

An Oracle spokeswoman could not immediately provide additional comment.

Author: Chris Kanaracus @ IDG News Service

SAP, Oracle Fail to Settle Copyright Suit Over Code

2009-02-25T08:30:00.000+01:00

SAP AG, the world’s largest maker of business-management software, failed to reach a settlement in Oracle Corp.’s $1 billion copyright lawsuit accusing it of stealing software code.

A two-hour settlement conference yesterday in federal court in San Francisco ended without an agreement, according to a court filing today in the two-year-old lawsuit. Another settlement conference is scheduled for Nov. 30. Settlement talks last year were unsuccessful.

Oracle, based in Redwood City, California, sued SAP in 2007 alleging it stole copyrighted software codes and support documents to bolster a service for customers that use Oracle software and eventually switch them to SAP products. Oracle has said it may seek as much as $1 billion in damages. A trial is scheduled for February 2010.

SAP, based in Walldorf, Germany, said in 2007 that it had made “inappropriate” downloads of Oracle’s support documents. The company denied it had access to Oracle’s intellectual property and said its Byran, Texas-based TomorrowNow unit had a right to make use of Oracle’s Customer Connection Web site and download support materials on behalf of its customers.

SAP said in court filings that it favors a settlement.

Kim Pineda, an Oracle spokeswoman, and Saswato Das, an SAP spokesman, didn’t immediately return voice-mail messages seeking comment.

The case is Oracle Corp. v. SAP AG, 07-01658, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Gullo in San Francisco federal court at kgullo@bloomberg.net.

NouvEON Hires Former Oracle Director of Sales

2009-02-24T08:30:00.000+01:00

NouvEON announced today the appointment of Steve DeSutter as director of sales. He begins with NouvEON on Feb. 23.

DeSutter brings a strong and unique combination of leadership, management and sales capital experience to NouvEON at a time when the firm is experiencing rapid growth. For the past four years, he has served as the director of North America strategic accounts for Oracle Corp. In this role, DeSutter was a member of the executive management team, delivered revenue, software integration development alternatives, and marketing leverage through high-level sales and alliance partnerships. In addition to his leadership role at Oracle, he was responsible for executing complex enterprise deal strategies and coaching executive sales and alliance teams.
In his new role at NouvEON, DeSutter will further position the company to meet future goals.

He will be an integral part of the senior leadership team, and will be responsible for providing leadership in sales, coaching the sales team and standardizing sales processes.

"This was not an easy role to fill," says President and CEO of NouvEON, T.J. Eberle. "Our requirements were tough in a market where outstanding, successful candidates in sales leadership roles seemed to be a needle in a haystack. I am delighted with the choice we made. Steve is an important addition to our team."

DeSutter has more than 27 years of experience in leadership roles within national and global organizations including Apple Inc., Global Logistics Technologies and Enovia Corp. He began his career in 1982 with Apple Inc. While at Apple Inc., he led the company's successful penetration of UNIX into the enterprise telecommunications market. Desutter also has strong international experience. He served as international sales director for Enovia Corp., where he worked across Europe and the U.S. to lead Enovia's sales initiatives. DeSutter has also been a part of several start-ups where he led sales force hiring and development.
"This is a fantastic opportunity to join a high growth consulting company," says DeSutter. "It is my goal to help NouvEON continue rapid growth and expansion."
DeSutter received his undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from the University of South Florida.

About NouvEON
NouvEON is a regional business and technology consulting firm that specializes in managing and delivering high-value solutions to mid-market and Fortune 1000 companies throughout the Southeast. Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, NouvEON represents a "New Era" in consulting services. In this "New Era", NouvEON provides an excellent Cost to Quality ratio by combining its proprietary LIFT™ model (Local accountability, Industry knowledge, Flexible delivery and Technology Business Solutions) with its Employee Owned Network (EON™) of experienced and highly qualified business professionals. The result: NouvEON value-efficient models have resulted in a 100% referenceable client base.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com

Standard Life picks Oracle for ID and access management

2009-02-23T08:30:00.001+01:00

Investement aims to standardise processes and cut costs world wide. Standard Life will implement Oracle Identity and Access Management software to control customer and business partner access to its sites.

The insurance and pensions firm said that using a common platform globally, to regulate access and improve security for those accessing its websites, would also help cut costs and centralise administration around access.

The system will share data with other Standard Life systems including Microsoft Active Directory, Novell e-Directory, Oracle Database and Oracle Internet Directory.

Standard Life has developed a service oriented architecture environment , which the company has said saved £16 million in development costs in three years.

The UK operations will roll out the identity management system after the first installation is completed, in Canada.

Brian Barbour, chief information security officer at the company, said customers had “a right to expect their information to be safeguarded by the companies they choose to do business with.”

Source: Leo King @ Computerworld UK

Virgin Blue grounds Oracle outsourcing

2009-02-20T08:49:00.003+01:00

Virgin Blue has grounded plans to outsource the maintenance of its Oracle e-business systems, chief information officer David Harvey said late yesterday.

After indicating last year it would outsource the management of its Oracle e-business systems, infrastructure and IT help desk, Harvey yesterday told ZDNet.com.au that the Oracle component had been "put on the back burner".

The decision not to outsource that component was a response to new labour market conditions; a year ago it was difficult to retain and recruit Oracle e-Business experts in Brisbane, however that has since changed, said Harvey.

"As it turned out, the employment market has subsequently tightened and we have been fortunate to retain and indeed build on our in-house expertise, which reduced the immediate driver to seek a long-term managed services partner," he said.

News of the decision might have come as a disappointment for Western Australian-based IT services outfit ASG, which early last year trumpeted its nomination as Virgin Blue's preferred partner for Oracle services.

Virgin Blue has, however, forged ahead with its broader outsourcing strategy, following in the footsteps of its competitor Qantas, which outsourced maintenance of key systems to Satyam, Tata Consultancy Services and ASG in 2006.

Global telco Verizon Business inked a three-year deal with Virgin Blue at the end of last year covering the airline's server infrastructure.

"Last week we transitioned a number of servers hosting production systems for our new V Australia airline into Verizon's remote management control," said Harvey. "Over the next month a number of production servers running enterprise systems for the Virgin Blue group will be transitioned to Verizon."

Should the airline decide later to outsource its Oracle systems, Harvey pointed out that Verizon did have capabilities in application management also.

Virgin had also recently struck a deal with Brisbane-based IT services outfit Corpnet, which will see the two share "first level" around-the-clock IT support to all business units, according to Harvey. "This shared partnership is in its early days, but the intention is for VB to increasingly leverage Corpnet's growing scale in the IT help-desk area," he said.

Virgin Blue is also gearing up for a major business transformation project, known internally as Next Gen. A key component of the project will be the replacement of its reservation system. Contracts are expected to be signed in the coming weeks with software vendor Navitair for its New Skies reservation system.

The broader transformation project will be headed up by former general manager of Virgin Blue's ground operations, Andrew Lillyman.

The new reservation system will be different to that selected for the company's recently launched trans-Pacific V Australia service, which inherited the Amadeus system that is used for its short-haul Pacific Blue service.

Harvey said Virgin Blue's recent decision to axe 400 jobs would be unlikely to affect the technology team, which today consisted of around 160 staff — 130 permanent and 30 contractors — down 40 on last year.

"With V Australia going live, and completing that work, we've reduced the number of contractors we have," he said.

"We have been deliberately not been replacing staff over a number of months. In parallel we are cranking up a huge new reservations project and a lot of staff will be working on that for the next 12 months."

Author: Liam Tung @ ZDNet.com.au

Oracle Financial releases new internet and mobile banking application

2009-02-19T08:29:00.000+01:00

Flexcube Direct Banking supports multiple entities that cater to the multi-business needs of financial institutions. Oracle Financial Services Software, a majority owned subsidiary of Oracle, has released version 5.0 of its Flexcube Direct Banking, an internet and mobile banking application.

According to the company, Flexcube Direct Banking caters to a wide range of transactions across corporate, retail as well as investment banking such as funds and wealth services.

Banks that are looking to deliver channel services efficiently and use a channel platform to help integrate heterogeneous host systems infrastructure can use Oracle Flexcube Direct Banking's integration capabilities that are based on industry standards, said Oracle.

From a single physical installation, Oracle Flexcube Direct Banking 5.0 reportedly supports multiple entities that cater to the multi-country, multi-jurisdiction and multi-business needs of financial institutions.

Oracle Flexcube Direct Banking 5.0 enables banks to deliver full transactional services on the mobile phone, including support for browser-based and Java-based application services, said Oracle. With this new release, banks can continue to use Oracle Flexcube Direct Banking's SMS based transactional services.

Manmath Kulkarni, senior vice president and chief architect for retail and internet banking at Oracle Financial Services Software, said: "Oracle Flexcube Direct Banking offers financial institutions the flexibility to deploy and support a uniform customer experience across all service channels including the mobile phone, thereby helping to reduce the infrastructure and operating costs for servicing customers."

Source: http://mobility.cbronline.com

Solix signs pact with Oracle Financial

2009-02-18T08:30:00.000+01:00

Solix Technologies Inc., a US-based provider of enterprise data management solutions with its global development centre in Hyderabad, has signed a global partner agreement with Oracle Financial Services Software Limited.

Under the agreement, Oracle Financial will offer Solix EDMS (enterprise data management solution) as embedded functionality in Oracle FlexCube to help automate archive and purge processes by classifying data, configuring and executing archiving and data migration routines.

“This will help ensure that data remains secure giving Oracle FlexCube customers greater control over enterprise data. Moreover, Oracle FlexCube would be enabled to ensure that data can be restored quickly and accurately as and when required. This coupled with the ability to retain real-time historical data is expected to deliver added value to Oracle FlexCube customers, helping them comply with legal and regulatory requirements,” Solix said in a press release on Wednesday.

Source: http://business-standard.com

Aircel implements Oracle applications to supprt growth plans

2009-02-17T09:20:00.002+01:00

Aircel implements Oracle applications to supprt growth plans. Indian GSM mobile operator Aircel has implemented multiple Oracle applications to support its growth plans.

The Oracle applications, including components of Oracle Communications Service Fulfillment Suite, Siebel CRM, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters, will help Aircel to launch its operations in new markets and provide a platform to offer new services, build better brands and lower operational costs, said Oracle.

Wipro Limited, a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork and partner for Aircel's IT transformation and maintenance for nine years, completed the implementation for Aircel in less than five months, added Oracle.

Aircel has deployed components of Oracle Communications Service Fulfillment Suite including Oracle Communications Service Activation, an automated platform for activation of complex services in a streamlined manner across multiple technology domains for both wireline and wireless service providers.

Aircel has also implemented Oracle Identity Management, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware that allows Aircel to manage the lifecycle of user identities across its various departments.

Aircel expects the scalable Oracle Identity Management solution to provide a high return on investment with improved security. In addition, the company expects Oracle Identity Management to help it realize significant cost savings by automating provisioning of user accounts, dramatically reducing help desk calls, streamlining compliance audit and reporting, consolidating identity silos and allowing rapid integration with enterprise applications.

Raghav Sahgal, vice president of Oracle Communications, said: "Aircel's selection of Oracle validates our leadership and our commitment to the communications industry in India. By leveraging Oracle solutions, Aircel will be able to deliver next-generation services and content. At the same time, Aircel will be able to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, reduce operating costs, and improve management reporting and control to capitalize on the fast-growing Indian mobile market."

Source: www.datamonitor.com

Oracle Financial launches two new applications

2009-02-16T12:05:00.002+01:00

Oracle Financial Services Software has launched the Reveleus ICAAP Analytics and Reveleus ICAAP Assessments solutions to help financial institutions comply with the ICAAP requirements under Pillar 2 of the Basel II accord.

Addressing all important components of the Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Process (ICAAP) including risk assessment, risk monitoring, modeling, stress testing, risk aggregation and allocation as well as regulatory reporting, the solutions are an integral addition to the Enterprise Risk Management offering which includes Oracle Reveleus - Basel II, Market Risk, Operational Risk Economic Capital, Economic Capital Advanced and Asset Liability Management.

To help ensure that financial institutions possess adequate capital to meet current and future regulatory and economic capital requirements, Oracle Reveleus ICAAP provides capital planning capabilities to analyze baseline and stressed scenarios.

With Oracle Reveleus ICAAP Analytics and Oracle Reveleus ICAAP Assessments, institutions can reportedly estimate risk measures such as value-at-risk, conditional value-at-risk and unexpected loss across risk categories and then allocate these risk measures back across various lines of business.
S Ramakrishnan, CEO of Reveleus and Mantas products at Oracle Financial Services Software, said: "Oracle Reveleus ICAAP furthers our industry-leading enterprise risk management offering for financial services and provides institutions with a holistic, enterprise-wide view of risk and capital management while simultaneously helping to achieve mandated regulatory compliance."

Source: http://enterpriseapplications.cbronline.com

Ex-Oracle director moves to consultancy’s board

2009-02-13T08:09:00.002+01:00

A FORMER senior director of the Oracle Corporation is to strengthen the board of leading procurement consultancy Source42.

Charles Courquin joins Source42 as non-executive director, a major boost for the business whose directors also include former Cardiff International Airport managing director Jon Horne and entrepreneur Sir Roger Jones OBE, who is a former chairman of the Welsh Development Agency.

Steve Watts, chief executive of Cwmbran-based Source42, said: “We are extremely pleased that Charles has joined our board of directors. We are structuring the company for serious growth, bringing in the high-calibre management and business skills to support that aim.”

Mr Watts added; “Charles was instrumental in founding our strategic partnership with Oracle and will play a major role in maximising that global relationship. He is a key figure in our plans.”

Mr Courquin gained an honours degree at the University of Oxford in biochemistry as well as being president of the rowing club at St Catherine’s College before joining the Price Waterhouse IT consulting practice.

After a number of years at PwC he moved to Oracle Corporation, where he held a number of key roles, including senior director for general business.

He said: “I believe that every business can benefit from the services provided by Source42 – the impact the organisation can make on the bottom line is one of the best-kept secrets in the Industry.

“Our opportunities are not confined to the UK or Europe; we have the ability to build a brand synonymous with efficiency and value.”

The company has recently announced the creation of more than 30 high-quality consulting jobs.

It has established its procurement services in the corporate market with clients including bmi, Arriva and HBoS, while also achieving benefits for smaller leading firms like Harding Evans of Newport.

Sir Roger said: “Source42 has the capability to deliver double digit percentage savings to the bottom line, making its propositions to reduce supply chain costs extremely compelling in the current downturn. Source42 has excellent potential as a business, its services are very much in demand in both public and private sectors. Charles is a major asset in achieving our global objectives.”

Author: Sion Barry @ www.walesonline.co.uk

What recession? Oracle support provider quadrupled its customer base

2009-02-11T08:05:00.002+01:00

In a year when a lot of other companies floundered, Rimini Street, Inc. -- a services provider for PeopleSoft and other Oracle-owned software products -- picked up 150 new business customers in 2008, four times its 2007 number.

How did Rimini Street pull off that feat? A "significant number" of new customers came to Rimini from Tomorrow Now (TN), a SAP business unit which disbanded last year in the wake of an acrimonious lawsuit with Oracle. But other customers, fed up with Oracle's high software maintenance and upgrade fees, migrated to Rimini directly from Oracle, said David Rowe, Rimini's senior VP of global partnerships and alliances, in an interview this week with Betanews.

Founded in 2005 by ex-TN executive Seth Ravin, Rimini has seen its sales bookings mushroom from $1 million in 2006, to $9 million in 2007, to $86 million in 2008, according to Rowe. Sales bookings for multi-year contracts are counted according to when they get signed.

The year 2009 could shape up into a lucrative one for Rimini Street, too. The third-party services provider is now launching a SAP practice, adding to its existing practices for disaffected users of Oracle's PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel CRM, ERP, and sales automation software. Sales bookings for the new SAP practice aren't even included in the company's 2008 numbers, Rowe noted.

SAP originally purchased TN back in 2005, using the business unit to provide customer support for both its own software and products garnered by major rival Oracle Corp. through a string of buyouts.

But in mid-2007, SAP admitted that members of its TN unit had improperly downloaded materials from Oracle's Web site by posing as Oracle customers. By November of that year, SAP announced that several of TN's top executives had resigned, including Andrew Nelson, its CEO and founder.

After trying fruitlessly to sell TN, SAP pulled the plug on the unit in October of 2008, giving TN's remaining customers just two or three months to "find a new home" for software maintenance and support, according to Rowe.

Rimini Street inked some TN customers even in 2007, Rowe said, during an earlier interview. But a lot more came on board in 2008, particularly at the end of the year, the senior vice president told Betanews this week.

In any case, the market is ripe right now for third-party maintenance and support, according to Rowe. With budgets strained from the economic crisis, fewer customers than ever are willing to fork over Oracle's software maintenance fees, which amount to 22% of the cost of software licenses, he said.

Users also tend to be less interested in costly upgrades by Oracle to solutions aimed at providing better integration with Oracle's own brand of applications and middleware.

Many businesses want to maintain their existing investments in Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel software and customizations for the next five or even ten years, contended Rowe. "At that point, they might look at SaaS solutions like Workday or NetSuite, once these things are widely deployed and more mature," he conceded.

SAP, too, is now charging maintenance fees of 22%, up from its previous level of 17%, according to Rowe. "But their timing isn't good. It's terrible," he added.

As for its own new SAP practice, Rimini Street isn't targeting customers of the German-based software vendor that are based overseas.

The third-party provider is taking its time, starting out right now with a small group of reference customers. "Customers are giving you their mission-critical systems. You need to make sure you get it right," Betanews was told.

But Rowe claimed that Rimini Street already has a growing waiting list of potential SAP customers. "We have a methodology for building third-party support, and we connect that methodology with specific applications. We're building a support program for SAP now, for full roll-out later this year," he elaborated.

Author: Jacqueline Emigh @ www.betanews.com

Kapital Bank implements Oracle Flexcube

2009-02-10T12:15:00.002+01:00

Optimizes business performance across its network of 88 branches. Azerbaijan-based Kapital Bank has implemented Oracle Flexcube universal banking system to help expand the size and depth of its banking operations across its network of 88 branches.

Oracle Flexcube's process-centric approach has enabled the bank to optimize business performance by using best practices with an ability to define, implement and monitor the effectiveness of its processes. The system has helped provide the bank with an application platform that enables it to conduct its operations in both domestic and international markets.

Oracle Flexcube has also helped the bank enhance its risk management practices through audit trails and limit tracking across customer segments.

Rauf Razayev, chairman of Kapital Bank, said: "We wanted to roll out Oracle Flexcube to help expand the size of our banking operations and completed the project in under 11 months. This solution is a complete banking product suite covering all areas of banking needs and has enabled us to adopt international standards and meet regulatory requirements. Our association with Oracle Financial Services Software, over the past 18 months, has helped us to translate opportunities in the market into tangible results.

Mustafa Moonim, vice president of Europe and Middle East sales at Oracle Financial Services Software, said: "Kapital Bank was our first deployment in the country and we had a tremendous success in the joint engagement with the bank. We are very pleased with the outcome for Kapital Bank. Banks in the region have shown great acceptance of Oracle Flexcube and the success at Kapital Bank has helped provide us with the foundation for this achievement."

Source: http://enterpriseapplications.cbronline.com

Oracle Acquires Leader in Application Configuration Management

2009-02-06T08:11:00.002+01:00

In its first acquisition of 2009, Oracle purchases mValent, a company whose configuration management solutions can promote efficiencies within Oracle Enterprise Manager. Even as it envelops smaller companies, Oracle may also be looking towards a future where cloud computing dominates the enterprise IT scene.

Despite the economic doldrums seizing most of the IT industry, the Oracle acquisition machine is alive and well. The company’s purchase of mValent, a provider of application configuration management solutions, is designed to enhance Oracle Enterprise Manager’s configuration-management capabilities across IT environments.

Announced on Feb. 4, the complete transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2009, according to a statement released by Oracle. As to be expected, financial details were not disclosed.

The move represents Oracle’s first acquisition of 2009. In 2008, they took over 11 companies, including Lodestar and Interlace Systems.

With mValent technology in place, enterprise users should be able to collect and harmonize data from even the most complex of systems. Ensuring consistent configurations across IT environments would also lead to both improved productivity and application uptime.

Oracle Enterprise Manager enhanced with mValent will also simplify systems’ root-cause analysis and automate remediation of issues caused by configuration changes. mValent’s customer base before the acquisition included Direct TV, Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan, and Kohl’s.

“Effective application configuration management is increasingly important as businesses look to improve operating efficiencies,” Richard Sarwal, senior vice president of Oracle Applications and Systems Management, said in a statement. “This acquisition is consistent with Oracle’s strategy for delivering cost-effective solutions for managing applications that enable customers to adopt new, innovative technology with reduced risk.”

In addition to its focus on enhancing its own product line through acquisition, Oracle has also been casting an eye towards paradigm shifts within enterprise IT. Even as CEO Larry Ellison denounced cloud computing as “gibberish” in Sept. 2008, Oracle has perhaps begun to embrace the model as a means of ensuring future survival.

Author: Nicholas Kolakowski @ www.eweek.com

Oracle Supports 100 Million Subscribers

2009-02-03T10:02:00.002+01:00

Oracle recently completed an extensive performance and scalability benchmark exercise for Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management 7.3.1 that demonstrated its ability to support 100 million subscribers. Scalability of this magnitude is vital to meeting the needs of tier-one communications service providers and those looking to consolidate multiple billing applications into a convergent platform.

· In addition, this week Oracle will propose a series of industry benchmark standards to the TM Forum through its Revenue Management Initiative. These benchmark standards will provide service providers with a consistent way to validate and measure the scalability performance of products marketed to meet the business requirements outlined by TM Forum's Enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) and Telecoms Application Map (TAM), with particular focus on the billing and revenue management segment.

Benchmark Details

· Conducted at IBM labs in Beaverton, Ore., the benchmark included various workloads such as rating, billing, invoicing and customer service activities using a variety of plans modeled after real-life communications industry business processes.

· The results demonstrated near-linear scalability from 33 million to 66 million, and to 100 million subscribers. At 100 million subscribers the application processed 176 million call-detail records per hour. Further, the test proved that the application can bill all 100 million subscribers in approximately 14 hours – meeting the needs of even the world's largest service providers.

· These results were four times higher than any achieved before and demonstrate the capability of the IBM Power 570 server and the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management application running on the AIX 6.1 operating system to manage and deliver a real-life workload in a high-end production environment with excellent performance.

· The benchmark tested Oracle's application running on a database cluster of IBM POWER6 processor-based Power 570 servers, with IBM AIX version 6.1 operating system and IBM PowerVM virtualization technology, hosted by an IBM DS8300 storage subsystem.

Source: www.hardwarezone.com

Louis Vuitton Pacific Series: Pataugas by K-Challenge has tough race with BMW Oracle Racing

2009-02-02T10:26:00.002+01:00

Pataugas by K-Challenge was racing today its 3rd match against the American team of BMW Oracle Racing, with Russell Coutts at helm. After a long wait for the team members, racing has finally been able to be launched this afternoon, and all races were completed (start for Pataugas by K-Challenge at 4:40pm).

Unfortunately, the French didn´t get a new point today, which means they will have to race in the “silver fleet” in Round Robin 2, and to finish in the two firsts to reach the quarter finals. This scenario is for sure longer, but all is still possible for the French team.

Gilles Favennec, Pit : “we didn´t look bad in front of them, but we found ourselves on the wrong side of the race course at the start, and then, they end up in front of us at the first mark. They will remain in front of us after that, and even if we come back a bit on the downwind leg, this will not be enough to put pressure on them. It is a big team, but we were consistent, and we are not far from getting there. In fact, I´m quite satisfied about the team because the manoeuvres are better and better, and we manage to organize ourselves together, which is a good thing for the future. The bad point is that we really needed that point to avoid the silver fleet, where there will be four teams. But even if the way is longer, it still exists. We all improved a lot the past three days, even if we don´t see that in our results. We are better in the manoeuvres, in the communications, which is what we needed to work on at the beginning. We are still confident for what is coming up, we have everything in our hands.”

Philippe Mourniac, Navigator: “the important event in today's match is that we wanted the right side of the race course like BMW Oracle Racing. But they made a better job than us in getting it, and we found ourselves on the left. From that moment we were a bit late to come back, and when the first crossing happens, we are four lengths behind, which is not a lot, but enough to make the race easy for the Americans until the end.

If we end up in the two firsts of the silver fleet, everything is possible and clocks will be reset for the quarter finals. We will have three matches in Round Robin 2, we need to win at least two. So we still have our cards in our hands, but the coming days will be a bit less comfortable than if we had entered the gold fleet directly.”

Pataugas by K-Challenge will race tomorrow against Emirates Team New Zealand for its last match in Round Robin 1.

Race details:

Mark 1 : 13 seconds for BMW Oracle Racing
Mark 2 : 27 seconds for BMW Oracle Racing
Mark 3 : 37 seconds for BMW Oracle Racing
Finish : 54 seconds for BMW Oracle Racing

Author: Stephanie Nadin @ www.bymnews.com

Open letter to Ellison critical of Oracle strategy

2009-01-29T07:51:00.002+01:00

TechWeb Global CIO writer Bob Evans recently published an open letter to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. The heart of the note illustrates the point that Oracle's current strategy remains a burden to customers and that they are (finally) starting to get fed up.

The issue that needs your fresh thinking and attention in today's brutal economic climate is the one-size-fits-all, nonnegotiable 22 percent annual maintenance fee Oracle charges your customers.

As you well know, those customers are desperately trying to cut costs and conserve cash, and are exploring every possible option for doing so. You can help those customers very directly while also advancing Oracle's cause in a variety of ways by being willing to modify your stance on that single-tier, unmodifiable policy.

The author primarily takes issue with maintenance fees, but the underlying theme is that users have already paid for the software and that they aren't seeing much value in what is described as "maintenance." And Oracle doesn't seem to care a whole lot about it.

Mr. Ellison, it's easy to see why you like the current system, where someone pays, for example, $4,000,000 for a software license and then pays you $880,000 every year for "maintenance." And maybe CIOs will continue to find that's a fair exchange of value. But maybe they won't--as you know better than just about anyone, the IT industry is an archetype of creative destruction, where faster/better/cheaper alternatives relentlessly stalk, attack, and kill older/slower/more-expensive models.

Perhaps the model you and Charles Phillips and the entire Oracle global team have built is so extraordinarily singular that it will endure forever and remain unassailable from the forces that have ground down every previous eternal model in the technology business. But maybe not.

Definitely worth a read--this thread of "long-gone customer value" is what open source and software-as-a-service companies thrive on. The big vendor backlash is just starting.

Author: Dave Rosenberg @ news.cnet.com

Oracle loses Melbourne to TechOne

2009-01-28T08:30:00.000+01:00

The City of Melbourne (CoM) will ditch its Oracle business management and reporting systems in favour of local vendor TechnologyOne under a deal worth $3 million.

CoM signed the contract in December last year, it revealed today, with an initial contract value of just under $2 million and an expected $1 million in support and maintenance over the next five years. An Oracle Australia spokesperson declined to comment.

ASX-listed TechnologyOne will commence implementing the new systems in February, which will cover CoM's financial reporting, supply chain, projects, contracts, human resource and payroll, and grants management. The project is expected to be finalised in two years.

City of Melbourne CEO Kathy Alexander said in a statement issued by TechnologyOne that she hoped the new system would improve the accuracy of information the council had. "We will rely less on manual data entry, which in turn will ensure that there is less duplication and more efficient use of our employees' time," she said.

She also hoped the new system will improve the council's modelling and analysis capabilities.

Author: Liam Tung @ ZDNet.com.au

Oracle Exec Shares Predictions on Information Management

2009-01-27T08:30:00.000+01:00

Oracle Corp. President Charles Phillips to speak about the future of enterprise information management, followed by expert panel discussion On February 12th, a panel of enterprise technology and wireless superstars will take the stage to talk about the future of information management. Charles Phillips, President of Oracle Corp. will kick off the program with a keynote presentation: "It's always been, continues to be, and will always be about information and information management." Phillip's presentation is a part of "Exploring the Future of Enterprise Systems," a live satellite broadcast from Atlanta presented by the MIT Enterprise Forum of Atlanta (MITEF) in collaboration with the Oracle Applications User Group, Southeastern Software Association, and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce's Technology Marketing Council. With the volume of information growing exponentially, companies must find ways to manage, process and deliver that information effectively.

This discussion and panel will address ways to manage information and will advise how to differentiate burned-out buzzwords from technologies and methodologies that will form the bedrock of enterprise computing of the future. As a business key asset, information must be sorted, shared and analyzed so that it enables better business decision-making. This program will focus on technologies that do just that, and will include discussions around newly-developing computing and management paradigms such as virtualization and cloud computing. Following Charles Phillip's keynote address, moderator, Susan Hoffman of Georgia Public Broadcasting will be joined by a panel of experts including Eran Gil, VP Business Development of Cloud Sherpas and Matt Trevathan, Solutions Architect/Master Inventor, IBM Interactive.

About the Speakers Charles Phillips is President of Oracle Corporation and a member of the Board of Directors. He joined Oracle in 2003 and is responsible for global field operations including consulting, marketing, sales, alliances and channels, and customer programs. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Phillips was with Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated, a global investment bank. Mr. Phillips holds a BS in Computer Science from the United States Air Force Academy, an MBA from Hampton University, and a JD from New York Law School.
Eran Gil, VP Business Development of Cloud Sherpas, is responsible for the company’s sales efforts with the goal of expanding new business revenues and strategic partnerships. Prior to Cloud Sherpas, Mr. Gil led the international expansion for an independent VAR, doubling sales in under two years. He also served as a strategy leader for Brighthouse, one of Atlanta’s leading marketing and sales consultancies. Matt Trevathan, Solutions Architect/Master Inventor, IBM Interactive, has over ten years experience in the IT industry with a focus on telecommunications. Mr. Trevathan has experience architecting high performance clusters and virtualized environments at multiple tier-one telecommunications companies and digital media companies. He has patents or patents pending on utilizing grid services, grid fault tolerance and grid based compilers. More InformationThis event will be held on Thursday, February 12, 2009 at the Georgia Public Broadcasting Studios, located at 260 14th Street, NW in Atlanta. An MIT Forum members-only reception will be held at 5:00 PM. Networking and light dinner begin at 5:45 PM; the program and live broadcasting will begin in the studios at 7:00 PM. For additional information or to purchase tickets, visit www.mitforumatlanta.org. About MITEF
The MIT Enterprise Forum of Atlanta is a volunteer, non-profit organization whose mission is to provide educational programs and services that promote and strengthen innovation and entrepreneurship at the intersection of business and technology in the Southeast. Since the formation of the first chapter in Cambridge in 1978, The MIT Enterprise Forum has grown to a network of 24 chapters located both in the United States and abroad. Affiliation with MIT is not required to participate. Additional information is available at www.mitforumatlanta.org.

Source: http://atlanta.dbusinessnews.com

Quest Software Unveils LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle

2009-01-26T08:30:00.000+01:00

Quest Software stated that it has provided the SQL Server market with advanced, high-performance backup compression and encryption via LiteSpeed for SQL Server.

Now Quest said it brings this same backup and recovery technology to the Oracle platform with the launch of LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle.

According to Quest, LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle offers database administrators (DBAs) an advanced tool that cuts storage costs, reduces backup and restore times and delivers a solid return-on-investment. Oracle DBAs charged with handling secure backup and recovery strategies on a lean budget can realize 70 to 90 percent compression with LiteSpeed while maintaining complete control over the backup and recovery process.

"Having responsibility for both Oracle and SQL Server in my environment has become much easier and more seamless now that I can use LiteSpeed for backup and recovery on both platforms," said Tom Sager, DBA manager, E.ON US. "Using LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle, we achieved phenomenal results--81 percent reduced storage and vastly increased efficiency in our backup and recovery operations on Oracle."

"SQL Server DBAs have depended on the advanced technology and true benefits of LiteSpeed for years, and our customers have been asking for this capability to be extended to the Oracle market," said Billy Bosworth, vice president and general manager SQL Server, Quest Software. "In these tough economic times, customers want to work with vendors whom they can rely on over the long haul for all their database needs. We're very excited to bring cost savings, efficiency, and dependability to the Oracle backup market."

Source: www.tmcnet.com

Sheridan Production Enhances Oracle E-Business Suite With Automated Invoice

2009-01-23T08:30:00.000+01:00

ReadSoft's Oracle E-Business Suite-certified invoice processing solution has been implemented at Sheridan Production Co., a Houston-based oil and gas production company, to automate accounts payable operations. ReadSoft and partner INSYTE Information Corporation assisted the Sheridan team with the accounts payable enhancements.

With a strategy focused on acquiring mature producing oil and gas properties in the U.S., Sheridan Production faces an ever-increasing number of paper-based invoices. Along with basic invoice information, employees were manually typing in line item information from every incoming invoice into the accounts payable application. In addition, approvals were obtained from various district offices causing the invoice flow to be costly and inefficient. Sheridan turned to ReadSoft to alleviate the manual focus of their accounts payable department and help automate the approval process for operating personnel.

''Having implemented Oracle E-Business Suite at other larger corporations, working with the ReadSoft team has been terrific,'' said Anne Oglesby, Accounts Payable Supervisor at Sheridan Production. ''Not only did ReadSoft's solution simplify a complex business process, but its staff maintained first-rate customer focus during the entire process.''

The ReadSoft solution has been installed with Sheridan's Oracle E-Business Suite system to not only automatically capture information from paper invoices but also to utilize ReadSoft's automated workflow and approval procedures. ReadSoft's solution has achieved the highest possible product certification with Oracle E-Business Suite which gave Sheridan confidence to partner with ReadSoft.

''With Sheridan's expected future growth, we needed to have the infrastructure in place to process invoices as timely and efficiently as possible to help minimize costly manual procedures and maximize efficiency of vendor pay,'' said Tim Blaine, Sheridan Production CFO. ''ReadSoft's solution allows us to better utilize our current staffing with only modest planned increases as we continue to grow.''

''When growing companies like Sheridan Production handle accounts payable inside the Oracle E-Business Suite system, they will experience improved control of cash flow and invoices,'' said Bob Fresneda, President of ReadSoft North America. ''The ReadSoft and INSYTE teams are both pleased that the solution is successfully in production with Sheridan already experiencing the benefits promised.''

About ReadSoft:

ReadSoft is the global leader in the development and sales of a complete product platform for Document Process Automation. With thousands of customers on a global basis, ReadSoft supports customers and partners in North America with offices in 7 locations, including the corporate headquarters in New Orleans, LA.

Established in 1991, ReadSoft was first to bring free form technology for invoice processing to market and first to achieve certifications to enterprise resource planning systems such as SAP and Oracle. ReadSoft has become the global technology leader, with operations in 16 countries and partners in an additional 70. We are proud to have the largest and most innovative development department in the industry, with professional services to assist customers and partners on a global basis. ReadSoft's vision is to free businesses everywhere from manual document handling. For more information please visit www.readsoft.com.

For more information, please contact: Alayne Pregeant Marketing Manager ReadSoft 504.841.0119 alayne.pregeant

Source: www.newspress.com

Oracle Tuxedo Now Available

2009-01-22T08:30:00.000+01:00

* Oracle today unveiled Oracle Tuxedo 10g R3, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware.

* Oracle Tuxedo 10g R3 provides mainframe-class scale and performance on open, distributed systems for software written in C, C++, and COBOL, and is the premier platform for "rehosting" mainframe applications on mainstream hardware.

* Oracle Tuxedo 10g R3 is the latest in a series of product releases that combine technology from Oracle Fusion Middleware and BEA Systems. These products illustrate the rapid progress that Oracle is making in combining market-leading technologies from the two companies into a unified product offering.

* Oracle also announced the availability of Oracle Service Architecture Leveraging Tuxedo (SALT) 10g R3 and Oracle Tuxedo System and Application Monitor (TSAM) 10g R3. The new releases are focused on standardization and improving SOA-enablement.

* Oracle SALT is the SOA-enablement product option for Oracle Tuxedo. Oracle SALT provides a standards-based, easy-to-use, configuration driven, bi-directional Web-services gateway and an SCA container to simplify new application development using standards based programming model while leveraging Oracle Tuxedo infrastructure.

* The new features and capabilities of Oracle Tuxedo 10g R3, Oracle SALT 10g R3 and Oracle TSAM 10g R3 are combined with enhanced integration with the following Oracle Fusion Middleware components: Oracle Coherence, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Identity and Access Management Suite.

* Oracle Tuxedo 10g R3 is certified with Oracle Clusterware to improve the availability of existing and new applications. Because Oracle Clusterware is a also certified with Oracle Real Application Clusters, integration between Oracle Tuxedo 10g R3 and Oracle Real Application Clusters is significantly enhanced.

Source: www.hardwarezone.com

SAP wants information about Oracle's deal with partner

2009-01-21T08:30:00.000+01:00

SAP wants a federal court to make Oracle hand over records of its business arrangement with CedarCrestone, an Alpharetta, Georgia, systems integrator that provides third-party support for Oracle PeopleSoft applications.

The filing was made on Jan. 16 in U.S. District Court-Northern District of California, in connection with the lawsuit Oracle filed against SAP in March 2007. Oracle charges that SAP's now-shuttered subsidiary TomorrowNow, a provider of third-party support for Oracle's PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications, illegally downloaded material from Oracle's support systems and used it to woo Oracle customers.

SAP has said that TomorrowNow workers were authorized to download materials from Oracle's site on behalf of TomorrowNow customers, but acknowledged some "inappropriate downloads" had occurred. SAP has also said that Oracle's software remained in TomorrowNow's systems and has denied Oracle's allegations of a wider pattern of wrongdoing.

SAP's Jan. 16 filing argues that since "Oracle's partners apparently pay for the right to access Oracle's Software and Support Materials," Oracle's deal with CedarCrestone is "directly relevant" to calculating damages in the suit.

"Moreover, the mere fact that customers have options for support from Oracle partners (rather than obtaining support services directly from Oracle) may prove that customers would have left Oracle to get support elsewhere regardless of the activities of TomorrowNow," the filing adds.

In addition, SAP wants Oracle to provide the terms and conditions by which CedarCrestone can access and use Oracle software and support materials; and "documents sufficient to identify" which Oracle customers CedarCrestone is supporting.

SAP also issued a subpoena to CedarCrestone in November, seeking a range of information on its relationship with Oracle, according to another filing. In a Dec. 8 letter, an attorney for CedarCrestone objected to the subpoena on the grounds it was "overbroad, vague, ambiguous and burdensome," and also requested proprietary and confidential information. The attorney could not immediately be reached for further comment Tuesday.

Oracle and SAP both declined comment Tuesday.

The Jan. 16 filing follows another request by SAP that could bring potentially sensitive information from Oracle into public view. SAP recently asked that Oracle reveal its profit-margin information regarding PeopleSoft and JD Edwards software and support, also saying such information would be relevant to calculating damages.

A settlement conference in the case has been scheduled for Feb. 23, and a trial date is set for February 2010.

Author: Chris Kanaracus @ IDG News Service

Oracle enters into partnership with Datawatch

2009-01-20T08:30:00.000+01:00

Oracle has formed a records-management partnership with enterprise information management firm Datawatch.

It said it has combined its Universal Records Management Adapter with Datawatch's BDS Enterprise Content Management product suite to create a single environment to control records and retention policies for all content stored in the Datawatch BDS archive.

It also provides records managers with a single view into retention schedules, disposition actions and audit histories, facilitates the process of discovering and declaring records, and helps ensure that the enterprise conforms to both regulatory mandates and internal corporate policies.

Oracle said the integration will provide a complete document lifecycle product that will enable users to reduce the cost of storing and managing unstructured content. Oracle said users can also access, manage, and produce data in a legally defensible manner when responding to litigation, antitrust inquiries, regulatory compliance, or investigation.

Harvey Gross, vice president of enterprise product development at Datawatch, said: "Our technology relationship with Oracle enhances the Datawatch BDS Enterprise Content Management product suite and enables a significant cost reduction to our customers for their critical business functions, helps ensure legal and regulatory compliance, and fulfills the need for technology to provide authenticity, access and longevity."

Source: http://contentmanagement.cbronline.com

Oracle cuts several hundred jobs, sources say

2009-01-14T08:31:00.002+01:00

Oracle Corp (ORCL.O), the world's No. 3 software maker, has fired "several hundred" of its more than 86,000 workers, according to two sources close to the situation, as the business software maker struggles in an economic downturn.

Redwood City, California-based Oracle laid off the employees on Friday, trimming its force of sales consultants who advise clients on how to integrate its business management software and database programs into their operations, the sources said on Tuesday.

Oracle declined comment.

The scale of the job cuts is far smaller than some investors had expected. Rumors surfaced last week that the company was preparing to lay off thousands of its workers.

While Oracle joined a growing list of technology industry giants that are cutting workers, the scope of the reductions is smaller than ones planned by peers.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Tuesday Oracle has cut around 500 positions.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle @ uk.reuters.com)

Oracle to issue 41 security patches

2009-01-09T08:33:00.000+01:00

Vulnerabilities, of which 15 are severe, are across 'hundreds' of its products. Oracle Corp. will issue 41 security patches next Tuesday addressing vulnerabilities across "hundreds" of its products, the company said in a pre-release announcement.

More than 15 of those patches address flaws that were described by the company as being remotely executable without the need for authentication -- a class of vulnerability to which Oracle usually assigns its highest severity rating. Of these, nine are slated for Oracle Secure Backup, two for its Application Server product and five for its BEA Product Suite.

The company's Critical Patch Update next week will also include fixes for 10 vulnerabilities in its database products. None of these exploits, however, can be taken advantage of remotely without the attacker having access to a username and password first, the company said.

Among the affected products that were listed by Oracle in its pre-announcement were multiple versions of its database going back to Oracle database 9i, its E-business suite products and several versions of Oracle's WebLogic Server and Portal products.

The number of patches being released by Oracle in this round is about the same as the last quarter, when the company issued 36 security fixes.

By Oracle's standards those number are relatively small. There have been occasions when the company has issued considerably more patches in its quarterly updates. Its January 2006 update had 82 patches, while the same year's October update had 101.

As with every release, Oracle is imploring administrators to install the patches as soon as possible. But if history is any indication, a large number of the database patches, at least, are unlikely to be installed in a hurry.

A study of 305 database administrators released in January 2008 by security vendor Sentrigo Inc. found that two-thirds of those surveyed did not install Oracle's security patches at all, no matter how critical the vulnerabilities were.

Most appeared to be reluctant to bring production environments down for any length of time to implement security patches and were also concerned about the possibility of the fixes breaking applications.

Author: Jaikumar Vijayan @ www.computerworld.com

SAP wants Oracle to reveal software, support profit margins

2009-01-08T08:44:00.002+01:00

SAP wants Oracle to reveal profit-margin information for JD Edwards and PeopleSoft software and support, according to a joint discovery statement filed this week in connection with Oracle's lawsuit against SAP.

In quarterly earnings reports, software vendors regularly trumpet statistics such as growth in earnings per share or the increase in revenue for general software categories, such as databases. But it is far from typical for companies to detail their profit margins for specific software product lines.

If such information were in the public domain, it could put Oracle at a disadvantage in negotiating with customers and provide "useful ammo" for its competitors, particularly Salesforce.com, said 451 Group analyst China Martens.

Oracle sued SAP in March 2007 for copyright infringement and other alleged violations, charging that workers at SAP's now-shuttered subsidiary TomorrowNow, a provider of third-party support for Oracle's PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications, had illegally downloaded material from Oracle's support systems and used them to court Oracle customers.

Meanwhile, SAP has said that TomorrowNow staff members were authorized to download materials from Oracle's site on behalf of TomorrowNow customers, but acknowledged that some "inappropriate downloads" had occurred. However, SAP has also said that Oracle's software remained in TomorrowNow's systems and has strongly rejected Oracle's claims of a broader pattern of wrongdoing.

Oracle has said its damages could top US$1 billion, but has not yet provided a specific figure.

SAP, meanwhile, states in the discovery document filed Monday that the information is "relevant to the calculation of Oracle's alleged damages."

"Under the Copyright Act, actual damages represent the injury to the market value of the copyrighted work at the time of infringement. In appropriate circumstances, this amount may be computed by determining the profits that would have accrued to plaintiff but for the infringement," it adds.

However, during discovery Oracle "has taken the position that it is unable to determine its profit margins on the two product lines that are at the center of this case," the filing adds. Oracle has refused to provide financial information to allow SAP to determine or make a "reasonable estimate of" its profits on the product lines, according to the filing. So, SAP wants the court to order Oracle to provide the "financial data necessary to attempt to determine Oracle's actual profit margins for the PeopleSoft and JDE products and support services."

SAP's motion comes some weeks before a settlement conference scheduled for Feb. 23. A judge has ordered both parties to turn in proposals for settlement that include specific dollar figures prior to the conference.

Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger declined comment on Wednesday.

"This filing speaks for itself and this is a normal part of the discovery process," SAP spokesman Andy Kendzie said of the company's request for the profit margin information.

SAP is not interested in dragging out the suit, he added. "We have always said that we would like this case to be resolved."

Author: Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service

'Leap second' snafu affects Oracle clustering tool

2009-01-07T08:58:00.002+01:00

Cluster Ready Services software is rebooting in some cases because of second added to 2008. The second that time-tracking scientists added to 2008 to adjust for the slowing of the earth's rotation is causing problems with Oracle Corp.'s Cluster Ready Services (CRS) software, the vendor said in a support document issued Monday. But it added that a pair of fixes are available.

CRS is used in conjunction with Oracle's Real Application Clusters software, which enables a single Oracle database to be deployed on a group of servers, or "nodes," in order to provide fault tolerance and increased scalability.

The "leap second event" is causing CRS nodes to reboot, according to the Oracle document that details the problem. The affected database platforms are Versions 10.1.0.2 to 11.1.0.7 of the Oracle Server Enterprise Edition, running on 64-bit Sun Solaris servers with CRS and Oracle patch sets 10.2.0.1 to 11.1.0.7.

Coordinated Universal Time, the world's time standard, needs to be adjusted in order to account for the differences that develop between UTC and the international atomic clock because of Earth's rotational speed. The addition of leap seconds are handled by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, either at the end of June or December. The IERS, as the organization is known, added a second to Dec. 31.

As a result, Network Time Protocol daemons "had to adjust time accordingly, and the CRS product stack has encountered problems resulting in node reboots," Oracle said in its support document. NTP is used to synchronize the clocks of computers and relies on UTC to provide reference times.

The reboots will occur on affected nodes only under two specific conditions, which were detailed by Oracle. The document also spells out two methods for fixing the issue, including the installation of available patches.

A spokesman for Oracle didn't immediately respond to a request for further comment.

The rebooting issue has prompted some discussions on multiple user forums and mailing lists in recent days.

"This begs the question -- how the heck do timekeepers and politicians get away with last-minute time changes?" one user wrote. "Surely there's some pushback from technology-related interest groups to try and get more than four weeks' warning?"

Other posters, however, pointed out that the IERS made its announcement regarding the plan to add the most recent leap second last July.

Oracle's disclosure follows the problem that cropped up last week with some of Microsoft Corp.'s Zune media players. The affected devices froze up and wouldn't work on Wednesday, a snafu that Microsoft attributed to a bug in their internal clock drivers. The bug became an issue because 2008 was a leap year, Microsoft said.

Author: Chris Kanaracus @ www.computerworld.com

Oracle India staff now get hour-based pay?

2009-01-06T08:43:00.002+01:00

The world's second-largest software products company Oracle is understood to have begun linking the payment of its 20,000-odd employees in India with the productive hours they spend in the company. This has resulted in salary cuts, ranging between 10 and 50 per cent across the board.

Company sources explain that if an employee is a billable resource for 15 days a month, he will be paid in full for that period while for the rest of the period, he is paid a "nominal" amount. Replying to an email query, a company spokesperson in India said: "Oracle does not comment on speculation or rumours."

The company is also understood to have asked all non-billable employees (those on the bench) to get themselves engaged in internal projects, failing which they can explore opportunities outside the company. It is not, however, clear whether the company is asking the non-billable resources to work for outside companies as contract employees while still on Oracle's rolls, or to use their non-productive hours to make money for themselves.

Initially implemented for the employees of Oracle Financial Services Software (formerly i-Flex Solutions), Oracle India has reportedly implemented this across all its centres in India.

Oracle India, however, has not communicated this decision to employees in writing. The team leaders and project managers in different centres have been informed about the decision orally.

"They are telling us that while many companies are laying off employees, Oracle does not want to take such extreme steps. They are saying that once things start improving, we will be back to all the usual compensation and allowances," said a senior employee of Oracle India on condition of anonymity.

Second quarter results announced last month show that Oracle had been able to maintain its profitability despite nearly flat revenue growth. Oracle's net income fell half a per cent to $1.27 billion in the second quarter and sales were up 5.5 per cent to $5.6 billion, lower than analyst estimates. Revenues from new software licences, which is an indicator of future sales, were down 3 per cent to $1.6 billion.

Following its acquisition of i-Flex, sources also note that there were plans to lay off all employees of that company, a decision that was scrapped following intervention of Oracle's management. Oracle feared that the lay-off of all i-Flex employees might suggest the failure of the M&A -- an area that has been mastered by the California-headquartered company over the years.

Sources added that Oracle India has cancelled employee travel costs and withdrawn free snacks and food. Despite news that the company has not stopped recruitments in India, freshers who were given offer letters for annual packages of Rs 2.4 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh earlier are now being asked to consider packages of Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 1.8 lakh.

Author: Bibhu Ranjan Mishra @ www.rediff.com

Oracle wins ruling on patents

2009-01-05T08:36:00.001+01:00

Redwood City-based Oracle Corp. won a judge's ruling Friday that stated it doesn't infringe on two patents held by Parallel Networks LLC, averting a jury trial that was set to start Jan. 12. Oracle in 2006 sued the patents' then-owner, EpicRealm Licensing LP of Richardson, Texas, in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware. Oracle contended it was about to be sued over the inventions for Web-page creation. The patents were assigned to Dallas-based Parallel Networks in 2007, according to court papers. Both companies agreed to dismiss Oracle's claims that the patents were invalid and unenforceable. Oracle had sales of $22.4 billion last year, behind only Microsoft Corp. among software makers.

Source: www.insidebayarea.com

Alaska Air Taps Oracle To Build Customer Loyalty

2009-01-02T08:30:00.000+01:00

The airline implements Siebel loyalty-program software designed to shift the focus away from revenue-draining free miles and more toward personalized service.
The poor economy and high fuel costs created a difficult year for airlines, and Alaska Airlines was no exception. The airline, which primarily serves the West Coast, had to drop flights in recent months and is in the process of trimming its workforce by 10%, including the layoffs of about 1,000 employees.

Alaska Air has improved its fuel usage in recent months and is looking for ways to get additional revenue from customers, including fees charged for its fledgling in-flight Internet service and other à la carte charges. But Alaska also hopes to build and grow on its reputation for high-quality service with several new customer-focused initiatives, some of which are powered by a recently implemented software platform from Oracle called Siebel Loyalty Management.

"What we're trying to do at Alaska Air is accelerate through the economic downturn," said Steve Jarvis, the company's VP of marketing, sales, and customer experience. That acceleration plan includes gaining more market share from competitors.
Although Jarvis calls Alaska Air's airfares "competitive," the airline isn't going to win market share through cutthroat pricing; it's better known for customer service than low-cost fares. In a JD Edwards survey released in June, the airline ranked No. 1 in customer satisfaction among traditional carriers. Alaska knows it must retain and grow its customer base to survive the difficult industry, and it's looking to the new loyalty system as the driver of that effort.

Siebel Loyalty Management replaces the mainframe-based system that ran Alaska's Mileage Plan program, but it's going to do much more than keep track of and dole out customers' earned miles, Jarvis explained. Alaska Air plans to heavily use the system's "triggered events" features, so that it can provide customers with more information and options when service disruptions happen, or offer them promotions based on personal information gleaned from their profiles or travel history. For example, at a future time, this might include offering a promotion tied to an important date, such as a customer's birthday, Jarvis said.

Alaska put the system to its first big test on Dec. 20, when it had to cancel 62 flights because of a surprise snowstorm in Seattle and other weather hazards on the West Coast. The system triggered e-mails to frequent fliers affected by the cancellation that explained what had happened and apologized for the inconvenience. In some cases the system generated free travel awards to inconvenienced customers based on the information it had about them and their specific situations.

"The ability to do more automated and proactive recovery from service failure is a real interest of ours," Jarvis said.

For example, if a customer's flight is canceled, Alaska is looking at better utilizing its airport check-in kiosks to let a customer select her way to a new flight via the airline's Web-based reservation system, rather than stand in a long line at the ticket counter.
"We ought to be able to power our back-end system with tools we now have to make that [service disruption] less stressful," Jarvis said. Alaska currently provides e-mail alerts to customers' handheld devices if there's a change or disruption in their scheduled flights, but it's looking at how it can better personalize those messages to provide each customer with more choices in service based on profile information.

It's been a long and time-intensive journey to implementing the Siebel Loyalty system, however. The company first began talking to Siebel about the system in 2005, shortly after it implemented Siebel Analytics and shortly before Siebel was acquired by Oracle (NSDQ: ORCL). It started the implementation in late 2006 and finished in April 2008, but in the past few months it just finished "stabilizing" the system and will "start to fill out customer profiles on an opt-in basis," Jarvis said. "That was a massive implementation of a very critical transaction system for us." He did not disclose the cost of the software, which runs on an Oracle database.
Jarvis thinks customers will have a much more personalized experience as a result of a system that is less focused on miles redemption and more on an improved traveling experience and promotions specific to a customer's personal interests. A lot of air travelers have become frustrated with trying to redeem earned miles -- with every airline making it more difficult to do so as they try to protect their dwindling revenue -- so airlines need to move beyond the award miles approach.

Said Jarvis: "For our most frequent customers, it's not about the miles, it's about the service we deliver."

Author: Mary Hayes Weier @ www.informationweek.com

No takers for Oracle database machine

2008-12-31T10:54:00.002+01:00

There has been considerable interest in Oracle's database machine, according to CEO Larry Ellison, but it has not led to any sales, he admitted.

The company launched the Oracle Database machine and the Exadata Storage Server (both jointly developed by HP) in September, aiming them at customers looking for high-end data warehousing products. Both machines combine Oracle's software and ProLiant servers from Oracle partner Hewlett-Packard.

Since then, the buzz has been big, Ellison said during a quarterly earnings conference call. "As measured by pipeline growth and pipeline size, this is the most successful introduction of a new product in Oracle's history," he said before admitting that "it's going to be a while" before Oracle can convert that buzz into solid sales of the product.

Still, the Exadata business "looks very, very promising and should help us drive growth over the next 18 months," Ellison said.

Ellison said a number of demonstration machines are in the hands of customers, but it was unclear whether any companies are now using the products in production.

"It doesn't surprise me that Oracle didn't name any specific customers on an earnings call, and that's because it was an earnings call, not a product announcement or customer-win or testimonial call," said Forrester Research analyst James Kobielus. "Don't interpret that as any slap against the new HP Oracle appliance, which is a strong product with considerable customer and market interest."

Oracle and HP also released the product in the middle of an economic recession, "so it may take some time to make those pipeline conversions," Kobielus said.

The new products are going up against the likes of Teradata, Netezza and Greenplum, the last of which announced NYSE Euronext as a customer this week.

During his keynote address at OpenWorld, Ellison had tart words for those competing products, but such boasting could be premature, suggested Curt Monash, founder of Monash Research.

"Until there are some major production Exadata success stories, it remains less proven than a number of smaller vendors' alternatives," Monash said via e-mail Friday. "Oracle will find Exadata pioneers anyway, of course, but not necessarily a huge stampede of them."

Greenplum's president, Scott Yara, echoed Monash.

"Oracle and HP are two great companies, but it's not a guarantee for success in the market," Yara said. "They're going to sell Exadata. Whether they're going to be the leader is another question. ... I think Oracle personally has a lot to prove."

Author: Chris Kanaracus @ www.computerworlduk.com

Oracle's edge

2008-12-29T15:53:00.002+01:00

The software giant will no doubt feel some pain as companies scale back staff. But its stable infrastructure business will help it weather the storm better than most. Say what you will about Larry Ellison's style, but the in-your-face founder of Oracle knows how to manage a company through a recession, at least so far.

In an economic climate where other companies are heading for the lifeboats, Ellison is skippering Oracle into a position of strength. And it comes down to selling software that relies on a growing stream of corporate data, rather than a growing number of employees.

During a recent conference call, Ellison and his management team were practically optimistic, projecting that overall revenue for Oracle's fiscal third quarter ending in February will be up from 8% to 11% adjusting for currency exchange.

In its most recent second quarter, revenue came in below guidance, with sales growth of 6% (9% was the Street's estimate), but with operating profit margins at almost 46%, above estimates, and pointing to Oracle's ability to maintain pricing power. (Earnings were down slightly for the quarter, a slip Oracle blamed on the strengthening dollar.)

Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) is feeling some pain, like every other company out there, but so far it is not as acute. And when you dig into the numbers, it gives you a sense of why Oracle may offer relative safety in these uncertain economic times.

Oracle sells both applications -- human-resources software and customer-relationship software, for example -- and so-called infrastructure software. The latter includes Oracle's core database products, as well as middleware, which acts as a sort of glue between all kinds of software and services.

Applications are generally sold on a per seat basis, so revenue is based on staff size at Oracle's customers. Infrastructure software is sold based on capacity, the number of processors (CPUs) in a server running the software, for example.

The scary issue for a lot of tech companies is of course is one of headcount. As companies cut numbers to weather the recession, they are also cutting the number of seats they need for any number of applications. But companies are less likely to scale back on the efficiencies an automated enterprise can offer them, so that business is not as vulnerable.

Because it is driven by "data, not heads, the (infrastructure) segment should be more stable than other software businesses through the recession," writes Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Holt, who has an "overweight" rating on Oracle, with a 12-month price target of $22.

In that context, data versus heads (or applications versus infrastructure), investors would be wise to look at other software companies SAP and Microsoft, for example, which will be subject to the same forces.

In the second fiscal quarter, Oracle posted database and middleware revenue of almost $3 billion, up 4% year over year. During the same quarter, the applications business was flat to slightly down.

"Oracle's negative year-over-year growth in applications do not bode well for SAP," says JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens, who has a "market perform" rating on Oracle. SAP has a very application-heavy product offering. "Our checks so far suggest SAP has already seen some of its larger deal prospects in North America push out."

At some point the economy will recover, and headcount will once again grow. At that point, Oracle will be able to push its applications business harder. In the meantime, unlike some of its competitors, Oracle has the leverage to wring additional revenue from its infrastructure business, and sail -- as it did after the tech bubble burst -- far ahead of the pack.

Author: Michael V. Copeland @ money.cnn.com

Despite Tech Slump, Oracle Hits Its Mark

2008-12-22T16:24:00.002+01:00

Oracle's bread-and-butter database business is faring better in the recession than its business applications, which companies use to manage finance, HR, sales, and other functions. Sales of new applications licenses fell 15 percent, to $469 million, during the quarter. Oracle's database and application-connecting middleware license sales grew.

During the tech industry's last big slump, software and hardware Relevant Products/Services vendors were slow to cut costs as falling demand pummeled profits.

This time around, Oracle isn't taking chances. Oracle, the world's No. 2 software company, hit Wall Street's earnings target when it reported fiscal second-quarter results on Dec. 18, by aggressively cutting research and development, travel, and other costs as its customers curtail spending.

Amid a global economic slowdown that's sapped business demand for computers and software, Oracle widened operating margins in the quarter ended Nov. 30 to 46 percent, compared with 41.3 percent a year earlier. While the software maker missed Wall Street's estimates for total sales and new software bookings, its earnings of 34 percent a share, excluding certain items, met analysts' projections. Better still, Oracle issued a third-quarter earnings outlook roughly in line with Wall Street estimates.

Shares of Oracle gained 4 percent in extended trading, after closing Dec. 18 down 13 percent, or 0.8 percent, at 16.61. The shares have lost 2.4 percent in the past month, compared with a 4.7 percent gain for the Nasdaq Composite Index.
Wide Range of Products Helps

Oracle displayed a knack for slicing costs while offering customers a wide range of products that it's assembled through a slew of acquisitions the past four years, analysts said. "This company can hold the bottom line better than anyone," says Brent Thill, Citigroup's software research director, who rates Oracle's stock a buy.

Analysts said Oracle has cut expenses in sales and marketing, and overseas R&D, and reduced sales and back-office expenses from its January acquisition of BEA Systems. A wide breadth of products lets Oracle salespeople zero in on where customers are still spending. "It all goes back to the all-you-can-eat buffet at Oracle," Thill says. "You can pick one thing or everything, and they have something they can talk to a client about."

The appetite for cost-cutting is catching across tech. Dell beat Wall Street's profit forecasts in its third quarter, reported Nov. 20, by taking an ax to expenses, despite ringing up sales that were more than $1 billion short of expectations. Troubled computer maker Sun Microsystems in November said it plans to cut up to 6,000 jobs, or 18 percent of its staff. Tech firms including Adobe Systems and Western Digital have announced plans to shed workers as well.

Net Income Falls amid Sales Slowdown

"Within technology we're seeing revenue weakness but good profitability," says Andy Miedler, a senior technology analyst at Edward Jones, who has a buy rating on Oracle. "Companies are more aggressive with cost-cutting during this downturn due to the lessons they learned with cutting costs too slowly during the tech wreck last time."

Cost-cutting aside, sales still take a hit when customers slash information technology budgets. Oracle's net income fell 0.5 percent, to $1.27 billion, in the second quarter, and sales were up 5.5 percent, to $5.6 billion, vs. analysts' consensus estimate of $5.84 billion. New software license revenue, an indicator of future sales, was down 3 percent to $1.6 billion. The closely watched metric fell far short of Oracle's forecast three months ago, when it said new license revenues would rise 2 percent to 12 percent. The bookings are a key measure of Oracle's performance, since they often produce additional tech support Relevant Products/Services revenue.

"Customers are signing up for fewer multiyear, $100 million projects," said Chief Executive Larry Ellison during a conference call with analysts. "Fortunately we have a very broad portfolio." A strong dollar is also hurting Oracle's results, as overseas sales translate into fewer dollars on the company's books.

Applications Vulnerable to Downturn

Oracle's bread-and-butter database Relevant Products/Services business is faring better in the recession than its business applications, which companies use to manage finance, HR, sales, and other functions. Sales of new applications licenses fell 15 percent, to $469 million, during the quarter. Oracle's database and application-connecting middleware license sales grew nearly 4 percent, to $1.16 billion.

"The applications business is in tough shape," says Citigroup analyst Thill. Applications revenues are more vulnerable in a weak economy, as companies protect database and middleware projects that can yield business information to help them compete, Thill wrote in a Dec. 2 research note. Oracle is locked in an applications market-share battle with SAP, which in October cut its profitability outlook for the year.

Oracle also issued a downbeat forecast for its third quarter, which ends in February. Assuming today's exchange rates, Oracle said it expects to earn 31 percent to 33 percent per share, vs. Wall Street's expectation of 34 percent per share. Oracle co-President Safra Catz told analysts that the company is expecting a record low in the pace of deal closings for that period of the year.

Lots of Acquisition Candidates

Oracle has been posting bang-up results for the past few years, largely by spending more than $25 billion to buy more than 40 software companies since 2005. In addition to having more products to sell, Oracle can also sign up customers added through acquisitions for lucrative tech-support contracts.

In recent months, Oracle has hinted it may hold to that strategy. There are at least 50 publicly traded software companies with $300 million to $6 billion in annual sales that Oracle could potentially acquire, said Mark Murphy, an analyst at Piper Jaffray who rates Oracle a buy, in a Dec. 12 research note. In September, Ellison said Oracle might take advantage of depressed stock prices to buy up more software companies on the cheap.

Now, Ellison said prices have dropped so low that some companies may resist being bought. "Some companies have much more attractive valuations right now, but I'm not sure they'd be wildly enthusiastic about selling for cash [value]," he said on Dec. 18.

When markets rebound and an M&A freeze thaws, Oracle could nevertheless be poised to spring. "As we come out of this cycle, Oracle is extremely well positioned," says Israel Hernandez, a director at Barclays Capital, who has an overweight rating on Oracle's stock. "They're going to come out a much stronger company after the recession." Until then, Oracle and other tech firms may have to keep looking for costs to chop.

Author: Aaron Ricadela @ www.newsfactor.com

The top advice from Oracle experts in 2008

2008-12-18T08:30:00.000+01:00

Whether you have a question about Oracle errors, backups, upgrades or jobs, SearchOracle.com has an expert panel ready to help. This year our experts answered questions on all these topics and more - - here's a look back at some of our most popular expert questions and answers of 2008.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. What is the ORA-03113 error?
2. How to get history of modified data from Oracle databases
3. How DDL and DML commands work in Oracle
4. How to do a hot backup when Oracle Database is up
5. When should an Oracle database be reorganized?
6. Tips for how to size an Oracle server
7. When to use CHECK constraints in SQL
8. When to do a manual upgrade vs. export and import
9. What is the difference between a database engineer, architect and administrator?
10. How to archive and decommission a database

What is the ORA-03113 error?
Q: We have an Oracle 10g database and get the ORA-03113 error sporadically. This is a science application where we query time-series data from a vb.net application. We can query successfully all day with some parameters (location, variable identifier, and date range) but when the date range changes beyond a (arbitrary?) limit (e.g. 2003 to 2007 works every time, but 2002 to 2007 fails every time), this error appears. We get a similar error using Oracle's sqldeveloper, though the error message text is different. Where do we start looking for answers?

A: ORA-3113 errors mean that your network connection to the database was severed. In my experience, there are two problem areas. One, something in the network failed between the client and the database. Two, a bug in the database caused the session to be terminated and the client thinks a network error was the cause. If you are sure your network is fine, then it is probably a bug. Make sure you have the 10.2.0.3 patchset installed. After that, file a Service Request with Oracle Support. Only they will be able to help you with the ORA-3113 error.

What is the ORA-03113 error?
Q: How can you get the history of data modified from an Oracle database?

A: There are a few options at your disposal. After the fact, you can mine your archived redo logs using Oracle's Log Miner utility. Before the fact, you can set up auditing to record changes...

How DDL and DML commands work in Oracle
Q: What happens in the background when we execute DDL or DML commands?

A: First, Oracle parses the statement and ensures that the statement is syntactically correct and semantically correct. Next, Oracle verifies that the user has permissions to perform the statement. If the user can execute the statement, Oracle obtains all locks necessary for the statement to complete. Once the locks have all been obtained, Oracle executes the statement. In some cases, results are returned. If results are returned from the statement, Oracle fetches those results and places the result set in an area called a 'cursor'. The cursor is passed back to the application.

Hot backup when Oracle Database is up
Q: What is the procedure for doing a hot backup when the database is up?

A: There are two ways. The preferred way with Oracle's databases today is to use RMAN. The following will perform a hot backup using RMAN.
Read expert Brian Peasland's recommended steps for using RMAN and learn more about RMAN and hot backups.

When should an Oracle database be reorganized?
Q: When should a database be reorganized?

A: Never. A well-designed database should never need reorganization. It used to be that a DBA would perform a weekly or monthly reorg to help database performance. But today's Oracle databases do not need regularly scheduled reorgs to perform well. Bad design can throw this theory out the window though.

Tips for how to size an Oracle server
Q: Do you have any suggestions on where I can find the following information, with recommended server hardware specifications for how to size an Oracle server? I'll be using storage area network (SAN) storage.
Number of processors
Quantity of RAM

I've searched the Oracle site and even though there are a number of white papers, I haven't seen anything like the old 9i sizing guide.

A: I have not seen any sites or other pieces of information that would give you the information that you seek. And I would be leery of the information presented. The amount of memory, processors, and other system resources are not dictated by the total volume of data in the database.

CHECK constraints
Q: How can I create a constraint to not allow a date prior to 1 Jan 2007 to be entered?

A: This is accomplished with a CHECK constraint. Here's an example:
create table documents
( id integer not null primary key
, title varchar(99) not null
, added date not null
, constraint only_new_ones
check ( added>= '2007-01-01' )
);

Manual upgrade vs. export and import
I am ready to upgrade. My database size is 200gb and it is an unsupported version of Oracle to upgrade to 10g(8.1.6.2 to 10g). It's O/S is on HP-UX, so could you tell me whether the best process for upgrade is to follow the manual upgrade process or by using the export & import to the new Oracle Database? If I follow the manual method then I have to apply the 8i to 8i Patches then to 10g . If I follow exp/imp then I need more down time. Which process should I follow?

A: If you perform the manual upgrade process, then you will have to be at least at Oracle 8.1.7 before you can begin. So to go from 8.1.6.2 to 10g, you will need two upgrades with this path. If you use export/import, then you will only need one upgrade. On average, each manual upgrade will take about 1 hour, but this time can vary. So without knowing more about your environment, the manual upgrade process will require about 2 hours of downtime. Using export/import for a 200GB database will probably take longer. So the big question to answer here is how much downtime can you take for the upgrade? If you had a larger downtime window, then you might use exp/imp for the upgrade. The exp/imp method also lets you perform some reorganization like moving objects to new tablespaces.

What is the difference between a database engineer, architect and administrator?
Q: Could you please explain the differences between a database engineer, a database architect and a database administrator?

A: Great question! It can get pretty confusing as these titles (and many more including database developer, data architect, data analyst, data modeler, database designer, etc.) are often intermixed, used improperly, or redefined by the companies using them. The definition really depends on the actual job descriptions as defined by the various companies posting them. I will do my best, however, to differentiate and simplify them for you...

How to archive and decommission a database
Q: What would be the best way to archive and decommission a 5GB Oracle 7.3 Database? This data needs to be available for at least 20 years from now in case a regulatory agency requires it, and we are afraid that in the future we won't be able to recover it to a newer version of Oracle.

A: I use Oracle's export utility for this type of task. Your database isn't too large, so exp will work. The nice thing about exp is that future versions of Oracle will still be able to read the resulting dump file. So perform the following:
exp userid=system/manager file=my_db.dmp log=my_db.log full=y

The resulting files can then be written to DVD or some other media for long term storage.

Source: Shayna Garlick @ searchoracle.techtarget.com

Oracle Likely to Bend to Recessionary Winds

2008-12-17T08:30:00.000+01:00

Oracle's boom time is not likely to continue as the U.S. recession deepens. The business software giant may not be ready to put jobs on the chopping block, but it will probably curtail expenses sharply.

Business software maker Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) is scheduled to report its fiscal second-quarter results after the stock market closes Thursday.

The following is a summary of key developments and analyst opinion related to the period.

Overview: Oracle has been on a roll for several years as it snapped up dozens of its smaller rivals, but the Redwood Shores-based company will be hard pressed to keep the momentum going as more corporate customers curtail their spending on technology to weather the recession.

Analysts already have lowered their fiscal second-quarter estimates to below the target set by Oracle's management three months ago and are bracing for a cautious outlook for the rest of the fiscal year ending in May.

The big question now is whether Oracle will rein in its expenses to help offset the anticipated weakness in its sales. Many other technology companies already have drawn up plans to prune their payrolls, so it won't be a shock if Oracle trims its payroll of about 85,000 employees worldwide.

Most analysts, though, seem to think Oracle will start off by curbing travel expenses and other discretionary items before resorting to its first mass layoffs since the dot-com bust of 2001 shriveled its software sales.

Oracle eliminated about 2,300 jobs between May 2001 and May 2003, representing a 5 percent reduction from a much smaller work force at that time. If Oracle were to impose layoffs on a similar scale in this recession, it would translate into about 4,300 fewer jobs.

As usual, investors are likely to focus on Oracle's sales of new software licenses -- a key benchmark because those deals uncork a stream of future revenue from product maintenance and upgrades.

Back in September, Oracle forecast its new software sales during the second quarter would rise by 2 percent to 12 percent. Some analysts think Oracle may have landed a large software deal that may have helped the company fall within that range, but management isn't expected to be as optimistic in its forecast for the current quarter ending in February

By the Numbers: Analysts, on average, expect Oracle to report earnings of 34 US cents per share on revenue of $5.86 billion. The earnings estimates exclude expenses for employee stock compensation and acquisitions. Oracle's management projected adjusted earnings of 35 cents or 36 cents per share.

Analyst Take: Even though analysts have already lowered their forecasts, Brad Reback of Oppenehimer & Co. is advising investors to be prepared for a letdown when the results and third-quarter outlook are released.

"It is difficult to envision a scenario where the company's ability to close deals in late November was not negatively impacted" by the deepening recession, Reback wrote in a recent note to clients.

Stronger Dollar Doesn't Help
As if the economy isn't challenging enough, the strengthening dollar also is taking a toll on Oracle's international sales. Noting that the dollar has gained 12 percent against the euro since mid-September, analyst David Hilal of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. thinks Oracle will lose about $300 million more in revenue from adverse currency fluctuations than management anticipated in September.

Both Reback and Hilal expect Oracle to cut its costs to cope with the downturn.

Reback believes Oracle has enough wiggle room to lower its annual expenses by about $700 million without resorting to layoffs. This assumption is based on projected fiscal 2009 expenses of nearly $14 billion, or about $160,000 per employee. Oracle's expenses have averaged about $153,000 per employee during the past 12 years, Reback said.

What's Ahead: Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison has indicated that he may try to take advantage of the recession's fallout to buy even more rivals at bargain prices. The company already has spent more than $35 billion on takeovers completed during the past four years.

Stock Performance: Oracle shares dropped by 27 percent during its fiscal second quarter and are down by about the same amount for the year.

Source: www.ecommercetimes.com

Minnesota Goes Live On Oracle PeopleSoft 9.0, Thanks To Infocrossing

2008-12-11T08:53:00.002+01:00

PeopleSoft 9.0 keeps the State of Minnesota's information up-to-date with ever increasing security policies. Infocrossing, a Wipro company, has completed an Oracle PeopleSoft 9.0 upgrade at the Department of Finance and Employee Relations for the State of Minnesota. The State of Minnesota leveraged Infocrossing's enterprise resource planning and consulting expertise to upgrade from PeopleSoft 8.3 to 9.0 meeting all project criteria in 11 months as planned. The newly implemented HCM system allows the State of Minnesota to effectively manage information of non-employees and the new compliance requirements.

The department has been recently renamed to Minnesota Management & Budget (MMB). MMB provides payroll and employee benefits services to approximately 50,000 state employees and retirees, with health coverage for approximately 115,000 lives.

The upgrade has improved printing through the use of newer technologies such as XML and has set a baseline to enable other reporting capabilities. In terms of security, People Soft 9.0 keeps the State's information up-to-date with ever increasing security policies. The upgrade has thus resulted in 'best practices' and has enhanced features for vendor releases of tax upgrades, corrections and enhancements, the company claimed.

According to Scott Antin, regional vice president, sales, Infocrossing, "The State of Minnesota has been a leader in adapting new technologies and automating payroll, and we are pleased that through this implementation they will derive the benefits of an updated ERP system that can streamline business processes, reduce costs and increase employee satisfaction."

"This upgrade is a great example of how a project should be conducted and delivered. Projects of this size and complexity are often late and over budget, but MMB has had a great history of success in delivering successful projects by complete planning, establishing disciplined project management and selecting experienced partners. For this upgrade, we selected Infocrossing and its consultants brought specific business and technical product knowledge that enabled a successful conclusion," said Steve Jorgenson, CIO, MMB.

Source: www.efytimes.com

BMW Oracle take plans for 'illegitimate' America's Cup format to court

2008-12-09T08:28:00.000+01:00

The US team BMW Oracle will refuse to register for the next America's Cup and will instead rely on a legal appeal against the plans of the defending champions, Alinghi, to alter the event's format.

The decision means the bitter dispute surrounding sailing's most high-profile competition, held since 1851, will continue in court.

Alinghi, along with 11 other teams, have agreed to work on organising the 33rd America's Cup and had set a deadline of December 15 for the BMW Oracle team to sign on. But the BMW Oracle's Golden Gate Yacht Club, which argue that the new format unfairly favours the Swiss champions, said they had no intention of doing so as they did not consider the event to be "a legitimate America's Cup".

"Rather, we will now focus our efforts and attention on winning our appeal before the New York state court of appeals," the club's commodore, Marcus Young, said in a letter to the Societe Nautique de Geneve, which represents Alinghi. "It's clearly the only avenue left open to create a fair and competitive challenge that preserves the integrity, prestige and tradition of yacht racing's pinnacle event."

In response, Alinghi said the BMW Oracle team were pursuing a "selfish legal strategy". "While it's disappointing that BMW Oracle have chosen to proceed with the legal route instead of joining the collective process, SNG and Alinghi are committed to working with all these entered teams to organise a multi-challenge event while waiting for the final ruling from the court of appeals."

The 33rd running of the race was originally scheduled for 2009 in Valencia but was put on hold after BMW Oracle challenged the legality of the Spanish team recognised by Alinghi as the event's official challenger of record.

The challenger of record is usually involved, along with the holders, in setting up the rules for the next edition of the race.

A New York judge ruled in BWM Oracle's favour in November 2007 and a subsequent ruling set up a best-of-three, head-to-head series between the two rivals rather than the traditional multi-boat competition.

Alinghi successfully appealed against the decision, saying they preferred a later race date, a separate challenger of record and a larger field of challengers.

BMW Oracle, who object to a number of elements of the rules and structure of the planned event, filed their own appeal and the case is set to be heard on February 10 with a ruling due by the end of March.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk