Oracle Hangs a Solid Q2 on a Thick Neck

Positive second-quarter earnings can be attributed largely to Oracle's acquisition strategy—42 companies in less than four years—and customer demand for "one throat to choke."

Oracle surprised Wall Street analysts and investors Dec. 20 by reporting better than expected fiscal second-quarter 2008 earnings, particularly in the area of software license revenue, much of which can be attributed to the fact that its acquisition strategy is finally paying off.

Oracle announced Dec. 20 that its earnings were up 35 percent to $1.3 billion and revenues were up 28 percent to $5.3 billion. Even more telling for Oracle's acquisition strategy, whidh has seen the company acquire 42 companies in just about as many months, software license revenues were up 29 percent to $4.2 billion, while new software license revenues were up 38 percent to $1.7 billion.

"The strength of the quarter comes down to the fact that we are selling more products to more customers in more industries," said Oracle Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz during the company's second-quarter conference call with analysts.

It is a sign, analysts and customers said, that buyers are looking for a single vendor—one throat to choke.

"Regardless of role, all the companies seem to appreciate the potential upside of the Oracle strategy," Bill Swanton and Lee Geishecker of AMR Research said in a November research note titled, "Oracle's Application Strategy—What's Your Five-Year Plan?"

"In fact, once Oracle accounts for over half of their enterprise applications footprint, most companies adopt an Oracle-first policy of seeing if Oracle's product meets their needs before investigating other vendors. They like the idea of single-vendor responsibility," Swanton and Geishecker wrote.

In its "Midsize Enterprise ERP Spending Report, 2007-2008," AMR Research found that 48 percent of midsized companies will increase their enterprise resource planning budgets by an average of 5.1 percent in 2008. That increase in spending will be driven in part by a desire to have a broad spectrum of functionality delivered from a single software vendor, the report said—a finding that ties nicely into the acquisitions that Oracle has been making.

In a Dec. 19 research note, Goldman Sachs analysts Sarah Friar, Derek Bingham and Frederick Grieb wrote that Oracle turned in a "highly impressive" second fiscal quarter, beating estimates on both applications and technology revenues. The reason, they said, is Oracle's acquisition strategy is paying off.

"Oracle continues to execute on its consolidation strategy, which has afforded it an expansive product set, greater account control and tremendous cross-selling opportunities, as well as a recurring engine of maintenance revenue," the analysts wrote. "While many investors believe Oracle's acquisition strategy is now limited by the number of targets available, we do not agree. The software landscape remains fragmented with opportunities springing up in newer areas such as software as a service. A tougher economy might only abet Oracle's strategy by lowering valuations and creating more motivated sellers."

Existing customers agree that Oracle's acquisition strategy is working, for a couple of reasons. The first is the "one throat to choke" theory, which is becoming more of a reality as Oracle acquires more companies. The second is that Oracle has realized the integration nightmare brought on by acquiring 21 application companies since 2005; while the actual product is not yet a reality, Oracle announced in April it would take on integration for its customers with its AIA (Application Integration Architecture).

Author: Renee Boucher Ferguson @ www.eweek.com

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Oracle VP Mike Betzer: The Mainstream Is Waking Up to CRM

"More companies are realizing [CRM] is more than ever before relevant to their businesses. There is more competition than ever before, and companies are trying to figure out how to make customer loyal. They know they need a good CRM foundation to do that," said Mike Betzer, vice president of CRM Strategy at Oracle.

Mike Betzer was working for MCI several years ago when he realized that if the company could use the Internet Over 800,000 High Quality Domains Available For Your Business. Click Here. as a front end, it could leverage the software in the data center and develop a network-based application that could be sold to other companies doing essentially the same thing that MCI did in-house.

As it happened MCI, in the midst of being acquired at the time, was in no position to develop such a new business strategy. Betzer though, for his part, went on to launch Ineto Services, a firm that provided hosted telephony infrastructure. He jumped into, in short, a trend that would come to dominate the CRM space in a few short years.

Later Ineto was folded into Siebel as the then-CRM giant began its push to develop its own on-demand strategy, of which Ineto would play a key part. Siebel, in turn, was acquired by Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) Latest News about Oracle a few years later.

Betzer's view of CRM has since evolved. For one -- not surprisingly -- he embraces Oracle's hybrid approach to CRM deployment, which includes both the on demand and on presence models. Betzer's prescience on trends in the CRM space, meanwhile, appear to be as sharp as ever. CRM Buyer caught up with Betzer to talk about where he sees CRM heading next, and how Oracle intends to stay on top of the trends.
Competition Ahead

CRM Buyer: Let's start with 2008. What do you think will be the big CRM story for the year?

Betzer: I think it will be a continuation of what has been quietly happening over the last several months and few years: a resurgence of CRM. More companies are realizing it is more than ever before relevant to their businesses. There is more competition than ever before, and companies are trying to figure out how to make customer loyal. They know they need a good CRM foundation to do that.

CRM Buyer: They didn't know this before?

Betzer: Of course they always knew that, but it is becoming easier all the time for a customer to switch from one service provider to another, from Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Latest News about Verizon, say, to AT&T (NYSE: T) Latest News about AT&T or from Home Depot (NYSE: HD) Latest News about Home Depot, for example, to Lowes.

CRM Buyer: I have to tell you, I am not sure how CRM can stop a consumer from switching from one service provider to another in a lot of situations. Most people, myself included, switch providers for a lot of reasons no matter how long they have been there, usually either because they are annoyed at the service or they like a phone offered by a competitor. And the Lowes versus Home Depot decision? Those stores are so commoditized now that people shop at the most convenient one.

Betzer: What you say is [about product commodization] true, which is why CRM is being viewed as the factor that can push a consumer from just shopping at the most convenient site to seeking out a company where he or she has had a good experience.

For instance, consider Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) Latest News about Dell. It developed a supply chain model that it thought it could ride to dominate the PC space -- until HP (NYSE: HPQ) Latest News about Hewlett-Packard copied that model. So consumers can buy from either Dell or HP, they don't care which one. But they will care which firm knows the consumer better and serves the consumer better. The way to do that is tie all the channels together and develop a master database of customer records. Developing a single source of truth on the consumer. Analytics as well is becoming increasingly important.
Oracle's Acquisitions

CRM Buyer: Can we talk about what is happening at Oracle and its strategy for CRM? How is it leveraging its acquisitions, PeopleSoft, Siebel namely, to build a better product?

Betzer: We are pulling the best from the different applications. PeopleSoft, for instance, cracked the code for the higher education vertical and figured out the right way to deploy and deliver software in that space. It did a fantastic job so we are leveraging that vertical instead of Siebel's.

In other cases we are blending the products. Siebel's field service Latest News about field service application was focused on a service person in a truck. Oracle's was about moving products through a supply chain. We are leveraging both and blending them together.

CRM Buyer: What can we expect to see from Oracle next year, in terms of CRM that is?

Betzer: More blending of sales, service and analytics to allow companies to make smart decisions faster and sell better. For instance, you own a Mac and several iPods. Conceivably an Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple salesperson should have you on his radar, reaching out to you about new devices or related products that you might want. That is what we are focusing on -- allowing that sales person to leverage the knowledge about the customer that sits somewhere within the organization.

We also will be bringing more self-service Latest News about self-service capabilities to the application. Also, loyalty is another focus area for us. Up until recently most in the industry have gotten loyalty wrong -- they think of it only as a marketing E-Mail Marketing Software - Free Trial. Click Here. campaign. But it is not so one dimensional -- you have to leverage sales and service as well, just like the airlines have done with their loyalty campaigns. Airline miles, in fact, is one of the greatest loyalty campaign examples of all time. We want to apply those lessons in other areas now.

Author: Erika Morphy @ www.crmbuyer.com

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How much will Oracle put up to regain its database stronghold?

Oracle may be willing to spend a record sum -- over $6 billion -- to acquire a middleware provider it believes will give it a permanent leg up on Microsoft's SQL Server. Does it still take a huge M&A like this to stay on par with Microsoft?

Database and applications software giant Oracle is trying hard to buy BEA Systems, a big-time middleware maker -- and Oracle is willing to shell out $6.6 billion for the privilege. Business customers could stand to gain by getting a robust and integrated alternative to the Microsoft SQL Server environment.

But will the deal happen? And if it doesn't, does the database crown get transferred to Microsoft, as an addition to its trophy case along with the word processing crown, the collaboration tools crown, and the network mail management crown?

Remember back when databases stood as Oracle's main claim to fame? Well, after snapping up application software vendors PeopleSoft and J. D. Edwards (JDE) a few years ago, Oracle is now chasing down middleware maker BEA Systems with a $6.6 billion offer. If Oracle somehow manages to pull off the deal, many business customers actually stand to gain, especially big enterprises that prefer to run Microsoft Windows alongside non-Microsoft operating environments such as Linux, Unix, and mainframes.

Although Oracle still wants BEA Systems, BEA is holding out for a better deal, Oracle's president and CFO, Safra Cata, suggested this week. Cata also confirmed that, over the past few weeks, Oracle has continued talks with BEA that started in October. But Cata said, too, that Oracle has now decided no "friendly" offer -- in other words, a pact which is willingly embraced by BEA -- can be accomplished "with the current BEA board at a price and terms acceptable to Oracle."
So why does Oracle want BEA so badly, anyway? For one thing, according to quarterly financial results released this week, Oracle is now growing more than twice as fast in application software -- at 63% year-over-year, in new licensing revenue -- as on its combined database and middleware sides.

Still, Oracle's 28% year-over-year growth rate for database and middleware isn't exactly chicken feed either.

But Oracle faces intensifying competition for its long-time database stronghold from Microsoft, a rival that's been working hard for years and years on creating a highly integrated middleware and applications software environment to accompany SQL Server.

With business already booming for its own database, Microsoft is currently pouring a lot of its considerable energies into supporting the launch of the virtualization-oriented SQL Server 2008 in February of next year.

Yet if Oracle's BEA buyout ever really happens, the deal will supply Oracle with a more robust middleware environment -- and through integration between BEA's middleware and the Oracle database, customers would gain a stronger alternative to SQL Server and the surrounding Microsoft .NET environment.

Moreover, many businesses want just this kind of choice. Although nearly all enterprises run some Microsoft software these days, lots of IT managers say they try their best to avoid "lock-in" to a specific vendor. And with Sun exhibiting greater openness these days, they're typically referring mostly to Microsoft.

Ironically, Oracle itself has been accused of just this sort of vendor lock-in, particularly by some customers of acquired properties such as PeopleSoft, JDE, and sales force automation specialist Siebel, who have opted to hire the now SAP-owned TomorrowNow or other third-party support specialists in lieu of Oracle Consulting.

But with Oracle ERP (enterprise resource planning) rival SAP now in court over charges that TomorrowNow hacked Oracle, could it be that some erstwhile disenchanted customers are finally giving up their grudges and signing on with Oracle?

Although Oracle isn't giving an answer here, this could stand as one factor in the company's stellar rise in new software licensing during Oracle's most recent quarter. For that matter, by the way, Oracle's services revenue also stepped up during the quarter to the tune of 22%.

BEA -- like Oracle, a company that's grown through acquisition -- now affords a Web SOA (service-oriented architecture) environment that could easily be used by Oracle to promote interoperability among its database, applications from its various acquired properties, customers' own custom apps, and other software from myriad operating environments.

BEA is also being widely hailed for its AquaLogic BPM (business process management) software suite, designed for automating customer-specific tasks such as manufacturing processes and document management routines. Recently, BEA was named to Gartner Group's prestigious "magic quadrant" in the BPM category.

Microsoft offers BPM, too -- most specifically, through its BizTalk Server middleware. But Microsoft's BPM requires installation of not just SQL Server, but a whole wide range of other .NET servers and components.

For companies that are on the fence about making deeper investments into Microsoft technology, could BEA's BPM serve to dissuade them?

Oracle's current efforts to buy BEA have major precedent in Oracle's purchase of a similarly reluctant PeopleSoft through an unfriendly acquisition back in 2003. But although at $10.3 billion, PeopleSoft might have cost more than Oracle bargained for at first, the unfriendly buyout has indeed paid off handsomely for Oracle in the end.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison acknowledged this week that Oracle has been pursuing a strategy of growth through expansion into vertical industries, during the same financial conference call in which Oracle's Cata confirmed Oracle's continuing interest in BEA. According to Ellison, Oracle plans to keep going with this strategy into the future.

But how has Oracle managed to perform this kind of vertical expansion? On the CRM (customer relationship management) and ERP sides, PeopleSoft was notable long before its acquisition by Oracle for its penetration into financial services, for instance. For its part, JDE was big into manufacturing.

And that all points to yet another reason why Oracle wants to buy BEA. More customers in vertical markets. BEA just happens to be a highly active middleware player in at least a couple of dozen different verticals, including financial services, manufacturing, health care, government, and education, to name a few.

Yet even at a mere $6.6 billion, BEA would be a costly buy for Oracle, especially when you consider that Oracle's entire revenues for the second quarter amounted to less than that, or $5.3 billion.

BEA apparently wants more than $6.6 billion. And rumor on the street has it that BEA could be courting some other suitors, too. So we know that retaining the database crown is of value to Oracle. The question now is, how valuable? If Oracle ends up forking over $7 billion or more, even if Oracle's executives find themselves smiling...Microsoft's might also celebrate just a bit.

Author: Jacqueline Emigh @ www.BetaNews.com

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EMC and Oracle unveil new business software

EMC Corporation has unveiled innovative new storage capabilities and features to help regional customers using the latest software from Oracle to deploy business solutions faster, better control costs and improve information management.

They include pre-tested, integrated and documented configurations for Oracle Database environments as well as the validation of EMC technology with Oracle Database 11g, which allows faster and easier configuration and management of EMC network attached storage (NAS) in Oracle grid computing environments, said an official spokesman.

“The EMC and Oracle partnership gives regional customers an advantage over their competitors as we are completely focused on helping clients control costs and get the most value from their technology infrastructure,” said general manager, EMC Middle East & North Africa, Mohammed Amin.

“We have invested a great deal and work closely to combine our products and supply clients with the simplest and most effective ways to deploy them. Combined with our shared service and support capabilities, we’re in a unique position to help customers with their Oracle Database 11g implementations,” he added.

EMC and Oracle jointly tested the Oracle Database 11g Direct NFS Client (network file system) feature. By integrating Direct NFS Client directly into the database software, regional Oracle Database 11g users can streamline performance and functionality as the database communicates automatically with the storage system.

This eliminates time consuming manual tasks, including setting NFS parameters such as block size, cache size and other parameters. EMC worked extensively with Oracle as a beta test partner.

“Oracle and EMC have collaborated for more than a decade and have provided thousands of mutual customers with solutions and services that have enabled them to get the most value from their information. Oracle Database 11g is designed to be effectively deployed on everything from small blade servers to the biggest SMP servers and clusters of all sizes and we’re working with EMC to make sure that the integration between the database and EMC storage systems and software are as seamless as possible,” said vice-president, Worldwide Platform and Distribution Alliances at Oracle, ,” Judson Althoff.

In the Middle East, EMC and Oracle work together with a diverse group of enterprise customers that span many sectors including government, aviation, oil and gas, telecommunications and manufacturing. Internationally, they have more than 55,000 mutual customers.

EMC is a Certified Advantage Partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork and Oracle is an EMC Global Alliance Partner. The two companies use each other’s technologies to run their respective businesses.

Source: www.tradearabia.com

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Oracle posts strong gains, alleviating investor concern

Business software maker Oracle Corp. on Wednesday posted a 35% gain in second-quarter profit, topping Wall Street's expectations and alleviating the concerns of investors looking at the company as a gauge of the broader tech market's health.

Oracle said net income for the period ended Nov. 30 rose to $1.3 billion, or 25 www.cents a share, from $967 million, or 18 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Meanwhile, revenue rose to $5.3 billion from $4.16 billion.
Excluding special items, Oracle said earnings for the quarter were 31 cents a share. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had been estimating Oracle would post earnings of 27 cents a share, on $5.04 billion in revenue.

Oracle Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz said in a prepared release that the results came thanks to "strong revenue growth across all product lines and geographies."
Oracle said sales of new software licenses grew 38% over the period a year earlier, marking the strongest quarterly increase in the past 10 years.

Analysts closely monitor Oracle's sales of new licenses to help them gauge the company's ability to wrangle new business, rather than depending on revenue drawn from maintaining and updating software already sold to existing customers.
Shares of Oracle jumped nearly 5% in after-hours trading to $21.73 following the company's quarterly earnings announcement.

Investors and analysts are especially interested in the health of Oracle's business now that the overall economy has faltered. Some have wondered whether the tough times will translate into fewer sales of Oracle's software to its many large customers in the financial, retail and other industries.

But Wednesday's results seemed to address those concerns in a resounding manner.
Oracle said its sales of new software application licenses grew 63% in the period compared to a year earlier.
Oracle's applications software is of particular interest to analysts, as the company has sought to build up its applications business in recent years -- mainly via acquisitions -- in order to provide a balance to its traditional database software business.
The increased emphasis on applications software has also drawn Oracle into tighter competition with German rival SAP AG.

SAP is expected to report fourth-quarter results in January.
Maintenance revenue has been a key point of contention between Oracle and SAP. An SAP subsidiary called TomorrowNow was attempting to undercut Oracle's lucrative product support business by pilfering documentation and offering cut-rate service for Oracle products, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this year by Oracle.
For its second quarter, Oracle said revenue from software license updates and product support grew 3%, to $2 billion.

Author: John Letzing @ www.marketwatch.com

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With economy sluggish, all eyes will turn to Oracle

Investors looking to gauge the effect of the troubled U.S. economy on the technology sector will focus on Oracle Corp.'s second-quarter earnings report, expected after the market's close Wednesday.
Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expect Oracle to post earnings of 27 cents a share for the period ended in November, on $5 billion in revenue.

Many analysts and investors are keen to hear what Oracle has to say about the health of its business now, amid the ongoing credit crunch and troubles stemming from the subprime mortgage crisis.
Business software maker Oracle has numerous customers among the country's largest financial services firms and other corporations. Some have speculated that these firms may scale back their purchases of software and other technologies amid the economic turbulence.

But analysts have made generally positive predictions for Oracle's quarterly results and outlook. Broadpoint Capital analyst Mark Murphy wrote in a note to clients Tuesday that he expects Oracle to beat consensus estimates on second-quarter sales and profit.
"Despite signs of softening macroeconomic demand, we continue to view our [Oracle earnings] forecast as being relatively resilient, due to Oracle's acquisitiveness and its large base of recurring maintenance revenue," Murphy wrote.
Oracle has turned in a string of well-received quarterly reports this year, translating its many recent acquisitions into quickly growing revenue while branching into new and more specialized areas of the business software market.
Shares of Oracle have risen more than 20% in the year-to-date, while U.S.-traded shares of rival business software maker SAP AG have fallen roughly 5%. Oracle shares rose slightly Tuesday, to $20.98.

Oracle's most recent acquisition, of Netherlands-based Moniforce, was announced earlier this month. Performance management software maker Moniforce "has a presence in the retail, federal, and financial sectors," CIBC World Markets analyst Brad Reback wrote in note released to clients.
Though Oracle's sales to financial firms may be slowed by the credit crunch, it should be able to cover its losses in the second quarter with gains in sales in other sectors, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry wrote in a note to clients earlier this month.
The "subprime mortgage industry may negatively impact Oracle's business by 2% to 4%," Chowdhry wrote, "however strength in healthcare, packaged goods and hi-tech verticals may offset the above weakness."
Chowdhry said he is expecting a "positive revenue surprise" for Oracle's second-quarter results, and "in-line guidance."
Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brendan Barnicle concurred with Chowdhry's upbeat expectations for the quarter.
"We have been very surprised by the strength of our [second-quarter] Oracle channel checks," Barnicle wrote in a note to clients earlier this month.
Barnicle said he's heard of strength in Oracle's sales to financial services firms, "which we certainly did not expect," as well as strong sales to small and medium-sized businesses, "which has historically been weak."

Author: John Letzing @ www.marketwatch.com

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Calsoft accelerates buy out of Inatech - Strengthens its Oracle practice

Chennai, 17th December 2007: Calsoft today announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for acquisition of the minority shareholding of 49% in Inatech Infosolutions, India (Inatech). The consideration for the acquisition of this part is valued at approximately USD 6.17 Million and will be paid through a combination of cash & stocks, subject to due regulatory approvals as applicable.

Earlier in Nov 2006, Calsoft had taken 51% majority interest in Inatech, a specialized end-to-end Oracle solutions provider in the enterprise space. As part of the agreement, Calsoft was to originally acquire the balance in November 2009.

Mr. S. (Sam) Santhosh, Managing Director & CEO, Calsoft, said, “Inatech’s good performance, their management team and European presence have encouraged us to accelerate the buy out. We expect this transaction to be accretive to Calsoft’s earnings. Given the size of our organization and the complementary nature of our businesses, we should recognize substantial revenue synergies and significant economies of scale.”

Inatech has posted consolidated revenues of Rs30.54 crores (US$ 7.5million) and with profits after tax of Rs 3.6 crores (US$0.9 million) for the half-year ended 30 September 2007.

Mr. Vedante Srihari, CEO & Founder of Inatech added, “There is an increasing demand for high quality Systems Integrators who can deliver globally. Now is the time for Inatech to join Calsoft and leverage synergies.”

Moving forward, Mr. Vedante Srihari would head Calsoft’s Enterprise Solutions strategic business unit.

Forward Looking Statements

Some of the statements in this release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include our financial and growth projections as well as statements concerning our plans, strategies, intentions and beliefs concerning our business and the markets in which we operate. These statements are based on information currently available to us, and we assume no obligation to update these statements as circumstances change. There are risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. These risks include, but are not limited to, the level of market demand for our services, the highly-competitive market for the types of services that we offer, market conditions that could cause our customers to reduce their spending for our services, our ability to create, acquire and build new businesses and to grow our existing businesses, our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel, currency fluctuations and market conditions in India and elsewhere around the world, and other risks not specifically mentioned herein but those that are common to industry.

About Calsoft

California Software Company Ltd (Calsoft) is a public limited company in India with a global presence. Its development practices are certified at CMMi Level 5. Founded in 1992, Calsoft group including subsidiaries currently employs over 1000 professionals. The group has development centers in Chennai, Bangalore and Mysore in India and Pleasanton, (California), Alameda (California), Boston (MA) in the USA. Calsoft group has marketing offices in the US, UK, Singapore, Dubai, Copenhagen and in India. Calsoft is listed in India at NSE (cali.ns) and BSE (cali.bo). For more information on Calsoft visit www.calsoft.co.in

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Amazon Takes on Oracle and IBM With SimpleDB

Companies can now go ahead and fire their expensive database administrators—those engineers who keep the Oracle or IBM databases humming. Amazon has just added an enterprise-class database called SimpleDB to its suite of cloud-based IT infrastructure, which also includes storage (S3) and computation (EC2) available by the drink. Today, Amazon is taking sign-ups for the SimpleDB beta, which should start in a few weeks. As it points out on the new Simple DB page:

Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.

Traditionally, this type of functionality has been accomplished with a clustered relational database that requires a sizable upfront investment, brings more complexity than is typically needed, and often requires a DBA to maintain and administer. In contrast, Amazon SimpleDB is easy to use and provides the core functionality of a database - real-time lookup and simple querying of structured data - without the operational complexity. Amazon SimpleDB requires no schema, automatically indexes your data and provides a simple API for storage and access. This eliminates the administrative burden of data modeling, index maintenance, and performance tuning. Developers gain access to this functionality within Amazon’s proven computing environment, are able to scale instantly, and pay only for what they use.

This will be especially attractive for Web startups. Amazon has just taken another major infrastructure cost off the table for them. Relational databases are expensive to buy and maintain. Whatever features or performance SimpleDB lacks, it should make up for in price. Amazon wants to democratize the database by making it available to more businesses, and even individuals, thus leveling the playing field between big companies and startups even more.

And since SimpleDB operates at Web scale, larger companies will wake up to the cost saving opportunities of such a service as well. IBM, for one, is already trying to preempt any customer defections with its copycat Blue Cloud initiative. If speed is of the essence, you might still want to keep your database on your own servers. But the Web is where most software will one day live, whether consumer or enterprise. And Amazon’s got nothing to lose by speeding that day along.

Pricing for SimpleDB is as follows:

Machine Utilization - $0.14 per Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hour consumed

Data Transfer

$0.10 per GB - all data transfer in

$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Data transfer “in” and “out” refers to transfer into and out of Amazon SimpleDB. Data transferred between Amazon SimpleDB and other Amazon Web Services is free of charge (i.e., $0.00 per GB).

Structured Data Storage - $1.50 per GB-month

Author: Erick Schonfeld @ www.techcrunch.com

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Customers Select HP and Oracle to Modernize Legacy Environments

HP and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), in collaboration with Intel Corp., today announced that their Application Modernization Initiative is gaining momentum as customers increasingly migrate away from legacy systems to drive business growth with more reliable and efficient IT infrastructures.

Introduced last year at Oracle OpenWorld 2006, the Application Modernization Initiative is a comprehensive solution that helps businesses modernize their legacy environments to increase business agility and performance, reduce operational costs and lower risks.

The initiative is a multi-vendor collaboration that delivers specialized hardware, software and services that are designed to help companies easily transition from legacy environments to an open-standards based infrastructure that is flexible enough to meet dynamic business conditions.

The Application Modernization Initiative was most recently adopted by the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket), a government agency under the Ministry of Finance in Sweden. In leveraging the tools and resources of the Application Modernization Initiative to modernize its IT environment, the organization joins, among others, BBVA, a Madrid-based multinational financial services group, and Carrefour Italy, part of one of the world’s leading distribution companies and the world’s second-largest retailer.

“Customers are rapidly adopting our solutions to assist in the modernization of their IT environments,” said Joe Kovach, vice president, Consulting and Integration, HP Services. “The Application Modernization Initiative enables organizations to efficiently transition to open standards-based architectures so they can focus on innovation.”

According to Dale Vecchio, research vice president, Gartner, “Gartner continues to see a growing interest in modernizing the business processes implemented in legacy applications. The desire to create greater agility is driving organizations to consider more modern application platforms as the vehicle for satisfying that demand. The relationship between the application decisions and the underlying infrastructure upon which they are delivered is critical to any IT modernization initiative.”

When the Swedish Tax Agency wanted to modernize its technology infrastructure to make its operational activities more effective, it worked with HP Services to design and implement an application modernization solution. The agency’s objective was to simplify its procedures when interacting with both the public and business community.

“We have selected HP to perform key migration of our Unisys legacy applications. This migration will make it possible for the Swedish Tax Agency to provide better opportunities for all kinds of taxpayers to file their tax returns electronically, and save time and money,” says Anne Grön, chief information officer, Swedish Tax Agency. “This is a critical modernization program for the Swedish Tax Agency. Under the contract, HP will migrate the existing legacy mainframe environment, consisting of Cobol and Assembler applications, to a new, open systems-based environment including HP Integrity servers and Oracle Database.”

The Application Modernization Initiative solution incorporates the Oracle Grid Computing Platform with SOA capabilities, including Oracle Database 10g with Real Application Clusters, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Enterprise Manager/Grid Control.

The solution runs on HP Integrity systems based on Intel® Itanium® processors – working with the HP Virtual Server Environment Reference Architecture and HP Software Business Technology Optimization solutions that include SOA governance, quality and management products – making it an ideal platform to achieve the required availability, scalability and resource utilization.

It is designed, implemented and supported through the HP Application Modernization Services portfolio and also includes architectural design and consulting support from HP, Intel and Oracle.

“The success of our joint investment in the Application Modernization Initiative demonstrates the strength of our alliance. Together we are helping enterprises take advantage of an open standards, SOA-based solution to give customers the confidence to address these expensive and inflexible legacy systems,” said John Gawkowski, vice president, Platform Technology Solutions, Oracle. “We are delighted to have Oracle’s Grid Computing software playing such a key role in this initiative.”

“Open systems based on Intel Itanium processors, such as the HP Integrity server line, provide superior price/performance and dependability for mission-critical applications,” said Diane Bryant, vice president, Digital Enterprise Group, Intel. “The Application Modernization Initiative from Intel, HP and Oracle is providing tangible benefits to customers through accelerated innovation, minimized risk and reduced costs.”

Underscoring the open nature of the Application Modernization Initiative, HP, Intel and Oracle also announced today the first two members of a network of independent software vendors whose offerings complement the initiative.

Relativity Technologies, Inc. supports the initiative with its Modernization Workbench® software platform. The platform maximizes the business value of existing operations by analyzing, adapting and re-architecting legacy applications. Orsyp S.A. is providing its market-leading Dollar Universe job and batch scheduler software used by thousands of companies worldwide across a broad range of platforms.

More information on the Application Modernization Initiative product and service offerings is available at www.hp.com/go/ami.

Source: Palo Alto @ www.hp.com

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BMW Oracle Racing: Defender’s Decision Needed

The Golden Gate Yacht Club (GGYC) today made a renewed call for the America’s Cup Defender to confirm whether it will agree to a mutual consent challenge so that planning for the next regatta can go ahead.

This follows a meeting in New York yesterday where the American club was disappointed that Alinghi representatives were only prepared to discuss a new vision for the Deed of Gift rather than concrete proposals.

Last week Ernesto Bertarelli, Alinghi’s President, issued a public letter on his vision for a new Cup. Larry Ellison, the owner of the American club’s BMW ORACLE racing team, wrote to Bertarelli today asking him to first declare where Alinghi stands on accepting GGYC’s proposal for a conventional America’s Cup in Valencia in 2009.

'We have heard Ernesto’s vision, but what we really need is his decision,' Larry Ellison said.

The club said time is running out. Teams need to plan their campaigns, and GGYC cannot continue to prepare for two different types of racing at the same time.

On December 4, GGYC sent Alinghi a proposal for a conventional regatta in Valencia in 2009 that was supported by many challengers. Alinghi has not responded to this.

Source: www.sail-world.com

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Q&A: Oracle's Dave Shaffer talks BPM

Dave Shaffer is Oracle's senior director of product management, BPM, and SOA. He is responsible for business process management and how it aligns with services-oriented architecture as part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware portfolio.

Q. What tend to be the most common drivers for business process management these days - obviously BPM has been around for many years in a number of guises?

A. I think there are a few categories that we commonly see. The first is people looking to eliminate manual tasks and error-prone systems - the automation of human workflow.

The second is about business visibility. The need for people to see the business processes, how they are executing, where there are bottlenecks. They want something they can layer on top of the existing infrastructure, and they look to BPM to expose that.

The third is where companies see their business processes as a key differentiator. Everybody has a set of core business processes but some companies look to apply BPM as a way to increase their revenue. So different people dive in at different points.

Q. One of the challenges in BPM has historically been that it is a technology or discipline that cuts across both the business and the IT department. Does that make it hard to get right?

A. Yes, we have seen that as an inhibitor at times. Sometimes we are selling to the business, which is looking for a more rigorous methodology. Other times you are selling to the IT department and they are often starting with the need for a systems-based approach. That gap means that there can be two sides, and one of our roles is to help the two sides talk to each other.

Q. Communication between the two is key then?

A. Yes absolutely, the two sides need to talk often and clearly explain in terms that each understands what they are trying to achieve and what constraints they are each facing. A lot of projects in this area may be driven by the business initially, and one mistake is to think of the IT side as a detail -- it's a very important detail! Because for the business to realize the benefits they need the IT department to be on board. The good news is that those two groups seem to be getting closer and closer.

Q. How does services-oriented architecture fit with BPM? SOA often seems to be about an approach to IT systems development and maturity, rather than having very much to offer the business in terms that they understand; but equally BPM is often described as a way of putting a business-focused veneer on top of more flexible IT systems.

A. Yes, we have an SOA maturity model that as you say, focuses primarily on the IT aspects of SOA. We think of SOA as an enabler for BPM, but it is definitely not the same as, or a substitute, for a BPM methodology in its own right. So we do also have some documentation that speaks to the BPM methodology itself.

Q. You say that BPM can be initially driven by the business or by IT. Are there any rules of thumb learned from your customer projects as to which approach tends to deliver greater success?

A. In our experience, if you have the business pull it works better, more often. But our advice in either case is to take an evolutionary approach: take bite-sized projects and automate them. Start with small, manual tasks on the IT side.

IT often knows more about the business than the business knows about IT. So IT can certainly propose solutions to business problems. But we see the greatest leap forward when these proposals are welcomed and embraced by the business.

Q. Many will feel that they have made significant investments in their IT systems already: ERP was meant to automate many processes, while business process re-engineering that was once such a hot topic is no longer particularly fashionable as for many companies it led to expensive projects that did not always deliver. Most analysts today espouse modern BPM as putting a new layer of abstraction, if you will, above existing systems. Is that something Oracle buys into?

A. We definitely believe in the "layering above" approach. We think most traditional BPM vendors have not focused enough on this aspect.

Our BPM tools are designed with the expectation that they will work above existing systems. That fits absolutely with our view of what SOA is all about. In fact we think SOA is a key enabler of BPM: you can layer it on top of existing systems and decouple them from the business logic without having to rewrite them just because a system or process has changed. In fact if there is one thing that we believe will accelerate BPM adoption it is the SOA approach itself.

How should you best tackle mainframe modernization? We think the best way is to be able to build new processes around key, clean interfaces that make change less invasive. Those clean interfaces are possible now thanks to SOA and BPM. BPM on SOA gives you an evolution roadmap of IT systems at the back end connected to business processes at the front.

Q. Does this not require some sort of cultural change though?

A. Absolutely, but the role of an in-between agent that straddles IT and the business is already starting to emerge. Titles like business process architect or similar speak to this trend. Even without such roles, there is a clear need for business people who can describe their IT requirements in a more effective way, and IT people who can clearly describe the IT systems implementation as it affects the business.

Q. Historically many BPM pure-plays specialized in the human aspects of BPM -- workflow, while others were better at the system-to-system level. Is that distinction blurring?

A. Yes, we think that has been another inhibitor to BPM. For our customers today there is almost nobody with a pure systems or pure human element, it is always a blend. If you have to change tools to do that, it is not going to work. That's why larger vendors like us were able to jump in and leap-frog the pure-plays: we were able to straddle both camps.

Q. As you mentioned, one of the drivers for BPM is to garner better visibility of the business processes. What gives Oracle a story in that particular space?

A. We have made acquisitions that have enabled us to instrument business processes and feed them out to business activity monitoring [BAM] dashboards. Out of the box you can get that visibility: what are the exceptions, what is the processing time and so on. This can then be shown in real time in BAM dashboards. They can be viewed in a lightweight interface in the browser using technologies that give you a rich-client interface, thanks to AJAX [Asynchronous JavaScript and XML].

Q. As we understand it, that complements rather than replaces more traditional business intelligence capabilities?

A. Yes, at Oracle we also saw a need for more sophisticated BI tools like those which came from the Hyperion acquisition and Oracle BI Enterprise Edition. These tools provide sophisticated analytics and can also integrate with the BPM solution and feed events to data warehouses as well.

Real-time BAM data is great for seeing the state of the business in real-time but there is also typically a very large data set that needs analysis, for example for regulatory filings. Compliance like Sarbanes, Basel II - in fact if you look at those they often almost mandate BPM, because you have to be able to describe in detail your processes.

Q. What about the latest standards that are at work in supporting BPM? BPEL [Business Process Execution Language] is perhaps the most widely adopted, but there are others, aren't there, like BPMN [Business Process Modeling Notation] and XPDL [XML Process Definition Language] that appear on the surface to be competitive. It's all a bit confusing, isn't it?

A. We think any BPM tools should support BPEL. The business stakeholders may not know or care about BPEL but it offers a way for them to own their processes in an independent fashion. It gives them flexibility, future-proofing, and vendor interoperability. No other BPM standard has the backing of so many key vendors as BPEL. However, BPMN is clearly complementary to BPEL and we see the two standards working very well together as BPMN provides a modeling notation for business analysts to use while BPEL provides an execution language for deployable processes.

Author: Jason Stamper @ www.cbronline.com

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Partnership is Oracle's goal

Oracle has never been a vendor to let the grass grow under its feet ­ especially with its track record of 40 acquisitions in the past 45 months.

So it was ironic that delegates at its recent Oracle Partner Network day at Arsenal FC’s Emirates Stadium spent a lot of time watching the grass grow. Literally.
The Emirates Stadium pitch, which could be seen from many angles within the conference centre, had been artificially lit with a series of special floodlights to encourage the grass to grow to maintain that lush-green pitch that Gunners fans have come to know and love.

During the event, Oracle revealed it has been investing Premiership-style sums in keeping its global channel running smoothly ­ pumping more than $40m (£19.4m) a year into helping its partners generate business. And it pledged to do more of the same.

Speaking to CRN, Stein Surlien, vice president of EMEA alliances and channels at Oracle, said: “Partnerships are becoming a substantial part of our licensing revenue ­ adding up to 44 per cent of our total licence revenue. It has been growing in double-digit figures for the past five years. Partners are very important to Oracle.”

The Partner day was Oracle’s first official event in London, but its 28th in the past three years. During that time it has met with 24,000 partner representatives in 2,500 one-to-one meetings.

“This way we are getting the right feedback from partners and it allows them to tell us their views,” he said.

Surlien said the vendor is pushing ahead in three core areas: grid computing; middleware including SOA, business intelligence and Java tools; and also in developing “industry leading” applications following its mammoth acquisition spree that included JD Edwards, Siebel, Hyperion and PeopleSoft.

“We are driving consolidation in the industry,” Surlien said. “Our partners are supportive of this because it adds value to their proposition. We are now leaders in the grid computing space and in the top two for middleware. When resellers look for a partner, they know we can help them make money.”

During the event, Oracle unleashed a raft of new tools and offerings for its partner base, including ISV partners and its Oracle Services for Partners (OMS4P) internet portal to help with channel marketing activities (CRN, 26 November).

From a UK perspective, Charles Courquin, director of technology general business at Oracle, said the channel was a vital part of the vendor’s business strategy.

"Our goal is 100 per cent business through partners,” he said. “If you look at enterprise customers and then at the mid-market, there are 1.1 million [mid-market] organisations in the UK. That equates to a $17.6bn spend. We have strength in our technology, and our partners take that and translate it into the business needs of their customers.

“We have aligned the Oracle team here by industry as well as by telemarketing and business development resources. We are starting to see the growth in ISVs and also new resellers coming on board. We have a pool of services they can use. They take the raw material and put an angle on it.”

Surlien added that the vendor is also promoting “co-opetition” ­ a term used to describe a vendor that is competing with another vendor, but also uses them as a close partner to further mutual business.

“Through our acquisitions and because of global forces we will be competing with the likes of SAP, but they are also one of our biggest partners,” he said.

Surlien said the key to a successful channel strategy was in the engagement model.
“Loyalty is about predictability and consistency. We know we can destroy things if we make the wrong move so we need to get it right in terms of predictability, impact and strategy.”

He said the vendor would continue to make acquisitions.

“We buy IP and innovation,” he said. “We invest in the technology and integrate the teams in terms of skills. We look at the people and pick the best for each team once integrated. The first acquisition was a tough battle, but we think we have got it right each time. We will continue driving consolidation as we have always done.”
Partners seemed quite impressed with Oracle’s mantra at the event.

Dave Forest, managing director of Pricipient, said: “We have been working with Oracle for many years, in our case focusing on the manufacturing sector. Over the past four years we have seen a lot of changes, particularly with the Accelerate programme.

“There has been a real emphasis on helping partners. We are about to embark on a go-to-market campaign in the life science area. On the application side there has been a lot of money invested in the tool sets.”

Mark Pulling, managing director of Application Links, said: “We have been working with Oracle for some time. The marketing collateral has helped us to go to market with a powerful brand and helps us evolve our IP in that area too. In terms of the HR market ­ a particularly strong area for us ­ there are a lot of alternatives on the market, but Oracle’s is a scaleable product and the competition is not.”

However, Oracle is keen to shake off its past image with the channel once and for all and Surlien said the firm had learned its lesson about vendor arrogance.

“We are going to work hard to prove to our partners we can help them make money,” he said. “Oracle is a humble company. We know how important our partners are and we realise they have a choice in terms of what vendor to partner with. We want them to stay with us.”

Author: Sara Yirrell @ www.channelweb.co.uk

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Support desk is unsatisfactory, say Oracle users

One in five Oracle Support users is unhappy with some element of the service, according to an annual survey published at this week’s UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) conference.

Dissatisfaction with global support has more than doubled, a further seven per cent of respondents cited a need for localised support, and the number complaining about the quality of offshore resources is up from seven per cent to 17 per cent.

But there were also positive results. Eighty-one per cent of Oracle Server users are happy with the product and 76 per cent of Oracle Consulting customers would recommend the services they use.

There is also increased take-up of the recent software releases.

“Historic versions have virtually disappeared from the estate, and that’s good news,” said UKOUG chairman Ronan Miles.

Author: Janie Davies @ www.vnunet.com

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Oracle to Put Moniforce Into Its Web App Mix

Oracle opened up its pocketbook again today, this time to snap up Dutch software firm Moniforce for an undisclosed price.

Moniforce's webStress and webProbe software lets companies monitor and evaluate the performance and availability of their Web applications by tracking a company's total network traffic.

Oracle officials said Moniforce's applications will help round out its Enterprise Manager application performance management suite, giving users the ability to detect and resolve end-user experience and application logic issues.

Moniforce's UXinsight software, developed by its UXTechnology subsidiary, detects errors in application logic and provides diagnostics and alerts for custom applications built on multiple software platforms.

"The transaction underscores Oracle's strategy of lowering total cost of ownership and delivering higher quality of service for customers running packaged or custom applications in Oracle or non- Oracle environments," Chuck Rozwat, Oracle's executive vice president of product development, said in a prepared release.
In a June research report, Forrester Research analyst Jean-Pierre Garbani wrote that Moniforce's webProbe software "forms a key element in managing service levels and supporting mission-critical Web applications. Although Moniforce is a European vendor, it offers a world-class suite of Web application management solutions."

In the past four years, Oracle has acquired more than 45 companies. During last month's OpenWorld conference, Oracle executives repeated the company's commitment to enter new markets such as virtualization and make strategic acquisitions to round out its enterprise software portfolio.

In the application performance management sector, Oracle competes against the likes of HP, which picked up Mercury Interactive for $4.5 billion last year, IBM, Corvil and Quest Software.

Oracle shares dipped 8 cents a share, or less than 1 percent, to $21.14 a share in Thursday afternoon trading after the deal was announced.

Author: Larry Barrett @ www.internetnews.com

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City of Las Vegas implements Oracle BPEL Process Manager

The City of Las Vegas has implemented Oracle BPEL Process Manager, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, to integrate various applications and business processes, as well as to provide a seamless user experience to city employees.

The city worked with Innowave, a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, on the implementation. The City of Las Vegas first used Oracle business process execution language (BPEL) Process Manager to streamline business processes within its water pollution control facility. The facility recently implemented Oracle Utilities Work and Asset Management to enhance efficiencies in maintaining public assets and managing the respective city workforce.

The city used Oracle BPEL Process Manager to integrate the utilities solution with the Oracle E-Business Suite's financial, human resources, payroll and purchasing applications, delivering a comprehensive view of the facility's numerous infrastructure assets and enabling more strategic management decisions.

Fauerbach, enterprise project manager for City of Las Vegas, said: "We have been looking for ways to become more efficient, increase employee proficiency and make improvements to the physical plant as we strive to economize wastewater management. Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle Utilities Work and Asset Management provided us the tools to do exactly that."

Source: www.cbronline.com

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Oracle clarifies VMware support...plans sort of

Confusion over Larry Ellison's comments at OpenWorld leads to clarifications from Oracle and VMware. Oracle Corp. is attempting to clarify its support plan for non-Oracle virtual servers to dispel confusion caused by conflicting statements from executives during its OpenWorld user conference in San Francisco last month.

After the Oracle VM virtual server was unveiled during the conference, CEO Larry Ellison said that the company would "essentially" continue providing support for Oracle software running on rival VMware Inc.'s virtual machines.

Ellison appeared to contradict earlier comments by Ed Screven, chief corporate development architect at Oracle, who said that the vendor would not offer support for such systems.

In an e-mailed response to Computerworld, Oracle contended that there is "no change" in its support policy for customers running Oracle applications on VMware. The statement asserted that such users have never been guaranteed full support.

"Oracle has not certified any Oracle software on VMware virtualized environments," the company said. Oracle said it will fix problems in non-Oracle virtualized environments only if they are unrelated to the virtualization platform.

VMware contended last week that its customers running Oracle software needn't worry about the database vendor's support policy. "Oracle has been responsive [to] and supportive of customers who are running Oracle products in VMware environments," said Parag Patel, vice-president for alliances at VMware, in an e-mail to Computerworld last week.

"We haven't seen many referrals from Oracle (even though Oracle's official policy mentions sending referrals to VMware), which seems to indicate that Oracle is engaging with our mutual customers," Patel wrote.

Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc., noted that Oracle tends to work with its customers despite such support policies.

"Like Microsoft, Oracle doesn't especially like to play in other children's sandboxes, but in practice, it does what it has to for important customers -- even if it does so reluctantly," he said. "This isn't exactly nice behavior. But it's hard to argue that it's hurt them to any significant degree."

Source: www.itbusiness.ca

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UK Oracle User Group Announces 2007 Customer Survey Results

Over 600 UK Oracle Customers respond to User Group Survey

LONDON - 3rd December 2007: UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG), an independent not for profit membership organisation created to support Oracle stakeholders, has issued the findings from its 2007 customer survey.

The survey, which questioned over 600 Oracle users in advance of the UKOUG 2007 conference (3rd - 6th December, Birmingham International Convention Centre), collects opinions from the growing Oracle user community. The survey showed an across the board increase in Oracle customer satisfaction with particular highlights being: -

Oracle Services
• Oracle University did especially well in the survey with 44% of respondents saying they were ‘very happy’ with Oracle University, a 16% increase on 2006
• More than half (54%) of Oracle Consulting customers are ‘happy’ with their overall experience
• Over three-quarters (76%) of Oracle Consulting customers in 2007 would recommend their services to other organisations
• Overall satisfaction with the Oracle Corporation has increased by 7% in 2007
• 81% of Oracle Server users are ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’ with the product

Oracle Technology
• 81% of Oracle Server users are ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’ with the product
• The number of customers operating on version 9i has significantly increased from 2006 from 28% to 45% increase in usage
• Several respondents commented on the scale of migration from older DBMS releases, commenting that they are ‘looking forward to both the 11g and Apps Server to bring products together to provide a uniformed experience’
• 49% of respondents are ‘happy’ with the functions and features of Oracle BI and reporting tools
PeopleSoft and JD Edwards
Of special note was satisfaction in PeopleSoft and JD Edwards increasing following the results of the 2006 survey. As a direct result of last years survey, Oracle has been working with UK Oracle User Group to increase satisfaction which has been achieved through particular metrics of:-
• PeopleTools is the most satisfactory PeopleSoft product with 65% of respondents being ‘happy’ with the product
• Respondents ‘happy’ with PeopleSoft financials software continued to increase from 67% in 2005 to 75% in 2007
• Respondents ‘happy’ with PeopleSoft human capital management have increased from 70% in 2005 to 75% in 2007
• JD Edwards customers were asked how ‘happy’ they were with the overall functions and features of 15 JD Edwards modules, the average score of ‘happy’ was 10% higher than in 2006

Focus for 2008
• The survey did show lower levels of satisfaction in Oracle Support with 1 in 5 Oracle Support users being ‘unhappy’ with an element of Oracle Support. The need for localised support was raised by a further 7% in 200
• Dissatisfaction with global support desks increased by more than double from 7% to 17%. However Oracle Web Conference/Direct Connect and Remote Diagnostic Tools were rated highly by those who use them and indicate that greater take up by users would significantly improve the support experience
• 14% of people using an Oracle Account Team are ‘unhappy’ with it, this is a 4% increase from 2006
• Satisfaction in the Oracle licensing scheme has fallen since 2005, just 15% of respondents said they were ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’, a 5% decrease since 2006 and users saying they were ‘unhappy’ or ‘very unhappy’ increased to 32%

Ronan Miles, chairman of the UK Oracle User Group commented, “The annual UK Oracle User Group survey gauges the opinions and perceptions held by Oracle customers in the UK. We are delighted that over 600 UK customers have responded to the survey and we are pleased to see that overall levels of customer satisfaction with Oracle are increasing. Of particular note is the positive response by the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards communities to the efforts Oracle has made during the year following last years survey. Our communities are dedicated to assisting Oracle succeed for our shared success and we look forward to helping Oracle address the new challenges the survey raised.”

“Oracle is delighted to see the responses from the User Group, particularly the increase in overall satisfaction with many of our customers adopting the latest versions of our products and seeing a solid return on investment,” said Ian Smith, regional senior vice president, Oracle UK, Ireland and Israel. “We have worked hard alongside the UKOUG to address the needs of our customers and we are delighted to see we are making good progress. That said we know we still have work to do and we are looking forward to hearing from attendees at the UKOUG conference this year to understand how we can continue to add value for our customers.”

Source: Oracle Press Releases

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Oracle tops corporate software usage study

Fresh from its annual OpenWorld conference, Oracle has earned top rankings in a corporate software usage study released recently by ChangeWave, an investment research firm.

The study, which was conducted during October, surveyed 1,780 people involved with IT spending in their organisations.

It found that 36% of respondents use Oracle's business intelligence software, up eight points from the last survey, which was conducted in July. However, Microsoft followed closely behind with 35%. Hyperion Solutions, which Oracle acquired this year, was counted separately from Oracle in the survey and also showed gains for its BI offerings, moving up five points to 19%.

For CRM software, Oracle maintained the 26% usage rate pegged by the July study, followed by SAP and Microsoft with 17% and 16% respectively. Oracle also made modest gains for ERP, rising two points to 32% behind leader SAP, which had 38% usage. Microsoft showed much stronger momentum here, however, shooting up 15 points to 29%.

ChangeWave also asked respondents to reveal from which vendors their companies planned to purchase software in the next three months. Oracle showed a 5% uptick, while SAP remained flat and Microsoft dipped by five points.

"Oracle is showing surprising strength in an otherwise calm macro environment," says Paul Carton, director of research at ChangeWave.

The study also found that 18% of respondents planned to spend more money on software within 90 days of answering the survey and 14% planned to spend less.

Carton says the findings regarding increased software spending are a positive sign for the industry overall. "The fact is we've seen this downtick all year, and to see it stabilising now is interesting," he says.

Carton says 83% of ChangeWave's pool of about 10,000 potential respondents are in the US and 17% are in Canada and Europe, and the survey results should be viewed accordingly. "Essentially, you're looking at the Nasdaq economy and how it buys stuff," he says. But, he asserts, "It's always been great at measuring market share."

The study findings arrive several days after the conclusion of OpenWorld in San Francisco, during which Oracle previewed its next-generation Fusion applications and launched a virtualisation product, Oracle VM.

Author: Chris Kanaracus @ computerworld.co.nz

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Microsoft more open than Oracle? Who'd have thought it?

Oracle may be signalling its intention to strong-arm customers over to its new virtualisation platform, but Microsoft is doing just the opposite.

As part of news announced recently regarding its virtualisation-enabled Windows Server 2008 and its new standalone Hyper-V Server software, Microsoft also unveiled its Server Virtualisation Validation Program.

The programme, which will become available next June, is intended to help companies using Windows Server in conjunction with third-party server virtualisation platforms get support if technical problems arise, according to a posting late last week on Microsoft's official Windows Server division blog.

The program allows companies such as VMware, or Xen provider Citrix Systems "to self-test and validate a specific virtualisation stack (hardware + hypervisor) to provide customers out-of-the-box support for Windows guest OSes," Alessandro Perilli, an Italy-based consultant, wrote on his Virtualisation.info blog.

Previously, Microsoft would only try to support Windows Server users using non-Microsoft virtualisation if they paid for pricey Premier Support, according to Frank Artale, vice president of business development at Citrix, who confirmed the vendor's plans to join the program.

"Now, Microsoft and Citrix can work together to jointly support customers, exchange bug info and solve problems," he said.

Until now, Microsoft only had a joint support relationship for non-Microsoft hardware virtualisation software with Novell

Virtual Iron Software also plans to join the programme, which will enable joint support for Windows Server 2000, 2003 and 2008. Other vendors expressing support are listed online.

Market leader VMware, which has been tangling with Microsoft all year on virtualisation, "intends to review and participate" in Microsoft's programme when more details emerge, wrote Dan Chu, vice president for emerging products and markets at VMware, in an e-mail.

"VMware and Microsoft have extensively discussed joint support for our mutual customers in the last year," Chu wrote. "We're currently working to ensure that customers receive the support they need, and that VMware environments are optimised for Microsoft operating systems and applications.

"Microsoft and VMware already handle customer support issues together through TSAnet and the direct relationship between our companies," he wrote. "The development of this programme further extends Microsoft's support policies and enhances customers' ability to choose the right virtualisation platform for their environment without worrying about the artificial constraints of support policy."

The programme does not apply to Microsoft applications such as SQL Server, although the Windows Server blog hinted that could change.

Oracle executives, in contrast to Microsoft, said last week during the OpenWorld conference that customers running Oracle applications in non-Oracle virtualisation platforms break their enterprise support contract.

VMware asserted that Oracle has been supporting their joint customers since 2006. Despite Oracle's "marketing spin," VMware is confident that Oracle will continue to its support, pointing to statements by CEO Larry Ellison and language in Oracle's own support contracts.

Citrix's Artale noted that this is "an interesting case where Microsoft appears to be much more open than other vendors" such as Oracle. He said he had not yet spoken with Oracle about Oracle's support plans, though he said any pulling of support would affect Citrix less than VMware. Most of Citrix's customers for XenServer virtualise Windows Server rather than Linux, upon which Oracle applications tend to run, he said.

In any case, some Oracle users are unfazed.

This "is nothing more than a 'good cop, bad cop' ploy'" from Oracle, said Karl Ehr, IT operations manager at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. The school plans to move some of its Oracle applications to VMware within half a year. Oracle pulling support for big users such as Golden Gate, he says, "is not going to happen."

Author: Eric Lai @ Computerworld.com

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Oracle scores with partner portal

Oracle has reaffirmed its commitment to the channel by unveiling a range of new tools to help its partners drive business forward.

At its Oracle Partner Network Day event last week at the Arsenal Emirates Stadium, the database software vendor unveiled its Oracle Marketing Services for Partners portal that will offer tools and services to help VARs carry out effective and targeted marketing activities.

The vendor also launched a new Oracle Business Accelerator Authoring Tool based on its JD Edwards software, which will give partners the ability to design and build new interactive questionnaires.

Stein Surlien, vice president of EMEA alliances and channels at Oracle, said: “Partners are very important to Oracle. About 44 per cent of our total licence revenue last year came through the channel and it has been showing double digit growth for the past five years.

We are spending $40m in partner development every year. Partnering excellence is one of our five key drivers and profitability is key.”

David Forrest, director at Oracle certified partner Percipient, said: “Over the past five years there have been changes in our relationship with Oracle. It has been a great relationship in terms of marketing, lead generation, advertising and exhibitions.”

Author: Sara Yirrell @ www.channelweb.co.uk

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How Oracle can lose by winning

If you want to have a good laugh, take a look at Oracle Corp.'s complaint against SAP AG, SAP America and the recent SAP acquisition, TomnorrowNow. It almost humorously describes the efforts of SAP to create a third-party support program aimed at current Oracle users, especially the ones sick of paying for Oracle's support and never-ending upgrades. View the complaint. Nobody can be certain how such lawsuits turn out, but I can't see how Oracle does not have SAP over a barrel.

The chief executive of Bryan, Texas-based TomorrowNow didn't help matters by resigning. See related story.
The crux of the case stems from Oracle's ability to track down what seems to have been a spidering operation, where TomorrowNow allegedly sent a crawler into the Oracle support site and downloaded every document it could find. That appears to be a clear violation of the terms of service of the support site. Curiously, it looks like Honeywell International Inc. was one company with alleged access to the site.

Oracle charges that TomorrowNow, using Honeywell's and other customers' accounts and passwords, went on the support site and downloaded what it could. Oracle also says that this was to be used for providing the exact same support services sold by SAP.

Normally, these sorts of tech lawsuits are dry and boring, but the writer of this particular complaint makes the story exciting -- employing the radical concept of plain English to explain the situation in detail. Apparently SAP, via TomorrowNow, thought it would be able to reproduce the entire Oracle support database for its own use. The legal filing also claims the company wanted to do a "cut-rate" service; it also includes unlawyerly-like terms such as "50 cents on the dollar" and "bankrolling." I found the whole thing to be a hoot. More importantly, by using common language it's an excellent PR vehicle. When you read it, you are convinced that Oracle is 100% in the right and SAP is bad.

I'm certain that this legal document was written to be read by the public, which is an interesting concept. A good proportion of the document is blatant self-promotion as would be presented by a PR person. But there is a subtext within the document that presents a problem for Oracle. It sounds as if the various licenses and terms of service lock users down so much that a prospective customer will have to think twice about using the Oracle products. I mean, the message is clear: Nobody is going to be able to provide "cut-rate," third-party support for companies too cheap to pay the full fare. What's more, once on the Oracle treadmill, you'll never be able to get off it.

This translates into pricey support and endless upgrades. To Oracle, support and upgrades add up to $2.1 billion in revenue, according to the corporate-software giant's third-quarter earnings report. If customers feel cornered by Oracle and these expenses, will they shy away from Oracle in the first place? Winning this suit sends a bad message. The company is going to have to license third-party support for its products somehow. That is the only way that a long-term safety net can be created to assuage users. Because Oracle has created a gravy train for itself with no escape routes for the clients, it will not be able to give up any of the free money. Who would? Generally speaking, I'm not jazzed about software plans where, like it or not, you are wedded for life. It cannot be a good decision to choose such a route. This complaint, ironically, spells that out.

Author: John C. Dvorak @ Marketwatch

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Oracle is RP’s top middleware vendor

Its high-profile buyout of smaller software companies seems to be paying off well for database king Oracle Corp. as it recently cited a newly released report showing it is now the top middleware vendor in the Philippines.

The report by research firm Gartner said the portal, process, and middleware (PPMW) offering of Oracle posted 170-percent revenue growth in the country in 2006 as it grew seven times faster than the market as a whole and more than doubled its market share while the top two vendors lost share.

In Asia Pacific, Oracle grew 70 percent, the fastest growing PPMW vendor among the top three in 2006, according to Gartner. The statement issued by Oracle did not mention the other two middleware vendors.

Gartner’s definition of the PPMW market segment includes general-purpose portal products, Business Process Management-enabling technologies, application integration and platform middleware.

The family of Oracle Fusion Middleware products is composed of Oracle Applications including Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Siebel CRM, Oracle Transportation Management, Oracle Retail, Demantra, and i-flex.

The company said its Oracle Fusion Middleware has more than 50,000 customers, spanning the financial services, retail, telecommunications, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, health care, transportation and public sector industries.

"In the Philippines, Oracle is gaining strong traction with customers. Oracle Fusion Middleware enables customers to solve their most critical business challenges while providing a clear path to service-oriented architecture," said Leo Liang, vice president of SOA sales for Oracle Asia Pacific.

Oracle said other research firms have also validated the leading position of its middleware offering with Forrester Research "recognizing Oracle as a leader across the board in its evaluation of application server platforms."

The Redwood Shore, California-based software giant said its middleware product is supported by 9,000 partners, including independent software vendors (ISVs), value added resellers, and system integrators.

The definition and scope of middleware has changed significantly during the last three years in line with the need for greater flexibility, better information, productivity, and tighter controls.

Author: Melvin G. Calimag @ www.mb.com.ph

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It's All Gravy For Oracle's Ellison

Oracle CEO and multi-billionaire Larry Ellison wrapped up what was, perhaps, the most important week of his company's year by selling off another 1 million shares of Oracle stock.

According to a Form 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ellison sold the shares as part of a prearranged trading plan on Friday, one day after Oracle's OpenWorld conference concluded in San Francisco.

The shares were sold for $20.68 a share, netting Forbes's No. 11 wealthiest person in the world another $20 million and change. His net worth was estimated at roughly $21.5 billion.

Oracle last week unveiled a series of new products to more than 43,000 OpenWorld attendees, including Oracle VM, the company's first virtualization software offering.

On Wednesday, IT consulting and research firm Saugatuck Technology issued a report suggesting Oracle and other virtualization software vendors still have plenty of time to gain ground on industry leader and Wall Street darling VMware.

"Easier management of virtual infrastructures is critical to broader and accelerated adoption of virtualization," analyst Charlie Burns wrote in the report. "Oracle offers single-source support which addresses some of the challenges of problem management when running Oracle on Linux in a virtual server."

Oracle VM will support Linux and Windows servers and is based on the Xen open source hypervisor. Oracle, which isn't charging for the software but plans to sell service contracts for updates, bug fixes and other support for either $499 or $999 a year, has tacked on a Web-based management console for server administrators to easily migrate and manage applications and operating systems running on both virtual and physical servers.

Oracle shares dipped 32 cents, or 2 percent, to $20.37 a share in Wednesday trading. The stock has fluctuated between $15.97 a share and $23 a share in the past 12 months.

Author: Larry Barrett @ internetnews.com

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SAP axed TomorrowNow execs to avoid black eye over Oracle suit

Analysts on Tuesday said that SAP AG's move to part with key executives at its TomorrowNow subsidiary is likely an attempt to repair a public image that has been tarnished by allegations that TomorrowNow employees illegally downloaded confidential data from Oracle Corp.'s Web site.

The alleged activities of workers at Bryan, Texas-based TomorrowNow are at the epicenter of a lawsuit filed by Oracle in March over alleged illegal software downloads of customer support materials by workers at the subsidiary.

SAP officials declined Tuesday to comment on the resignation of TomorrowNow executives beyond Monday's statement that it is weighing "several options" for the subsidiary, including its possible sale. TomorrowNow, which provides services-based support and maintenance for Oracle-owned PeopleSoft Inc., Siebel Systems Inc. and J.D. Edwards & Co. technology, was acquired by SAP in January 2005.

Noting that SAP is the type of company that "doesn't like to look bad in public," Marc Songini, an analyst at Wellesley, Mass.-based Nucleus Research Inc., said this week's actions show that the ERP software vendor is making a concerted effort to wash its hands of TomorrowNow's suspect actions.

"Whether or not there's any real culpability from the parent company [SAP] as far as illegal downloading, they don't want the black eye," Songini said. "So you had to figure somebody's head was going to roll. Obviously, it doesn't look good for SAP that it's doing this."

Ray Wang, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc., said the departure of TomorrowNow top executives allows SAP to create a "fresh start" and reassures customers that such activities won't occur again.

"SAP's decision to remove the [TomorrowNow] management team is really just another part of the process of building credibility and accountability in that organization," said Wang. "Going forward, I think this really helps with the customers."

Wang did call departing TomorrowNow CEO Andrew Nelson and some other officials "pioneers" in third-party software maintenance. In particular, Wang said Nelson -- and his former TomorrowNow colleague Seth Ravin, who left the firm in 2005 to found another third-party support firm, Rimini Street Inc. -- should be recognized for helping to expose unfair costs and practices historically attributed to third-party software maintenance.

"[Nelson] really had a place and a role to play in terms [of] helping customers see 'what am I really getting for my maintenance dollars.' Too bad it had to end this way for [him]," remarked Wang.

Wang said that Rimini Street could be a viable alternative for existing TomorrowNow customers if SAP sells its subsidiary. He also speculated that Rimini Street could be a potential buyer for the firm.

Author: Brian Fonseca @ www.computerworld.com

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