Uniloc Leverages Power of Oracle® Database 11g to Help Increase Performance and Business Analytics

Uniloc USA Inc., the technology leader in physical device recognition for protecting intellectual property, networks and personal data, today announced interoperability of the company’s flagship product lines, softANCHOR™ and netANCHOR™, with Oracle® Database 11g. Leveraging Oracle, the number one provider of secure and reliable database technologies, Uniloc now brings powerful business analytics and new features, including Oracle Fast Files, Oracle Audit Vault and enhanced passwords, to customers demanding the industry’s best network security and software copy protection solutions available.

Uniloc softANCHOR and netANCHOR allow organizations to use Oracle Database 11g as the backend database, raising the business intelligence bar for Uniloc users in need of strong analytics to drive powerful reporting from the data available through Uniloc security solutions. The enhanced developer productivity tools allow Uniloc to rapidly port the company’s existing data infrastructures from Oracle Database 10g to Oracle Database 11g. The power and security of Oracle Database 11g not only helps increase the speed and reliability of the Uniloc platforms, but also provides Uniloc customers with greater integration opportunities for a better overall picture of the environments they are managing.

Oracle’s tradition of excellence continues with Oracle Database 11g, helping independent software vendors like Uniloc provide its users with technology that satisfies the critical need for detailed and timely business analytics. With Uniloc softANCHOR and netANCHOR now compatible with Oracle Database 11g, the combined solution also enables substantially increased overall performance and provides support for Web2.0 and integrated XML processing, which should result in greater adoption of Uniloc softANCHOR and netANCHOR within customer infrastructures. As a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork and the Oracle Database 11g beta program, Uniloc successfully tested both softANCHOR and netANCHOR software and network security suites on Oracle Database 11g. The new and enhanced capabilities of Oracle Database 11g provide Uniloc’s software packages with significant efficiencies in terms of deployment, integration and performance, delivering a variety of enhancements and support that will result in greater interoperability with technologies in any environment Uniloc’s products are used in.

"We are excited to bring the industry’s strongest database platform to our customers as part of a complete product offering. The synergy between Oracle and Uniloc provides users with the most innovative security solutions in the industry," said Casey Potenzone, chief information officer for Uniloc. "The power of Oracle helps increase the performance and reliability of our security platforms, but also gives our customers the ability to deploy softANCHOR or netANCHOR into new areas of their IT infrastructure to provide greater insight into secure business processes."

Availability

Uniloc softANCHOR and netANCHOR product suites with Oracle Database 11g will be available through Uniloc.

About Oracle Database 11g

Oracle Database is the only database designed for grid computing. With the release of Oracle Database 11g, Oracle is making the management of enterprise information easier than ever; enabling customers to know more about their business and innovate more quickly. Oracle Database 11g delivers superior performance, scalability, availability, security and ease of management on a low-cost grid of industry standard storage and servers. 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. It features automated management capabilities for easy, cost-effective operation. Oracle Database 11g’s unique ability to manage all data from traditional business information to XML and 3D spatial information makes it the ideal choice to power transaction processing, data warehousing, and content management applications.

About the Oracle PartnerNetwork

Oracle PartnerNetwork is a global business network of more than 19,500 companies who deliver innovative software solutions based on Oracle software. Through access to Oracle's premier products, education, technical services, marketing and sales support, the Oracle PartnerNetwork program provides partners with the resources they need to be successful in today's global economy. Oracle partners are able to offer to their customers, leading-edge solutions backed by Oracle's position as the world's largest enterprise software company. http://oraclepartnernetwork.oracle.com

About Uniloc USA

Uniloc USA is the technology leader in electronic physical device recognition for software copy control and information security. The core technology driving Uniloc innovation is Physical Device Fingerprinting, the company’s patented method of uniquely identifying a user device, such as a PC, game console, smart phone or cell phone, by the naturally occurring, inherent physical imperfections of that device, and then incorporating that physical device fingerprint into licenses or access credentials. Uniloc’s technologies can identify devices with more comparable accuracy than human DNA. Uniloc is the inventor and holder of the seminal physical device locking patent (U.S. 5,490,216) and has 15 related patents pending. Uniloc has applied its Physical Device Fingerprinting technical expertise to several vertical markets, including software publishing, government network access control, online banking and trading, and CD/DVD anti-theft. For more detailed information, please visit www.unilocusa.com.

Uniloc, softANCHOR, My License Manager and LicenseAUDIT are trademarks of Uniloc USA Inc. All other brand and product names are, or may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.

Source: www.oracle.com

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Q&A: Oracle's President Charles Phillips

From acquisitions to Web 2.0, Phillips shares his vision for Oracle's strategy. And he's not shy about sharing his thoughts on the competition. One of the most influential people in the software industry these days, Phillips is a hard man to pin down, due to the demands of a hectic travel schedule meeting with customers, startups, and potential acquisition candidates. Editor-at-large Mary Hayes Weier got him to sit still long enough to answer an e-mail enquiry on several facets of Oracle's acquisition strategy, the company's upcoming Fusion technology, its Web 2.0 push, and its competition with archrival SAP.

InformationWeek: As a result of Oracle's acquisition strategy, you've helped turn the company into a Wall Street darling and greatly improved its market cap. But is it good for customers?

Phillips: Customers now recognize that Oracle acquiring a product is a very good thing for them. The product will be quickly enhanced and tested more thoroughly, supported globally, and integrated into the Oracle stack. Our strategy is consistent with the decisions customers are already making: They want fewer software suppliers and more accountability, more standardization and pre-integration, and less complexity. We are removing the complexity from their environments by taking responsibility for integration, certification, and testing across all these products. We can do it once instead of each customer doing this on their own.

Our renewals on support agreements reached an all-time high last quarter. We have to earn the renewals each month, and customers generally don't spend money with vendors that aren't providing value. Our customer satisfaction ratings are also at an all-time high. We've shipped more updates to the products we've acquired than anyone anticipated. Call any of our user groups and they'll register their satisfaction on the product improvements. We've improved the quality, broadened the language support, integrated the products where appropriate, expanded support to more countries with more localizations, and updated the underlying tech stack with modern middleware. We've done what we said we would do, and customers are rewarding us for providing value.

InformationWeek: Oracle can't possibly replace the majority of SAP ERP deployments since companies have gone through so much time and expense putting them in place. So what exactly is Oracle's endgame in business software?

Phillips: We've been trying to educate the press and analysts that ERP is but one component of the enterprise applications market. It's the one people know the best, but things are changing and that's an opportunity for us. We're going well beyond ERP to CRM where we are the leader, and the extremely large opportunity for industry applications.

The industry applications are line-of-business applications such as communications billing, utility billing, core banking, and retail merchandising. These applications are a higher value-add than a general ledger and drive the core business of our customers. We're selling them into SAP accounts because SAP only has administrative applications and lacks the expertise in these industries. The person who builds a good general ledger isn't the person you want building a billing engine for telcos. We've found that these industry applications are so strategic that customers will often give us the back-office administrative applications if we're providing the line-of-business applications.

In other cases, we simply surround SAP's general ledger with best-of-breed functionality in areas where SAP is weak. A very common scenario is the SAP GL surrounded by Siebel CRM, PeopleSoft HR, G-Log for transportation management, Hyperion for consolidation of those GLs, and Demantra for demand planning -- all sitting on Oracle Fusion middleware and the Oracle Grid. Many SAP customers also use Agile and Siebel CRM On Demand.

So we make sure we integrate well with SAP using standard technologies such as BPEL and our Application Integration Architecture, which supports a common object model across all applications. In this scenario, the customer simply decides they are a two-vendor applications shop: SAP for GL and Oracle for everything else. They can continue to run the GL but get world-class functionality, standard integration via our middleware suite, which most of them are already using, and support for all these other applications from the largest enterprise software company.

So the answer is that the applications market is changing. Customers spend more on custom line-of-business applications than they spend on ERP. We're aggressively pursuing the rest of the market that SAP seems to be ignoring, and we're betting that more customers will buy these processes off the shelf as their legacy applications age. Meanwhile, we'll let SAP add more complexity to their general ledger.

InformationWeek: Some analysts state matter-of-factly that there will be no super-set of Fusion applications within the next few years; that Oracle has changed its strategy here and will instead focus on a small set of Fusion applications and integration with the other software apps. Has there been a shift in strategy?

Phillips: We certainly recognize the tremendous value and brand loyalty associated with JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and Oracle EBS, and we plan to aggressively enhance those products for many years to come. We could have communicated that more clearly on day one, but now I think people understand what we're doing and they're responding well.

We've never said that every single feature in every single application would end up in Fusion Applications. We said we'd use our existing applications as a blue print to determine what represents the "best of " features, and we'd concentrate on those in Fusion Applications. But Fusion Applications will simply be an additional choice along with all of our other applications. The object model in AIA is the same one that will be used in Fusion Applications, which is a logical design, so it will make co-existence and upgrades easier for those customers that choose to go that route. But many will stay with PeopleSoft, Oracle EBS, Siebel, and JD Edwards, and that's fine with us. All these products will continue to have dedicated development teams that deliver enhancements based on conversations with our customers.

InformationWeek: You're asking customers to achieve innovation by integrating applications using Application Integration Architecture and Fusion at a time when many companies are attracted to simpler, easier answers to software and IT, such as hosted software. Doesn't that put Oracle at risk of being perceived as moving in a different direction than the Web 2.0 approaches to innovation?

Phillips: We were an original on-demand pioneer. We've been at this for nine years, and the current crop of press analysts don't remember how much time we spent educating the market on why on-demand was so important to the future of software and for customers in general. That is, of course, a separate discussion from Web 2.0, which we're also doing, but you can do one without the other. We have over 2 million subscribers to our on-demand service, and it's posting strong subscription growth.

Oracle is in the great position of not having to force customers to on-demand or on-premise. Enterprise customers are complex and have different needs and constraints. We understand what they're dealing with. Some will go all on-demand, some will stay with on-premise, and some large percentage will do both. We're the only company that accommodates all scenarios with proven, pre-integrated products. I'd also invite you to use release 14 of our CRM on-demand service, which is a fully Web 2.0 mashup, collaborative environment built using Oracle JDeveloper (the same IDE we're using to develop Fusion), which is turning out to be a major differentiator against the competition. We plan to be the largest on-demand company in the world, period. That's a lot easier to do if you're already providing customers their key ERP, CRM, and industry applications, as well as their technology infrastructure.

InformationWeek: Some CIOs complain communication breaks down after an Oracle acquisition. How would you convince them Oracle's strategy is in their long-term interests?

Phillips: Most of our customers see the same sales rep post-acquisition because we simply fold in a specialized salesforce and tell them to keep doing what they've been doing. We've had very little turnover in the field as a result, and we've become the employer of choice in software. We maintain the continuity so we don't break relationships. The results over three years suggest we're connecting well with customers, very well. As time has gone on, customers are not only understanding what we're doing but encouraging us. They continue to suggest acquisition ideas for us, and I routinely get calls the day of acquisition congratulating us [for] helping them to further simplify their architecture. So opinions have changed.

We do have various experts by product in the field. Customers have complex problems, and they need a functional expert to solve the problem at hand. We do not field the traditional generic account rep who knows his golf game better than the product. We want well-trained experts that can map our products to customer needs and help them solve problems.

Most of our customers also make acquisitions, and they're not only comfortable with our strategy but very interested in how we've executed so well. We routinely get asked by senior executives to discuss our acquisition methodology. Many of them believe we can better understand what they're going through as a result of our acquisitions. It has been a tremendous advantage for us to bring in proven innovation into Oracle quickly and solve customer problems. If we can bring them great technology instantly and then add value around it, they see that as a good thing.

At the same time, we continue to invest heavily in development to enhance what we have. The acquisitions are nothing but proven research and development moved under the Oracle umbrella, so our development budget is actually much larger that it appears, in a sense. Lastly, almost every interesting startup wants us to know what they're doing because we're the likely exit strategy given the tough IPO market. As a result, we get to see everything, and customers benefit from that.

InformationWeek: Is there a point when the aggressive acquisition strategy must end, due to integration overload or just the physical difficulty of managing it all?

Phillips: We have a very well-developed process, and it's pretty efficient. We have more capacity for acquisitions because we don't take very long to get them integrated, and in the software industry, that's a unique skill set to Oracle. We innovate in many areas, including around our business model itself. We aren't afraid to do something different because that's how you change the game. By now, our customers are telling us that it all makes sense, even if they didn't see it four years ago. We don't get these types of questions anymore because we have delivered.

InformationWeek: As a top Wall Street analyst, what would have scared you most about Oracle's acquisition binge?

Phillips: The stock is up 41% over the last 12 months. That usually assuages fears on Wall Street.

InformationWeek: What's the hard evidence that the PeopleSoft and Siebel acquisitions have been successful?

Phillips: The hard evidence is in our SEC filings. Our financial results speak for themselves. We described a five-year plan to our investors, which was to grow 20% a year on average with this strategy. We've exceeded that plan handily. That wouldn't be possible if our major acquisitions hadn't worked. Our customer satisfaction ratings and renewals are at an all-time high for both product families. The evidence is so overwhelming that I'm surprised the question is still being asked at this late date. I'm going to have to provide you guys with a list of new questions to ask.

InformationWeek: Do you view Oracle as a pioneer in overall software industry consolidation? Are you showing the rest of the industry the future?

Phillips: There's no question that we're changing the game. We took some arrows early on because that's what happens when you do something unconventional. But I think customers have benefited from what we've done, and they're encouraging us to do more, and that's always the bottom line.

InformationWeek: Is this acquisition strategy Larry Ellison's vision that you were tapped to carry out, or is this your vision that you convinced Larry to support?

Phillips: This has been a team effort. We all play a role and make each other smarter. It's about winning.

InformationWeek: SAP is planning something called A1S, an on-demand service for small and midsize companies. What's Oracle's position on software as a service (SaaS) and its response to A1S?

Phillips: They're nine years behind us on SaaS, and they don't know what they don't know. We have everything they're trying to build in SaaS. This will divert their resources and focus from their core product, mySap, while they walk up the learning curve. They now have at least four code bases: A1S, All in One, BusinessOne, and mySAP. And they still have to maintain R/3. By our count, they're using seven different development tools and five data models within mySap alone. In fact, given that many of the product groups in mySAP have separate schemas, separate installation processes, and significant integration gaps, I'd argue they have different product lines even under the mySAP umbrella, which can happen if you build a monster with 270 million lines of code. It has a life of its own and represents the very definition of complexity. That's why SAP had to start over for the small-business market.

So we both have multiple product lines, but we have critical mass on all of ours and a standard integration platform, BPEL orchestration layer, and object model -- all in AIA -- across all of our products. SAP does not. In fact, there are more SAP customers using Oracle Fusion middleware to integrate SAP applications than those using Netweaver. Netweaver appears to be directionless, as their Palo Alto people head for the exits with all the internal struggles with Waldorf.

InformationWeek: How will you keep Oracle database competitive with the rising threat from Microsoft?

Phillips: This question has been asked for the last five years, during which time we've expanded our database market share, delivered the only enterprise grid computing platform that works, and innovated with an entire family of options around the database for security, partioning, and performance. At the same time, we've gone down market and made our products much easier to use and install. We have cheaper entry-level pricing than Microsoft, and we also have a free version, so you can't get much cheaper than that.

The key change over the last few years is that we've added Ingram Micro, Tech Data, CDW, Arrow, and Dell as distributors. We didn't have the low-end distribution in the past. But with the packaging and pricing changes, those distributors are asking for our product because our brand name has grown so strong. Plus, they all need an answer for Linux, which is growing on the low end, and we have an 80% share on the Linux platform and built the clustered file system in Linux.

They also need an alternative to Microsoft, and it's all upside for us. We run well on Linux and Windows so customers, distributors, and resellers now have a choice. Our low-end database business has been exploding as a result. Our numbers are real sales and not allocated revenue from client access licenses. We now have a dedicated SMB business unit led by Tony Kender, focusing on this market. Dell is bundling our database pre-installed on servers with other hardware partners signing up shortly.

Author: Mary Hayes Weier @ InfromationWeek

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Melbourne Health tests Oracle 11g beta

Oracle yesterday heralded Melbourne Health as one of the first Australian customers for its 11g database, which is still a beta test version.

Melbourne Health is the first Oracle 10g user to upgrade to the latest version of its database software. Oracle hopes that over the next year, between of 15 and 30 percent of its 10g customers will follow, said Mark Townsend, Oracle's vice president of server technologies.

Melbourne Health has rolled out the new platform to five member institutions under the Bio21: Molecular Medicine Informatics Model (MMIM) project, which is a AU$16 million federal and Victorian government-funded initiative designed to help researchers and clinicians access and share information between institutions.

According to Naomi Rafael, senior database administrator at Melbourne Health, the updated database will help researchers make better use of the seven million MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans, which are currently stored on DAT tapes.

Rafael said the MRI scans are used to create huge 3D images that can help detect brain deformations associated with epilepsy."Someone came along and said, 'We've got 12 years worth of MRI images and we don't know how many gigabytes it is because they're distributed on a thousand DAT tapes. Do you think you could load that up onto a server for us?'"

Chuckling at the severe underestimation, she said the DAT tapes contained two terabytes of scan data.

Rafael's search for a new system covered PAC (picture archiving and communication) systems, file systems as well as outsourced PACs solutions, but it ended when Oracle got wind of the project and, as an existing 10g customer, proposed Melbourne Health join the 11g beta program.

Under the MMIM system, multiple local research repositories are connected via a virtual private network to a "federated data integrator" which contains the MMIM metadata scheme.

For the MRI scans to include Melbourne Health's metadata scheme, all the files have been converted to DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) files -- an open standard, similar to a ZIP file, which bundles JPEGs, video and other files into a single file and retains metadata used to identify and manage images.

Rafael said that combining the information in both databases was crucial.

"Our clinicians wanted to know if someone had diabetes in one database and the same person had choleric cancer in another institution's database. We wanted a way to find out what happened to that person in those two databases so we devised a way of identifying each person in the database -- patient name, date of birth, Medicare number, sex etc -- which is all stored in 11g."

Once stored in 11g, said Rafael, the system probabilistically matches information in it with other databases. If a match is found, it re-issues the same identification number that occurred in the first instance.

"They can do queries through the FDI (Federated Integration database) and can view data on various repositories," Rafael said.

Over the next 12 months Rafael expects the new system to be rolled out to research and health sites in regional Victoria, New South Wales, Canberra and Tasmania.

Author: Liam Tung

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What's in a Name? Oracle's Mixed Message With Siebel CRM On Demand

Oracle reverts to the Siebel moniker for the newest version of its CRM On Demand product, which features several usability, customization, and integration enhancements.

Oracle Corp. has made generally available the latest iteration of its acquired Siebel Systems on-demand product, an offering that revives the Siebel moniker despite Oracle's previously announced decision to rebrand the software as"Oracle CRM On Demand." The new edition, Siebel CRM On Demand Release 14, leverages Oracle Fusion Middleware technology; is the first major release of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering since Oracle finalized the acquisition of its former rival in January 2006; and is the first to run entirely on Oracle's infrastructure.

Many of the improvements fused into the product concentrate on strengthening usability and customization capabilities as well as tightening integration with other applications, such as Oracle E-Business Suite. The release draws on programming languages such as AJAX and technologies such as in-line edit to simplify user tasks. The release also introduces home-page customization functionality, such as the ability to arrange page elements such as lists, history, and favorites based on end-user preference.Release 14 also provides integration with other applications and systems at the process-, data-, and user-interface (UI) levels, according to the company. "The improvements in the UI and the customization capabilities are pretty big and are required to keep them competitive," says Rob Bois, a research director at AMR Research. "It seems like all the CRM vendors today are spending a lot of time and effort improving usability because they recognize that usability is still a big challenge."

Robert DeSisto, vice president of CRM at Gartner, takes a similar stance in a June 2007 research note entitled, "Oracle Has Renewed Its Focus on CRM on Demand," noting that the release improves usability and customization, Oracle E-Business Suite integration, and physical database separation. "It also leverages Oracle Fusion Middleware; however, it is limited when creating custom objects," he writes.

Release 14 also includes industry-specific editions; a built-in virtual call center; embedded analytics; and a prebuilt data warehouse for real-time decision-making. "We continue to see Siebel CRM On Demand really building in the analytics as a key differentiator, and we've seen a lot of customers get a lot of value out of the analytics piece of the solution," says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at Nucleus Research, which has a "Siebel CRM On Demand Guidebook" available for download from Oracle's corporate Web site.

Interestingly enough, however, Oracle's on-demand positioning appears to contradict the company's previously announced roadmap, which seemed to include retiring the Siebel name in favor of an Oracle brand. (The April 17, 2007, press release announcing that Release 14 would be available "within 12 months" clearly labeled the product "Oracle CRM On Demand.")

Prior to the January 2006 Siebel acquisiton, Oracle CRM On Demand "was developing market momentum and becoming a formidable competitive threat to Salesforce.com," according to DeSisto's note. "However, since the acquisition, interest in Oracle CRM On Demand had diminished significantly in the market. Gartner has seen a reduction of nearly 75 percent in inquiries on competitive customer evaluations involving Oracle CRM On Demand," he writes. "Having acquired multiple large installed bases (such as Siebel On Premise, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards), Oracle's focus has been on such programs as Applications Unlimited and Oracle Fusion, rather than growing Oracle CRM On Demand."

Oracle executives were unavailable for comment by press time to discuss the release. But for Oracle's part, this new edition--the 14th release of the product in three-and-a-half years--marks the first formal announcement of the availability of a new Siebel CRM on Demand product since the April 2006 announcement of version 10, which was rebranded at the time as Oracle CRM On Demand. (As with Release 10, pricing for Siebel CRM On Demand Release 14 starts at $70 per user, per month.) In the intervening period, Oracle rolled out Releases 11, 12, and 13, but no formal press announcements were made; the naming convention and branding used for those release versions was not clear at press time, nor was the precise timing or rationale behind the reversion to the Siebel name.

The naming conventions can get somewhat convoluted because Oracle refers to the application service provider (ASP) part of its business--which includes a hosted version of the traditional Siebel application--as "on demand," although, according to Bois, Oracle's homegrown (pre-Siebel-acquisition) version lacks the bona fide multitenant SaaS functionality of Siebel CRM On Demand. "They use 'on demand' to describe the ASP model as well as the true SaaS version, so customers do tend to get a little bit confused. The more they can distinguish the true SaaS product from the traditional ASP version would certainly help." Oracle, Bois continues, "hasn't figured out how long and how firmly they want to hold on to the Siebel brand, but it clearly carries a lot of equity so they're trying to keep the Siebel brand in there as long as possible."

To that end, Wettemann contends that stamping the Siebel CRM On Demand with Oracle's name had confused customers, rather than clarifying and simplifying the brand. "Going back to Siebel is a good recognition of the strengths of that brand name," she says. "It's taking away that confusion because customers are clear that what they're getting is the Siebel product that was developed and not the Oracle CRM product."

Overall, Bois maintains that it's good to see Oracle continue to put an emphasis on the on-demand product. "SaaS is driving the future growth of the CRM space," he says. "When you have one of the biggest CRM vendors continuing to push that, it's good for the industry."

Author: Coreen Bailor

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Paetec uses Oracle SOA to automate ordering

Oracle and Paetec Communications today announced that Paetec has deployed Oracle’s Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications, enabling the competitive service provider to more efficiently automate the full service delivery process, from sales and contracts right through to provisioning the service.

By deploying Oracle systems throughout its back office, Paetec also has enabled more rapid and efficient integration of U.S. LEC, the competitive services provider with which it is merging, said Bob Moore, Paetec’s chief information officer. Using the Oracle E-Business Suite will enable the company to have a single, consolidated view of customers as it continues to work to consolidate databases and merger OSSs, he said.

While Paetec has used Oracle systems in the past, including Siebel order management and customer care products, Portal Software billing and revenue management and MetaSolv service fulfillment products, using SOA applications to tie everything together “supercharges our relationship with Oracle,” Moore said.And most importantly for Paetec, which differentiates itself in the competitive market by offering complex services tailored to enterprise needs, tying everything together enables rapid, paperless, automated ordering, Moore said.

“We have the sales force mechanized and the contract process mechanized, but then [the sale] goes to an order group, given how complex Paetec’s service line is, since we differentiate by being high-tech and high-touch,” Moore said. “The one piece that has been missing has been automated paperless ordering system. Generally how people do it is to pick your package, then someone in the back end takes it and connects the dots.”

Using Oracle SOA will also enable Paetec to continue its practice of providing profit assistance online, as that is integrated within the Oracle workflow of the sales process, Moore said.

“The sales reps take a building block approach from the ground up of what they are selling, and the costs are built into this,” he explained. “We do margin approvals based on that. What makes ours special, and one of the things that has always differentiated us, is the high-touch value collaborative sale. It enables us to keep really good margins and be good selling to the enterprises, which is one reason for churn that is industry low.”

By tying together systems using Oracle Fusion Middleware, account reps can sit down with customers and do point-and-click building blocks of service components to quickly process a completely customized contract, Moore said.

Paetec is rolling out these systems now and will connect them using the Oracle SOA applications by the first quarter of 2008. The company will be able to integrate U.S. LEC customers into the process, even before it moves billing data from the system that U.S. LEC used onto a different billing system that Paetec is using.

“The most disruptive thing you can do to a customer is change billing systems,” Moore said. “This way, the consolidated view of the customer lives within Oracle – all the workflow, ordering from business and systems perspective is all Oracle – things flowing in and out of billing system and in and out of the order system are all Oracle. That doesn’t mean we won’t consolidate our billing systems at some point, but we don’t have to do that right away.”

Author: Carol Wilson

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Oracle refutes 'SSH hacking' slur

An investigation by Oracle has revealed the none of its systems were involved in launching a recent brute force attack on secure servers around the net.

From the beginning of May until earlier this week, "compromised computers" at Oracle UK were listed among the ten worst offenders on the net for launching attacks on servers which run SSH (secure shell) server software, according to statistics from servers running DenyHosts software to block SSH brute-force password attacks. DenyHosts is a script for Linux system administrators designed to help thwart SSH server attacks. Around 6,800 users contribute to the data it collects.

Oracle servers - recorded as active since 3 May - featured at number nine of DenyHosts list. The listing implied a computer (or multiple computers) at Oracle UK been compromised for weeks, allowing hackers to gain access to Oracle's bandwidth to hack other boxes elsewhere on the net.Following our inquiries last week, Oracle supplied us with a holding statement saying it was investigating the problem. The database giant concluded this investigation early this week. It says none of its systems were responsible for the attack.

"Security is a matter we take seriously at Oracle and our first priority is meeting customer needs and reducing their risk. As soon as Oracle was made aware of the situation we began an investigation, which is now complete. Oracle can confirm that none of its systems were responsible for an SSH brute force attack and the allegation of compromised computers at Oracle has been removed from the Deny Hosts website," it said.

So if DenyHosts's listing was erroneous how did the entry for the database giant get there in the first place. Reg reader Stephen has one theory:

"There are a couple of issues in the present DenyHosts that could cause a group to insert their favourite bad-guy site into the DenyHosts database. They all seem to be related to regular expression problems".

"I confirmed that one could insert false sites in by just spamming a bunch of sites with echo "string from oracle IP" as listed above. It is probably not the cause for this issue, but could be used as a cover," he adds.

We were unable to contact DenyHosts at the time of writing so the exact cause of the Oracle listing remains unclear.

Author: John Leyden

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Oracle says CEO plans to sell up to 100 mln shares

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq:ORCL - news), the world's third-largest software maker, on Friday said Chief Executive Larry Ellison adopted a plan to sell up to 100 million of the company's shares over the next nine months.

Ellison also plans to gift almost 2 million shares to the Ellison Medical Foundation, which supports biomedical research.

Oracle said if Ellison completes all the sales and gifts detailed in the plan, he would own about 1.173 billion shares, or 22.7 percent, of Oracle's outstanding stock.

Based on their closing price of $20.61, the 100 million shares would be worth $2.06 billion. Earlier on Friday, Oracle's shares rose to their highest level in more than five years.

The Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted by Ellison allows corporate officers and directors to conduct prearranged stock trading if they don't have material, nonpublic information.

Forbes magazine ranked Ellison as the fourth-richest American in its annual list last September.

Reporting by Justin Grant and Lewis Krauskopf

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Oracle patches 45 vulnerabilities in its databases

Oracle released patches for 45 flaws, 13 of which allow an attacker to exploit various Oracle products remotely without proper access credentials, in its latest round of quarterly Critical Patch Updates on Tuesday.

Among the products affected are multiple versions of the Oracle Database, Application Express, Secure Enterprise Server Search, Application Server, Collaboration Suite, E-Business Suite and the PeopleSoft customer-relationship management (CRM) software.

Seventeen of the 45 vulnerabilities affect revisions of Oracle’s Database Server (two are among the 13 that can be exploited remotely).

Here's a breakdown of the 45 fixes deployed in the July Critical Patch Update (CPU):

* 18 are for Oracle Database Server, with two that patch flaws that are remotely exploitable without credentials.

* One is for Oracle Application Express.

* Four are for Oracle Application Server, including three that patch flaws that are remotely exploitable.

* One is for Oracle Collaboration Suite, patching a flaw that can be exploited remotely.

* 14 are for on Oracle E-Business Suite, with six that patch flaws that are remotely exploitable.

* Seven are for Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise, with one for a remotely exploitable flaw.

Secunia, a private security research firm, rated the patches "highly critical." The company noted that Oracle has not released enough details on some of the vulnerabilities to predict their impact but that other flaws "can be exploited to bypass certain security restrictions and conduct SQL injection attacks."For instance, one of the vulnerabilities, in Oracle’s Application Express (APEX), does not correctly "sanitize," or normalize, input passed via the password function before using it in SQL queries. (APEX is a free tool that allows building, deploying and managing secure web applications via a web browser.) This can be exploited to modify SQL queries by injecting arbitrary SQL code into the password field, according to Secunia.

Certain input processed by the DBMS_PRVTAQIS function suffer from a similar vulnerability and can also be exploited by a SQL injection, Secunia said.

While "Oracle is doing a pretty good job" of testing and fixing problems, most major software developers a falling down in creating secure code, said Bill Bartow, vice president of product management for Tizor, a database auditing company.

"Building secure code must be a fundamental of their code-development processes and has to be institutionalized across their environment," he said. "The industry could do a better job of testing their products for vulnerabilities before they ship them. A few [developers] are doing that, but the rest of the industry has a long way to go. Until they do, we’ll continue to see vulnerabilities [in enterprise applications]."

As part of its latest round of patches, Oracle also released what it called its "napply CPU" (pronounced "N Apply"). This feature helps customers who encounter merge conflicts when installing CPU patches, Oracle’s Eric Maurice said in a blog posting.

He said that napply CPU simplifies patch conflict-resolution procedures and speeds the resolution of security vulnerabilities. He called the napply CPU an "enhanced" offering for the Unix and Linux versions of the Oracle database server that groups "molecules" of security fixes in way that eliminates conflicts with other molecules within the server.

Oracle has scheduled its next round of Critical Patch Updates for Oct. 16.

Author: Jim Carr

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Oracle to buy ID theft detection company Bharosa

Acquisition will extend Oracle's Identity Management capabilities and beef up its growing identity management operation. While most of Oracle's recent purchases have focused on growing its applications business, the vendor's latest proposed purchase will beef up its growing identity management operation.

Oracle announced Wednesday that it has agreed to buy Bharosa, a provider of software to help detect online identity theft and fraud. The companies didn't reveal the financial details of the acquisition, which is expected to close next month.

"The transaction will extend Oracle's Identity Management capabilities by adding proactive real time risk-analysis, strong authentication and fraud prevention," Hasan Rizvi, vice president, identity management and security products at Oracle, wrote in a letter to customers.

Identity Management is part of Oracle's Fusion middleware.

Bharosa has two main products -- Tracker, antifraud software that works by verifying a variety of factors to confirm identity, and Authenticator, a suite of secure authentication software, which works with Web browsers to protect a range of sensitive information such as passwords from malicious attacks. Once the purchase is completed, Oracle plans to add some of Bharosa's Tracker and Authenticator software to its existing online single sign-on (SSO) and Web-based authorization security products. The intention is to expand the use of Oracle's identity management software outside of an enterprise to safely encompass external users. At the same time, Oracle committed to continue to make Bharosa's software available on a stand-alone basis and to offer integrations with non-Oracle databases and applications as well as its own products.

Bharosa has more than 30 customers for its real-time fraud detection and multifactor online authentication enterprise security software. Consumer Web sites using Bharosa's technologies include Wells Fargo and National City. In total, the company estimates its software protects 27 million users. Other Bharosa customers are AudioTel, a supplier of software to banks, and I-flex solutions, an Indian financial services software vendor and a majority-owned Oracle subsidiary.

Founded in 2003, privately held Bharosa has its headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif. The company's name means "trust" in Hindi.

Oracle was previously busy on the identity management front in 2005 buying up three companies -- Oblix, OctetString, and Thor -- for their technologies, which the vendor then integrated into its security offerings.

Author: China Martens

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Google Maps Gets Used For Oracle's Field Service

The word “oracle” has a number of definitions, and they generally relate to knowledge provided by one or more deities - this would, in theory, be some solid intel. But the Oracle company has recently turned to Google in order to get people on the correct path.

I mean that in a literal sense; as acknowledged in a press release, “Oracle today announced the integration of Google Maps for Enterprise mapping service with Oracle Field Service, giving companies new tools to help improve customer service, maximize resource utilization and increase operational efficiencies.”

So technicians will always be on time, company vehicles will save hundreds of gallons of gas, and prices everywhere will plummet! Or not. But there may be slight improvements in all of these areas, and at the very least, the deal has given both Google and Oracle some extra exposure.

“We are pleased to see the innovative ways in which Oracle is using Google Maps for Enterprise to deliver geo-based capabilities that are both powerful and easy-to-use,” said Noah Doyle, the product manager of Google Maps for Enterprise, in the release.Mike Betzer, Oracle’s Vice President of CRM Product strategy, expanded on those sentiments - and mentioned a buzzword or two. “By integrating Google Maps for Enterprise, Oracle Field Service delivers on the promise of an extended Service Oriented Architecture and Web 2.0 collaboration,” he stated. “Oracle CRM users will derive tremendous business value through advanced map views and interactions; at the same time receiving a world-class user experience through the Google Maps User Interface.”

Hey, there - maybe the Google-Oracle development will save time, gas, and money, and also not stress the guy who’s running the whole show.

Hat tip to China Martens of the IDG News Service.

Author: Doug Caverly

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Q&A with Oracle's Charles Phillips -- Putting The Pieces In Place

Computer Reseller News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) CMP Channel Senior Editor Rick Whiting spoke with Oracle President Charles Phillips in an exclusive interview about Oracle's new SMB initiative. Here are excerpts from that discussion:

CRN: Why undertake this push now with Oracle's Technology products into SMB markets?

Phillips: We've finally got the ease-of-use and packaging right. Before, the focus was on enterprise capabilities like scalability. Now [the database] is a lot easier to install and configure. That's made it a lot easier for the midmarket. Another factor is that some distributors and resellers came to Oracle because they wanted a database on Linux. We're basically the main game in Linux. So the pieces are in place. The number of resellers and, hopefully, customers that can access the product has gone up substantially.

CRN: What are the strengths and weaknesses of Oracle's products in SMB markets?

Phillips: A strength is that customers can start out with [the SMB version of] the product and grow into the enterprise version. The ISV base is unmatched. And we're on every platform everybody cares about. Our only challenge now is reaching more customers via distribution and resellers.CRN: How much of your competition in databases comes from Microsoft?

Phillips: We don't see Microsoft in the enterprise space. They're more focused on competing with Google and building Xboxes. On the very low end, in organizations with 300 employees or less, they have the brand name and a reputation for being easier to use. There is the impression that Oracle is harder to use and higher priced. Our challenge is to re-educate the reseller.

CRN: Why so much emphasis on the channel for this initiative?

Phillips: It's just not a market that's well-suited for a direct-sales force. I think a lot of resellers would like an alternative to Microsoft-certainly the distributors have told us that. Over 80 percent of [Oracle Database] Standard Edition One goes through the channel and that's increasing.

CRN: What other products could be added to the VAD Remarketer program?

Phillips: We have a broad family of products. We have in-memory and embedded databases. There's a lot going on in [Fusion] middleware that could be brought down to SMB markets. And there are other things coming.

CRN: Why establish the new Oracle SMB Technology Program Office?

Phillips: You need a program office to look at this from the customer perspective and to provide focus and accountability. We needed it because with this program we needed to change processes, licensing and packaging, and there are legal and financial aspects to consider.

Source: www.crn.com

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Oracle has increased its offer price for an additional stake in i-Flex

Oracle has increased the price it is willing to pay for an additional stake in i-Flex solutions, a vendor of financial software in Mumbai, India.

The move follows a period of sharp increases in company valuations on India's stock market, and Oracle may have felt that increasing its offer was necessary to make its offer more attractive for i-flex shareholders, analysts said.

Oracle, of California, said Thursday said it has increased its offer price to 2,100 Indian rupees (AU$60) per share, including interest. The company also said that it has raised by about 35 percent the number of shares it has agreed to buy in the pending open offer to i-flex shareholders.

The new open offer price is a 42 percent premium to the 1,475 rupees per share that Oracle first offered, and a 20 per cent premium to i-flex's closing stock price on Thursday of 1,751 rupees.

Indian stock markets are booming, and investor expectations are high, said a financial analyst who declined to be named. Oracle may have not found sufficient support for the offer at its earlier price, he said. The price of i-flex's shares has risen by over 52 percent in the last six months. Oracle informed the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in September that it intended to acquire an additional 20 percent of the equity of i-flex. It already holds a 55 percent stake in the company. Oracle would be paying about $531 million for the additional stake. Oracle subsequently delayed the open date of the offer from Nov. 6 to Dec. 4.

In an statement to the BSE on Friday, i-flex said that Oracle had increased the number of shares it wanted to purchase in the open offer from the earlier 16.63 million to 28.39 million, representing 34.14 percent of the emerging voting capital. An i-flex spokeswoman declined to comment on the new offer.

Oracle will be paying about $1.7 billion for the additional equity if its offer sails through. The open offer closes on Dec. 23.

Author: John Ribeiro

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EMC and Oracle buckle up for joint integration ride

EMC Corporation and Oracle have announced a broadened investment in joint engineering testing and integration and solutions development to support customers who are deploying EMC Information Infrastructure in Oracle environments.

EMC's Information Infrastructure offerings provide a range of hardware, software, and services for enterprise applications, database, and middleware solutions.
Click here to find out more!

Jointly integrated services, solutions, and support seek to help customers avoid multi-vendor complexity when deploying end-to-end information infrastructure solutions based on EMC and Oracle technologies.

The EMC Information Infrastructure for Oracle includes four solution areas: Data Warehousing, whereby EMC partners with the Oracle Information Appliance Program to offer customers packaged, low-cost data warehouse solutions that are high performance, quick to deploy, and can easily scale through validated building blocks known as Foundations; Oracle Unbreakable Linux, jointly engineered grid computing solutions backed by the Oracle Unbreakable Linux support program which have generated Oracle Validated Configurations and pre-defined best practices, allowing customers to reduce deployment time while minimizing risk with tested and qualified Oracle Enterprise Linux on core EMC platforms and software; Enterprise Security, integrating RSA security technologies and Oracle's identity management and data protection solutions along with user authentication, database encryption, and compliance reporting tools for database applications across the enterprise; and Grid Computing, using joint reference architectures and best practices for midrange environments to help customers rapidly deploy Oracle Grid Computing environments across EMC NAS or SAN platforms with low-cost tiered storage for simplified consolidated management and unique business continuance software for transaction consistency. All EMC Information Infrastructure for Oracle Solutions are backed by the EMC-Oracle Joint Escalation Center that provides customers a dedicated single path for support.A file is a file, the saying goes, but not all files are the same. Logically, they are just bits on a disk. However, from a usage perspective this is where the commonality ends. Databases are very different from plain text files and have differing usage scenarios and storage performance needs. Likewise, not all databases are the same. Oracle database solutions have specific performance and data storage requirements that are part of Oracle's articulated strategy for storage, which involves clustering, disk management and replication, as well as promoting the Linux OS.

The choice of storage architecture affects database performance, storage utilization, suitability as a high-availability solution, and the ability to tune and optimize the solution to meet organizational goals. Organizations deploying storage solutions that are not in alignment with Oracle's strategy as instantiated by Oracle 10g, ASM, and RAC may find themselves at a disadvantage from an operational and competitive standpoint.

As such, the availability of tried, tested, and true storage infrastructure for Oracle databases is well positioned to assist organizations get the most from their extensive Oracle investments, which for many represent the operational lifeblood of their enterprise.

To appreciate the significance of this announcement, one must consider the depth of the technical and commercial relationship the two companies share, and the dependency upon one another that they have developed over time. The Oracle Global Single Instance, which has been promoted by Oracle as the driving force behind a multi-billion dollar IT cost savings, runs on a variety of EMC hardware.

Similarly, EMC is one of the five largest Oracle customers in the world, based on the number of Oracle Application modules, users, and database instances deployed. The two companies' first-hand experience with each other, which should mirror the many operational experiences of customer organizations, feeds each other's product requirements and assessments.

This does allow many of the deployment and usage "gotchas" that are inevitable in the customer environment to be experienced firsthand by the vendors, which should help alleviate issues sooner rather than later and reduce the likelihood of the issues impacting end-customer's production environments.

Overall, this announcement will likely be welcomed by the many organizations, large and small, that depend on Oracle databases to run their businesses. Although vendor partnerships are common and sometimes short-lived, it is a rarity in the industry for such a deep vendor relationship to develop for a substantial period of time.

The obvious joint investments made by EMC and Oracle bode well for users of their certified technologies and serve as an example of the value of long-term strategic relationships not only for the vendors in question, but for their customers and partners as well.

Author: Clay Ryder, The Sageza Group

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Oracle 11g hits the streets

Oracle has released Database 11g, the first major refresh of its database management software in over three years, making it smaller and greener.

The company promised customers hundreds of new features including the ability to patch without taking systems offline, simplified application testing, and several green upgrades, such as data compression, to make it three times smaller.

Oracle Database 11g is the successor to 10g, which shipped in February 2004. After 10 months of beta testing, Oracle yesterday described 11g in detail for the first time, saying it stems from the work of 1,500 developers and 15 million hours of testing.

Oracle president Charles Phillips emphasised 11g's ability to save space and power, during a launch event in New York City yesterday.

"Every customer is looking at this space issue, the fact that they're buying so many disks. The cost of data centres alone is a big concern." Phillips said. "We built in advanced compression. We compress the data on the fly for you automatically, so you get a 3X savings on disk space." Another space-saving feature takes standby databases - normally kept in reserve in case the main system crashes - and offloads certain tasks to them. The standby database is simultaneously available for reporting, backup, testing and rolling upgrades of production databases.

Oracle also added what it calls "real application testing" to help customers quickly test and manage changes, such as database and operating system software upgrades.

These features save space by eliminating the need for a dedicated test server and backup recovery server, Phillips said. "Everybody wants a greener data centre," he said.

Oracle, which has been criticised for not quickly providing patches, said it added a "rolling patching" system to its latest database to update the grid automatically with no downtime.

"This is a breakthrough we think is huge," Phillips said. "You don't want to take systems down."

More than a third of Oracle database customers who attended the Independent Oracle Users Group annual conference plan to upgrade to 11g within one year, and more than half will upgrade within a few years, the group said.

IOUG president Ari Kaplan spoke at Oracle's launch event and praised the company for helping customers with regulatory compliance.

11g introduces Total Recall, a query tool allowing administrators to look at data from any time in the past, which Oracle says will be useful for tracking data changes, auditing and compliance.

The price of 11g was not released. When asked, an Oracle spokeswoman said "we'll have more to share regarding pricing in the near term."

Oracle launched 11g at an event featuring James Burke, science historian, author, producer and host of the BBC series, "Connections." Burke said 11g will "free up the massive potential of the brainpower in companies," adding that "in this new age of innovation speed is the key, not only to innovate but to do it faster."

Oracle partners followed up with their own announcements, including EMC, which said it will support Database 11g, and the vendor Application Security, which said its database security suite will also support 11g.

Author: Jon Brodkin

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Oracle BI Standard Edition for SMEs

Oracle is bringing business intelligence to the masses with Oracle BI Standard Edition One aimed at SMEs and departmental users.

Oracle did the same with its flagship database to produce a cut-down version called Oracle 10g Standard Edition One, which this lies at the heart of the new BI offering and includes tools for creating dashboards, ad hoc reporting and publishing. The BI SE One software costs $1,000 for each user, minimum five, maximum 50.

Author: Geoff Nairn

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New Supercomputer-Class Oracle Accelerator Kit From Texas Memory Systems

Texas Memory Systems delivers plug-and-play Oracle acceleration by bundling QLogic switches and host channel adapters with RamSan solid state disks...

Houston, Texas, USA, July 9, 2007 -- Texas Memory Systems, maker of the World’s Fastest Storage®, today announced a new Oracle Accelerator Kit – a product bundle designed to make it easier to accelerate Oracle database performance using supercomputer-class hardware. The Oracle Accelerator Kit includes Texas Memory Systems’ RamSan solid state disks, QLogic switches and QLogic host channel adaptors (HCAs) designed for InfiniBand-based Oracle grid computing environments.

The Texas Memory Systems Oracle Accelerator Kit can accelerate Oracle databases up to 2500%. Applications accelerated by solid state disks can support more concurrent users, more simultaneous transactions and demand less technical support. By using a pre-configured solution bundle, organizations benefit from extreme database performance and productivity gains, yet maintain an infrastructure that is scalable and easy to manage. The kits ensure fast and easy installation with assured compatibility of the components, all of which have been tested and certified by QLogic and Texas Memory Systems.“The need for database performance continues to grow,” said Dr. Klaus Heihoff, managing director of HMK Computer Technologies GmbH. “Being able to offer a certified and tested bundle that combines Texas Memory Systems’ super-fast SSD with QLogic’s InfiniBand HCAs and switches will make it much easier to solve customers’ performance challenges. Having Texas Memory Systems stand behind the complete offering eliminates any guesswork associated with moving to InfiniBand.”

“We are delighted that Texas Memory Systems has chosen QLogic products to build their InfiniBand Oracle Accelerator Kits,” said Frank Berry, vice president of corporate marketing, QLogic Corporation. “The RamSan SSD and QLogic InfiniBand HCAs and Switches are a powerful combination for achieving extreme application performance without sacrificing reliability, scalability or value. With the pre-certified InfiniBand Oracle Accelerator Kits, it is very easy for users to upgrade their data centers to address I/O performance bottlenecks.”

Texas Memory Systems’ Oracle Accelerator Kit is immediately available in three configurations, designed to meet the needs of small, medium or enterprise customers.

The Small Business Kit combines a Texas Memory Systems’ 32GB RamSan-300 SSD with a QLogic 9024 switch and two QLogic 4x InfiniPath HCAs.

The Medium Business Kit offers the Texas Memory Systems’ RamSan-400 with 64 to 128GB of capacity along with the QLogic 9024 switch and two QLogic 4x InfiniPath HCAs.

The Enterprise Business Kit is comprised of two Texas Memory Systems’ 128GB RamSan-400s, two QLogic 9024 switches and four QLogic 4x InfiniPath HCAs.

Source: www.itbsoftware.com

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Google lures Oracle vet for Lenoir center

(News & Observer, The (Raleigh, NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jul. 7--Google has hired a veteran of Oracle to manage the $600 million data center the company is building in Lenoir and start hiring for the first round of positions.

The facility is one of five the California company has announced in the past year, including one in South Carolina.

Tom Jacobik, 41, will oversee functions ranging from construction and hiring to hardware installation and day-to-day support once operations get under way in December.

"Tom has created a name for himself as an IT problem solver and leader," Andy Johnson, Google's East Coast regional manager, said in a statement. "This appointment is crucial to the success of the data center."

Google, which operates the world's largest Internet search engine, needs the server farm to store copious amounts of data such as pictures, video and other media moving on the Internet. For Internet users, the extra capacity will ensure all searches run smoothly and dependably, according to the company.

Jacobik, who started this week, was reached by phone in Atlanta, where he is training for the new job.

"The opportunity to build out a data center for a company like Google was way too much to turn down," Jacobik said. He plans to move his wife and seven children to Lenoir this year from Austin, Texas, where he was technical operations director for Oracle.

Jacobik has also worked for Cisco Systems and was chief information officer on special missions for the U.S. Air Force, where he managed the maintenance of communication systems and oversaw more than 300 people.

The new Google executive will begin posting positions for the Lenoir center in August and start hiring in December for 75 to 125 workers. Google promised to create 210 jobs in Lenoir within four years in exchange for up to $260 million in state and local tax breaks over 30 years.

Positions will include systems administrators, hardware managers, electricians and ventilation and air-conditioning experts -- these are needed to keep the facility cool amid hundreds, possibly thousands of hot-running servers. The new jobs will pay an average of $48,300 annually, nearly twice the Caldwell County average, according to state employment data.

"If growth continues, we will have capacity at our sites for further expansion," said Google spokesman Matt Dunne. That would be beyond the 210 workers.

While the first of two construction phases isn't scheduled to finish until mid-2008, the company will be able to erect work stations starting in December. "We're taking a good look at local talent because it's cost-effective in terms of not having to move people around and because it's the right thing to do," Jacobik said.

He could not say how many of the new workers will come from Lenoir or surrounding Caldwell County, which is about 200 miles west of Raleigh.

Sue Land, who manages the Employment Security Commission office in Lenoir, said Google is on schedule for building and hiring. She said she met Jacobik at a chamber event in Lenoir and discussed plans to employ as many local workers as possible.

To see more of The News & Observer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.newsobserver.com.

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Understanding the ROI of ERP

If a companies wants to succeed with ERP, they must know how to properly implement it. However, this is only one of the things that a company must deal with if they want to succeed with this system. They must also have the resources to properly train their staff on using it.

The company as a whole must be determined to make use of this system. If this is not done, there is little point in setting up the system to begin with. If you wish to set up ERP, you must look at your return on investment. If you cannot see a reasonable return on your investment by using it, it may not be a good idea to spend money and time implementing it.

There are three things companies will want to pay attention to when they are deciding whether or not ERP will be a good return on their investment. When these three things are taken into consideration, the company will ensure that the system that is picked will allow them to achieve their goals. To do this, a company will first need to pay attention to the methods involved with implementing the system. Failing to do this will put them at a severe disadvantage. The biggest mistake made by most businesses is choosing can ERP system by placing an emphasis on the functionality and architecture. This is like purchasing a used car based on how it looks on the outside. When this is done, the results are always the same. The system is installed, the payment is made, but no one is happy with the results. The goals that the company originally set out to achieve by implementing the system are not realized. A tremendous amount of capital and time has been wasted. Because of the company wasted time and money on a system that didn't work, they now find themselves in a situation where they are losing the edge against their competitors. What is wrong with this situation? The answer is implementation. The vendor did not present a proven method of successfully implementing the system in a way that would allow it to be useful to the company.

It is important to realize that implementation and installation are two different concepts. Getting the two confused can lead to a number of complications. Installation can be defined as the process of moving from one software to another while keeping problems at a minimum. Implementation can be defined as a method that a company uses to achieve their goals by transforming the way they carry out operations. With implementation, the software is the tool that is used to achieve this objective. The process of implementation does not start while a company is looking for ERP vendors. It begins when the company present a goal that the ERP system will be used to achieve. The goal is the key. If there is no clear goal, selecting a vendor is a waste of time.

Once a company has come up with a clear goal they wish to achieve, the next step is to find a vendor that can help them achieve it. The only time a vendor should be chosen is if the company does not already have the necessary technology to achieve their objectives. Once a company begins the process of choosing an ERP vendor, they must look at more than the functionality of the system.

They must also look at the ability of the vendor to help them change their business processes in a way that can allow them to reach their goals. How can the company evaluate the vendor? There are three methods available.

The first method is to look at their sales efforts. Pay attention to how they want to assist their customers. The second strategy is to request the references of the vendor. If they are a quality company, they should have a solid reputation. The third thing companies will want to do is analyze the implementation methods of the vendor. Are they consistent in helping you achieve your goals? If they are, you will want to consider them. If they aren't, you will want to find another vendor. You must find a vendor that is able to help you based on work they've done with clients in the past.

Source: www.exforsys.com

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Oracle rolls out first fusion-born BI offering for SMBs

Oracle has announced a new packaging of its business intelligence technology that is aimed at small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) previously priced-out by its enterprise-class platform.
The Oracle BI Standard Edition One (SE One) builds on the same Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition (EE) product the company introduced a year and a half ago that incorporates technology acquired from Siebel Analytics and home-grown Oracle reporting tools.

SE One includes Oracle's core OLAP analysis, ad hoc and production reporting, and role-based interactive dashboard tools as well as a Standard Edition One of the Oracle's 10g database, the Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) ETL tool for building data warehouses and marts, and Oracle's core BI Server infrastructure that provides a unified metadata layer across all the end-user products.

Dave Planeaux, director of BI product marketing at Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle, said the SE was specially tailored for SMBs and large workgroups within organisations in terms of packaging, functionality and price.

"We have basically included everything you need - reporting, analysis, dashboarding and building data marts to get a BI and data warehousing system running. And at a price-point that is approachable for SMBs."

Pricing for the SE One software starts at $1000 per user - with a minimum of five users and maximum of 50 users.That is a much lower entry cost than the EE which sells for $15 000 users (or $225 000 per processor) with a minimum of 50 users.

Planeaux also said that SE One comes with a greatly simplified installation process. "We are providing a single install for all the suite's components that run on a single server."

Oracle had been selling another BI product at this same market for several years - Oracle BI Standard Edition which is based on Oracle's Discoverer product packaged up with the Oracle Application Server Enterprise Edition.

But Planeaux said the new SE was the first Fusion-led BI foray into the SMB space. Fusion is the name for Oracle's modern SOA-based architecture for tying together all its various applications and tools.

Functionally the SE One includes more or less the same capabilities as EE but without some bells and whistles like proactive alerting and disconnected analysis.

Also in SE One's BI Server, the number of data sources that customers can connect to is also limited to an Oracle database plus one other relational source. Access to flat file sources is however unlimited.

While Planeaux believes that connecting to a multitude of data sources will not a pressing issue for most SMBs, he does point out that SE One customers can use the included OWB tool to integrate data from other sources into an Oracle database.

Because SE One is built on more or less the same technology as the EE, Planeaux said that customers can easily upgrade when user-scale demands it.

"Because SE One shares the same core technology as EE, companies that outgrow it can just acquire a license with no re-implementation needed. They can continue to use the same reports, multidimensional analysis, and dashboards they already have."



Our view

With Oracle BI Suite SE One it seems as if Oracle has simply lowered the price-bar for its EE software. Sure cost has always been a major barrier for the adoption of BI and data warehousing technologies among budget-constrained SMBs. But there are other factors that need to be taken into consideration, not least packaging and ease of use.

Oracle said it has included all the 'right' components needed for BI - which is a bit of a generalisation. More importantly perhaps is the pre-configuration of these components to work with one another. Oracle also claims to have 'dramatically simplified' installation, which is important for companies that are constrained in terms of in-house IT skills. But the area where Oracle needs to be a lot more convincing is in ease of use.

Oracle BI Suite EE is not the most complex suite on the market. But it certainly carries a learning curve. Customers should press Oracle on what they intend to do in terms of supporting customers with tutorials, training and education. If not, then they risk getting their hands on a complex set of BI technologies, albeit at a bargain price, that they struggle to use.

Finally Oracle could do with a serious re-think of its BI branding. 'BI Suite' appended with 'SE, EE, and/or One' make for a confusing mix. Surely there is a more simplified branding to go with the various packaging.

Source: Computergram

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The Importance of Enterprise Resource Planning

There can be no doubt that ERP is an important tool in our world of today. As more businesses begin to compete on a global scale, it will become critical for them to streamline their operations and processes. However, it is important to realize that ERP is not the cure to all the problems a company will face. There are a number of pros and cons to this technology, and those who understand this will be the most likely to succeed.

One of the most powerful benefits of ERP is that it successfully companies the many system architectures of a company. Indeed, this is why the technology was originally introduced.

When business processes are streamlined into a single cohesive unit, the company will operate at a higher level. This will lead to a higher level of productivity, and this in turn will lead to more profits. Another powerful advantage of ERP is greater levels of information flow, along with a higher quality of information. Given the fact that we are living in the Information Age, this is critically important. Companies must be able to rapidly transfer information from one place to another. When information is transferred quickly and efficiently, the company or organization will be able to act on the data within a short period of time. However, it is not simply enough to transfer information quickly. The organization must be able to make sure the data is high in quality. All of the information in the world is useless if it is not high in quality. In addition to information flow and data quality, ERP is also powerful because it allows a company to effectively manage its inventory. When the products are manufactured, it will be done with a high level of precision. Perhaps the most important thing about this technology is that the costs will be decreased. When a company has to deal with large amounts of paperwork, managing it can be costly. It is also expensive to integrate various software tools that were not originally designed for each other.

Once the processes of a company are integrated, the costs involved with maintenance and transfer of information will be low. The money saved by the organization can be used to invest in new products or marketing strategies. Enterprise Resource Planning is powerful because it allows a company to become highly flexible. An organization that uses this technology will be able to quickly adapt to changes that occur in the market. Though it may require a great deal of corporate restructuring, the benefits will pay off handsomely in the end. Flexibility is very important today. If an organization is not flexible, it will be difficult for them to stay competitive.

One of the most powerful advantages to ERP is the implementation of software. Even though Y2K didn't become the disaster that many people expected, it gave rise to the concept of making sure software was properly implemented. In addition to dealing with software issues, ERP can also help companies integrate their operations. At the same time, it is important to realize that there are a number of challenges involved with utilizing ERP. Perhaps one of the greatest of these challenges is cost. Enterprise Resource Planning tools are outside the price range of many organizations.

When ERP was first introduced, the only companies that truly could afford it were Fortune 1000 companies. Even then, there was the problem of getting workers to accept the new tool. A number of companies would purchase complex ERP tools, only to find that it was not successful because the end users failed to properly use it.

Another problem with ERP is the implementation. Setting up this system can be complex and time consuming, and the minimum implementation time for a large company is six months. Despite this, there have been cases were it took 18 months to fully implement the system. Some clients have also complained that ERP software is not flexible.

It is important to understand that ERP tools must be customized to meet the needs of the company. In most cases, it will not be useful when it first purchased. Each company has unique needs, and ERP tools must be able to meet them. A number of companies run into problems when they attempt to customize the software.

Source: www.exforsys.com

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SAP finally responds to Oracle Complaint

Oracle sued SAP back in March for corporate theft. Today SAP filed an answer to the Oracle complaint.

In the answer, SAP said TomorrowNow was authorized to download materials from Oracle's Web site on behalf of TomorrowNow customers. At the same time, SAP acknowledged that some inappropriate downloads of fixes and support documents occurred at TomorrowNow. Importantly, SAP affirmed that what was downloaded at TomorrowNow stayed in that subsidiary's separate systems. SAP did not have access to Oracle intellectual property via TomorrowNow.
"Even a single inappropriate download is unacceptable from my perspective. We regret very much that this occurred," said Henning Kagermann, CEO, SAP AG. "I want to reassure our investors, customers, partners and employees that SAP takes any departure from the high standards we set for all of our businesses very seriously, regardless of where it occurred or how confined it may be. When I learned what happened, I promptly took action to strengthen operational oversight at TomorrowNow while assuring that we maintain excellent service for TomorrowNow's customers going forward."

SAP stated that it did not have access to Oracle materials downloaded by TomorrowNow. SAP explained that it intentionally created a business structure that maintained a firewall between TomorrowNow and SAP and that it was satisfied that SAP AG or SAP America did not access Oracle intellectual property via TomorrowNow.

SAP created a site that informs about this lawsuit.

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Oracle Reports Q4 2007

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) fiscal 2007 Q4 GAAP earnings per share were up 27% to $0.31, compared to the same quarter last year. Fourth quarter GAAP revenues were up 20% to $5.8 billion, while quarterly GAAP net income was up 23% to $1.6 billion. Total GAAP software revenues were up 19% to $4.8 billion. GAAP new license revenues were up 17% with GAAP database and middleware new license revenues up 18% and GAAP applications new license revenues up 13%. GAAP services revenues were up 26% to $1.1 billion compared to the same quarter last year.

Fourth quarter non-GAAP earnings per share were up 28% to $0.37, and non-GAAP net income was up 24% to $1.9 billion compared to Q4 last year. For fiscal year 2007, GAAP earnings per share were up 27% to $0.81. Fiscal year 2007 GAAP revenues were up 25% to $18.0 billion, while annual GAAP net income was up 26% to $4.3 billion. Total GAAP software revenues for the year were up 23% to $14.2 billion with GAAP database and middleware new license revenues up 16% and GAAP applications new license revenues up 32%. Annual GAAP services revenues were $3.8 billion, up 33% compared to the year ago period.

Fiscal year 2007 non-GAAP earnings per share were up 25% year over year to $1.01. Annual non-GAAP net income was up 25% to $5.3 billion compared to fiscal year 2006.

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