SAP, Oracle Ready to Square Off

SAP seeks speedy discovery and mediation; Oracle seeks an 18-month discovery process and 2009 trial. In a joint statement filed Aug. 28 by SAP and Oracle—a requirement for the upcoming Sept. 4 case management conference to kick off Oracle's legal claims against SAP—both companies make their initial arguments to the United States District Court, Northern District of California, San Francisco Division.

Not surprisingly, SAP is seeking a speedy resolution to what surely has become a public relations thorn in its side. Equally predictable is Oracle's desire to draw its case out through a lengthy discovery process and 2009 jury trial.

What's a bit more explosive are Oracle's seemingly new claims that SAP has been stealing from Oracle for years—and that it will take at least 18 months of discovery, at least 69 customer witnesses and dozens of depositions around the globe to prove it.

Oracle filed suit against SAP on March 22, alleging that SAP, through its subsidiary TomorrowNow, which provides third-party support for Oracle applications, illegally downloaded support material. In a June 4 amendment Oracle added copyright infringement and breach of contract claims that include allegations that SAP hacked into Oracle's computer systems to steal documentation and code.

Both companies are seeking a jury trial to decide the case. SAP, in its part of the statement, is looking for two considerations: A speedy resolution to Oracle's suit against SAP—that is, one unhampered by a lengthy discovery process—and the commencement in the next couple of months of court-ordered mediation by a retired or acting Magistrate Judge.

Oracle, on the other hand, is seeking the court's approval for an in-depth discovery process leading up to a 2009 trial. Oracle's extended timeline is based on the claim that the scope of SAP's crimes far surpasses the amended complaint that SAP knowingly hacked into Oracle's systems to steal confidential product documentation.

"The evidence of unauthorized downloading detailed in Oracle's First Amended Complaint is likely only the tip of the iceberg. Oracle's best records cover only a period of a few months, but SAP's own public statements suggest that SAP downloaded Oracle's intellectual property over a period of years," read the Aug. 28 joint statement. "If true, the actual scope of SAP's unauthorized taking may exceed by many times the numbers reflected in the First Amended Complaint. Oracle expects difficulty in determining the actual scope of SAP's misconduct, in part because SAP did not have a policy of preserving the records of its access to, and taking from, Oracle's computer systems."

In its part of the joint statement, SAP said Oracle's dramatic statement is inaccurate.

"[Oracle's statement] ignores that TomorrowNow, on behalf of its customers, had a right to access Oracle's Customer Connection Web site and to download support materials for the customers," SAP's statement said. "It ignores that the downloads were performed by TomorrowNow, not SAP America or SAP AG. It ignores that none of the support materials downloaded by TomorrowNow were provided to SAP America or SAP AG. This case, in short, is about whether TomorrowNow exceeded its customers' rights in downloading certain materials. That is not a matter of 'corporate theft on a grand scale,' as Oracle says in its complaint, but a matter of contract interpretation."

In a July 3 press conference, Henning Kagermann, CEO for SAP, based in Walldorf, Germany, responded publicly to Oracle's claims and admitted that TomorrowNow inappropriately downloaded "some" Oracle files, but said the scope of the wrongdoing is not close to what Oracle claims in its more than 150 allegations against SAP. Kagermann also asserted that SAP had no knowledge of TomorrowNow's misdeeds, and, more importantly, no access to Oracle documentation or code.

As such, SAP is seeking "prompt resolution" of the case through the Court's ADR, or Alternative Dispute Resolution process.

ADR processes are defined in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act of 1975 as "procedures and services for the resolutions of disputes" that include alternatives to normal court proceedings leading up to a trial. Alternatives can include conferences, mediation, neutral evaluation, case appraisal and conciliation. ADR does not include arbitration or court procedures and services—nor does it do away with the need for a trial. As a general principle, all disputes are potentially suitable for referral to ADR, and the majority wind up in mediation.

In its joint statement to the court, SAP said it believes the San Francisco court's ADR process would be a "useful forum for Oracle to identify and quantify its alleged harm so that discovery, motions and trial can be appropriately focused."

Oracle has its own timeline in mind. In the joint statement, Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., proposed, "due to the complexity and scope of the issues that includes at least 69 customer witnesses and dozens of depositions around the world," an 18-month discovery period followed by a jury trial in the latter half of 2009, as Oracle's trial council will be otherwise occupied in a separate trial in Delaware scheduled to begin in April 2009.

Author: Renee Boucher Ferguson

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PHP Oracle Web Development book by Packt Publishing

PHP Oracle Web Development is a new book from Packt that helps users combine the power, scalability, and reliability of the Oracle Database with the ease of use, short development time, and high performance of PHP. Written by experienced author, Yuli Vasiliev, this book is built entirely around example code, covering the most popular and up-to-date topics on using PHP in conjunction with Oracle.

When building a PHP/Oracle application, users have two general options. The first is to use an Oracle database just to store data, performing all the operations on that data on the client side; the other is to use the database not only to store data, but also to process it, thus moving data processing to the data.

While building the key business logic of a database-driven PHP application inside the database is always a good idea, users should bear in mind that not all of the databases available today allow you to do. The Oracle database, which offers record-breaking performance, scalability, and reliability, does. The partnership of Oracle and the open-source scripting language PHP is an excellent solution for building high-performance, scalable, and reliable data-driven web applications.

This 100% practical book is crammed full of easy-to-follow examples. It provides all the tools a PHP/Oracle developer needs to take advantage of the winning combination. It addresses the needs of a wide spectrum of PHP/Oracle developers, placing the emphasis on the most up-to-date topics, such as new PHP and Oracle Database features, stored procedure programming, handling transactions, security, caching, web services, and Ajax.

Through numerous examples, this book will show readers how to build simple and efficient PHP applications on top of Oracle, efficiently distributing data processing between the Web/PHP server and Oracle Database server.

Although PHP Oracle Web Development covers only the most popular and up-to-date topic areas on the use of PHP in conjunction with Oracle, the author does not make any assumption about the skill level of the reader. Packed with information in an easy-to-read format, the book is ideal for any PHP developer who deals with Oracle. For more information, please visit:

www.PacktPub.com/PHP-Oracle-Web-Development-XML-Ajax-Open-Source/book

Source: www.linuxpr.com

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eHarmony Weds Oracle 10g

Oracle on Monday announced that eHarmony, a leading online dating and match-making service, is now using the Oracle 10g database to play Cupid to more than 17 million love-starved users.

While the actual transition from Microsoft's SQL Server database software only took an uneventful three hours, the planning, testing and installation took more than 14 months, according to Mark Douglas, eHarmony's vice president of technology.

But the days and weeks preceding those fateful three hours were every bit as nerve-wracking as those awkward, hesitant seconds leading up to a couple's first kiss.

"It went flawlessly, but a lot of our IT people were nervous," Douglas said in an interview with internetnews.com. "Some said they didn't know a lot about databases but it sounded risky. We’re a 24/7 business. We can't just shut our database down for the weekend."

To make it happen, Douglas and his five-person IT crew embarked on the tedious task of scripting custom code that would allow eHarmony to seamlessly transfer data from the SQL Server database to Oracle 10g without any downtime.

The eHarmony site handles more than 400 million page views a month and processes between 400 and 1,200 transactions per second. Douglas wouldn't comment on exactly how much revenue would be lost if the site went down but said it would "a lot more" than a $1,000 a minute.

"The analogy I like to use is that is was like transferring packages from one plane to another while both are in flight," he said. "We had to write a really significant amount of code."

eHarmony, along with competitors such as Yahoo Personals, Match.com, JDate and dozens of other more specialized sites, allows subscribers to build personal profiles, view other subscribers' profiles and access an array of dating services, including a match-making system that connects would-be lovers with others based on their dating preferences. eHarmony, based in Pasadena, Calif., charges $59 a month for the service but does offer long-term contracts at a lower monthly rate.

In the past year, eHarmony's registered user base has surged from around 11 million to more than 17 million, adding an average of 15,000 new daters each day. That kind of growth, Douglas said, couldn't be accommodated on SQL Server.

"There's nothing particularly wrong with SQL," he said. "We just needed functionality that Microsoft doesn't provide and didn't want to write it all ourselves."

Leading up to the live launch, eHarmony tested migrating more than five terabytes of its precious data every day for 100 days in a row. It uses more than 400 servers to process changes to customer profiles, queries for potential matches, searches and new customer orders.

Douglas said the total cost to move eHarmony to Oracle 10g was in the vicinity of $1.5 million. The site's perceived response time—essentially how fast individual pages load—has improved by about 30 percent and the IT department no longer has to schedule planned site outages to perform service operations on the system as it did with the SQL Server software.

According to a study conducted by the Online Publishers Association and comScore Networks, Americans in 2005 spent more than $500 million on online personals and dating sites.

For the record, Douglas is married, didn't meet his wife on eHarmony and said the company prohibits employees from using the service.

Author: Larry Barrett

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eRewards Selects Oracle Database Infrastructure for Online Market Research

eRewards, Inc., a provider of online market research, has opted for Oracle Database infrastructure to conduct online market research. eRewards leverages a family of Oracle Database products as the basis for its online transaction processing (OLTP) and data warehouse systems.

eRewards makes use of Oracle Database 10g to power its program, which rewards members for the time they spend answering online surveys. Participating in the program, members earn e-Rewards currency, which can be redeemed for a variety of rewards including dining, entertainment, travel and retail rewards.

eRewards relies on Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Automatic Storage Management, Oracle Data Guard and Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g to process the influx of data.

eRewards' Web site runs on OLTP system supported by Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Real Application Clusters that facilitate online interaction with eRewards members. The multi-terabyte data warehouse of eRewards also works on Oracle Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters. In addition, eRewards leverages the flexibility of Oracle Data Guard to keep its data warehouse up-to-date with the latest information captured by the OLTP system. eRewards has also deployed Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g to design its data warehouse and business intelligence systems.

"We evaluated competitive offerings and nothing could match the combination of functionality, performance, manageability and the cost structure offered by Oracle," said Joel Davis, Senior Vice President of Technology, eRewards. "Near real-time synchronization of our data warehouse with our OLTP system enables eRewards to more effectively scale our environment to meet the needs of members, clients, and employees."

Author: Niladri Sekhar Nath @ TMCnet

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Who Will Win The SAP vs Oracle Battle?

When it comes to the business of selling technology, two immutable facts emerge: Past is prologue; and it's always personal.

Just ask Larry Ellison and Henning Kagermann, the stars of the latest and, some might say, most vicious revival of an age-old tale that's been told and re-told throughout the history of American commerce.

This time it's SAP and Oracle.

Before that it was Microsoft and Yahoo for search. And quite some time ago, it was Apple and IBM for PCs. The names change but the storyline remains largely the same: No. 1 and No. 2 channel all their rage and resources toward destroying each other, oblivious or indifferent to an emerging competitor that's soon to kill them both.

And while SAP and Oracle continue to slug it out for the lion's share of the estimated $30 billion-plus that companies spend for business applications and services each year, Salesforce.com's software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is propelling the company to record sales and earnings.

Worse for SAP and Oracle, the on-demand applications provider is not just winning in the small- to mid-sized market, but it's also winning contracts for large installations in head-to-head battles with both rivals and, in some cases, landing subscription deals with some of their largest and most lucrative clients.

"The competition continues to struggle with how to build, sell and deploy multi-tenant shared solutions," Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said during an Aug. 15 conference call announcing the company's second-quarter results. "The appeal to customers is undeniable. But for entrenched legacy vendors like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft, to truly adopt this model is unthinkable."

Benioff, who might be even better at needling competitors than his former boss, Ellison, said Siemens, SAP's largest European customer, chose to go with his company for its customer relationship management (CRM) software in the second quarter and added "of course, we already have their largest global customer, Dupont. That's amazing."

He said Salesforce.com landed the largest customer account in its history -- a yet undisclosed international financial services firm with more than 35,000 subscribers -- at the expense of Oracle. It also doubled its subscriber deployment at Cisco Systems, a legacy Siebel account, and beat out Oracle for a "large opportunity" at American Express.

An Oracle spokeswoman declined to comment on Salesforce.com's customer wins in the second quarter. In an e-mail to internetnews.com, SAP spokeswoman Lindsey Held wrote "we are focused on our customers, not competitive claims."

The strong second quarter and impressive customer wins aside, Salesforce.com still casts a relatively small shadow over SAP and Oracle. In the quarter, it earned $3.7 million on sales of $176.5 million. It's now projecting sales of between $727 million and $732 million for the fiscal year. Meanwhile, SAP pocketed $2.5 billion on sales of more than $12.4 billion in its most recent fiscal year while Oracle earned $4.3 billion on sales of $18 billion.

While neither SAP nor Oracle is saying much about Salesforce.com or its rapidly expanding subscriber base, both companies say they recognize the importance of the SaaS market. SAP plans to unveil A1S, its twice-delayed SaaS offering geared for the SMB market later this year. Meanwhile, Oracle's Siebel CRM OnDemand service lags far behind Salesforce.com.

"Salesforce is leaps and bounds ahead of Oracle right now," Gartner analyst Sharon Mertz told internetnews.com. "Salesforce has somewhere between $400 million and $500 million in on-demand sales compared to between $50 million and $100 million for Siebel OnDemand."

Mertz said Microsoft looms as a potential threat to Salesforce.com down the road. It will be releasing the latest version of its Dynamics CRM Live service in the first quarter of 2008. She said Microsoft is already bringing in between $175 million and $200 million from its CRM Live offering.

"I don't believe Salesforce's success is necessarily due to the fixation Oracle and SAP have with each other," she said. "They have a good alternative to on-premise solutions for a wide range of company sizes. Now they're making more headway into the larger companies, selling into SAP and Oracle strongholds."

Analysts say the growing popularity of SaaS with companies large and small represents a significant growth opportunity for vendors who can branch out from traditional SaaS applications for CRM and human resources to more business-critical applications such as procurement and compliance management.

In March, Gartner reported worldwide SaaS sales surged to more than $6.3 billion in 2006 and predicts the market will blossom to more than $19.3 billion by 2011.

While Salesforce.com keeps adding subscribers, Oracle and SAP continue to trade punches.

In March, Oracle filed a lawsuit alleging SAP engaged in "corporate theft on a grand scale" by engaging "systematic, illegal access to -- and taking from -- Oracle's computerized customer support systems."

Last month, Kagermann conceded that its subsidiary, TomorrowNow, engaged in "inappropriate" downloads of Oracle support materials but said SAP did not access any of Oracle's intellectual property.

SAP claims the "majority" of the 150-plus complaints in the Oracle lawsuit are "unfounded" and Kagermann said he was "surprised and disappointed" that Oracle did not personally contact him when it discovered the downloads. He also acknowledged the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has requested some of SAP's internal documents for its investigation.

Oracle contends TomorrowNow employees downloaded thousands of mission-critical items from Oracle's knowledge bases used to service its customers.

Both CEOs have shown an affinity for mocking one another and their companies in the press, particularly in the months leading up to and immediately following Oracle's hostile takeover of PeopleSoft in January 2004.

Kagermann, in a July 2004 interview with Business 2.0, said he wasn't too concerned about Oracle's $10.3 billion purchase.

"Larry claims that he will overtake SAP," he said. "But just look at the facts. Who's gaining market share? It's all bullsh**."

Ellison enjoys mocking his chief competitor by calling it "sap" and damn SAP with faint praise with quotes such as "[SAP] has good industry knowledge and products in some industries, like oil and gas, but they lack industry-specific knowledge and products in most other industries."

Denis Pombriant, an analyst at Stoughton, Mass.-based Beagle Research Group, said the ongoing war between SAP and Oracle is playing a role in distracting both companies from the threat Salesforce.com presents.

"Salesforce started as an insurgent in a corner of the market that Oracle and SAP didn't want to play in," he said. "They're both making half-hearted efforts to develop an on-demand strategy. But they're more focused on attracting customers with on-demand and then switching them to on-premise solutions with bigger price tags and profits."

Author: Larry Barrett

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VOICECON - Oracle sees gold in unified communications

Unified communications has helped Oracle integrate its many acquisitions, its CIO said. Oracle has almost three years of experience with unified communications technology that some enterprises are just starting to consider, and it says the deployment has been well worth the time and expense.

Standardizing and centralizing its communications systems has helped the software giant integrate the more than 30 acquisitions it's made over the past three years, including Siebel and PeopleSoft, said CIO Mark Sunday in a keynote speech at VoiceCon.

Unified communications has also saved the company millions of dollars and let it support a growing workforce while actually cutting its voice and data team by 6 percent, he said. The new technology also means better support for users of its Oracle On Demand services, Sunday told attendees at the San Francisco conference.

Although there are still some legacy phone systems Oracle hasn't replaced with VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) because it doesn't yet pay to do so, the company's general strategy has been one of diving in. Some IT managers at VoiceCon aren't yet so sure about unified communications, but Oracle's Sunday is sold. "The return from deploying this has real, hard savings that more than justifies it," Sunday said.

Nearly 75 percent of Oracle's facilities have migrated to VOIP, Sunday said. Those are spread over 120 countries but are all controlled by six Cisco Systems CallManager systems, and the company wants to end up with just one large CallManager cluster, Sunday said. "Triple redundancy" keeps the phones alive in emergencies, he said. Equipping a new office or consolidating sites, as Oracle has done many times as it bought companies, is much easier than before.

"Effectively, we just plug in the phones," Sunday said. "This is a tremendous enabler for acquiring companies."

Combining voice, video, e-mail and text messaging with presence has saved employees millions of hours, according to Oracle. It also helps developers come together quickly on projects and lets customers quickly reach Oracle and have what Sunday called "rich interaction," beyond voice and e-mail, to solve problems.

The new technologies are also finding their way into Oracle's own products. The company is building communications capabilities into every aspect of its middleware and putting tools such as Oracle Communicator and Oracle Communications Suite on the surface of all its applications, he said.

Matt Drage, an IT director at a manufacturing company, heard Oracle's presentation and wondered whether things have worked as smoothly as described. Drage is getting ready to replace four traditional phone systems and wants something more than just VOIP phones, so he's looking into unified communications at the show.

"I'm hearing that UC is the Holy Grail, but I'm not sure the products are quite ready yet," Drage said. The main thing he hopes it can fix is the array of different things clamoring for employees' attention: desk phones, cell phones, notebooks and technical workstations. Employees tell him they like to travel just because it simplifies their lives down to a cell phone and notebook, he said.

A telecommunications manager at a midwestern university medical center, who asked not to be named, thinks one size may not fit all parts of his organization. He'll leave the choice to departments and then put together a system that makes sense for each. For example, some researchers may have no use for unified communications at all, while a call center for clinic patients might be able to offer better service if operators automatically had information about callers presented to them, he said.

Author: Stephen Lawson @ IDG News Service

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ADFD adopts Oracle solution

The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) is set to empower its management and drive workforce efficiency backed by Oracle’s soluiton.

As well as being the first implementation of its kind in the region, the Oracle’s Human Resources Management System (HRMS) solution was implemented in a record 30 days.

The fund’s main activity is to provide economic assistance in the form of confessional loans, grants or contributions to projects capitals.

With more than 240 projects in 55 countries, the fund owns equities in more than 11 organisations in Egypt, Morocco, Oman, Tunisia, and Bangladesh.

"ADFD, which provides conventional development aid to Arab, African, and Asian countries, has provided over $5.7 billion in aid to over 240 projects,” said Ahmed Sari Al Mazrouei, general manager, Abu Dhabi Fund for Development.

“We make a real contribution to the development of infrastructure in some of the world's poorest nations. With our global workforce, it is imperative that we have a reliable and robust human resources management system in place to support all our endeavors. By implementing the Oracle solution, we were able to strengthen the fund inside out & align workforce with the strategic objectives.”

The components of Oracle’s HRMS include Oracle Payroll, Oracle HR Self Service, and Oracle BI Enterprise Publisher (Fusion). By installing Oracle HRMS, Abu Dhabi Fund for Development has increased its operational efficiency.

“The fact that this implementation was complete in a record 30 days will drive ADFD to align its workforce with its business objectives, control and lower employee and administration related costs, manage workforce risk and manage its globally integrated workforce. The systems will also empower managers through its decentralised decision making, and automate all HR and Payroll processes leading to a paper-less organization, ” said Hussam Dajani, senior vice president, Oracle Middle East and Africa.

Oracle’s implementation partner Appslink provided turnkey solutions from consultation to delivery and implementation. “We adapted the system to integrate with Oracle Financials and billing applications with zero customization,” said Mohamed Mowafaq, consulting manager for AppsLink. The web-based Oracle HR Self Service will boost productivity and allow users faster online access to HR data and update their own profiles, thereby lowering costs and increasing reliability of records. This web-based solution is less costly to maintain and suffers fewer breakdowns. With better access to information ADFD will make better use of its workforce and find new opportunities to manage operations more effectively.”

With Oracle HRMS, the fund can now rapidly collect and analyse detailed information about its business and assess the capabilities to improve services by placing the right people with the right skills.

The fund will also be able to trim down costs associated with employee absence, and turnover. Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher will enable ADFD to produce a wide array of documents and reports such as financial statements, high-fidelity reports, invoices, labels, and more, using a variety of familiar applications for layout such as Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word.

Author: Abu Dhabi

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Sympathy for the Oracle

I used to envy Larry Ellison. But then I had lunch with one of his senior minions, and now I feel a little sympathy. Just a little. :-)

It was actually very educational, because it reinforced for me the power of an open-source sales model, and how it could help Oracle. Oracle kicks tail with sub-$1 billion companies, selling a feature/function value model often winning these deals from SAP. But in the biggest companies, Oracle often loses, and not because it's technology is worse.

No, according to this Oracle executive, it's because SAP builds relationships with executive management at target customers and these CxOs decide for SAP, even when it's the wrong technical decision. Time after time, he talks with the IT executive responsible for the decision after Oracle has lost the sale, and finds out that he was selling to the wrong person.

But surely Oracle could outdo SAP on the executive meet-ups?

Oddly, no, he suggested, because SAP's management exudes thought leadership, whereas Oracle's is more about execution. The prospects want to connect with these SAP executives. As a result, SAP's sales model starts with its thought leadership and ends with a product sale (whereas Oracle takes the inverse approach).

I have no way of knowing how true this is but, if true, an open-source model offers a ray of hope (though surely not the only one, or even the easiest one). Why? Because open source makes it easier to win the bottom-up war. Once one gets to the stage of Red Hat, perhaps it helps to win the top-down war, too (albeit slightly different? Alan Cox exuding technical leadership to the IT staff rather than the CFO/CIO).
Oracle already makes most of its profit on maintenance revenues and, as my friend reminded me, breaks even or loses money quite often on these initial big license sales (because upwards of 100 people can get involved in closing a $1 million deal with a multibillion dollar prospect). So, a low-cost sales model that gets it in the door and sets it up for downstream maintenance revenues sounds ideal.

Is open source a panacea? Of course not. But it sure sounded like a good idea in light of how Oracle prefers to sell and the costs associated with that preference. If only Oracle could adopt the model before it starts getting bumped and scraped by open-source applications and databases. It's nowhere near hurting today, but it could start putting a serious dent on SAP and Microsoft by going on the offensive with open source.

And then we'd no longer need to sing (from The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil")...

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long years
Stole many a man's soul and faith...
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste.

No, we'd have real sympathy.

Author: Matt Asay

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Oracle Officials Pleased With Siebel CRM Progress

Oracle officials have announced they are pleased with Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand and Oracle On Demand customer traction, announcing that in the last quarter alone Oracle established or expanded its relationship with more than 200 new global customers, including ADP, Central Plastics, Fidelity Registered Investment Advisor Group, GE Commercial Finance and Translational Genomics Research Institute.

With 14 releases of Siebel CRM On-Demand in less than four years, Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand Release 14 is now generally available. This new version unites CRM functionality with the latest in Web 2.0 technologies, company officials say, and includes "significant enhancements across its sales, marketing, services, analytics, built-in call center, and industry edition capabilities."

Siebel CRM On Demand Release 14 will also include "next-generation usability and customization capabilities, and strong integration capabilities that allow customers and partners to quickly and easily establish deep integration with other applications," company officials promise.

Additionally, with the Siebel CRM On Demand Integration Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite, customers gain pre-built integration between their subscription CRM applications and the back office suite.

Early this month Oracle announced that Jenny Craig, the weight management company, had expanded its relationship with Oracle to standardize on Oracle's Siebel CRM to help increase business growth, improve overall efficiencies, gain a 360 degree client view across all sales channels and trim the fat from its operating expenses.

Using Siebel CRM, Jenny Craig will be able to automate business processes for sales, inventory, reporting, and scheduling, company officials say.

Jenny Craig, based in Carlsbad, California, has about 650 centers in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Puerto Rico. "We recognize knowledge and insight as the currency of influence among our clients," said Shoukry Tiab, Vice President of Information Services and CIO at Jenny Craig. "We chose Oracle's Siebel CRM for its flexibility and scalability. We will have visibility to forecast growth and revenue based on client preferences and seasonal campaigns."

Jenny Craig also runs Oracle Database 10g, an Oracle-based data warehouse, Oracle Partner Portal, Siebel SmartScript and Oracle Business Intelligence Applications.

Author: David Sims

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Openbravo recruits senior Oracle director from Silicon Valley

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Openbravo, the leading developer of professional, web-based, open source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions designed specifically for small and medium businesses, has expanded its management team with the appointment of Paolo Juvara as Chief Products Officer (CPO).

Paolo Juvara joins Openbravo from Oracle Corporation, where he worked for fourteen years, most recently as senior director, leading the development of the Service product line. He also held a broad range of development and management roles within Oracle's Applications Development business, including positions in Financials, Supply Chain Management, CRM and Business Intelligence.

His experience in developing products for global markets is highly relevant to Openbravo's ERP software.

Moving from Oracle's headquarters in Redwood Shores, California, Paolo Juvara will be based in Pamplona, Spain, and will assume responsibility for Openbravo's ERP product roadmap, engineering and integration projects.

Manel Sarasa, Openbravo's CEO, said: "Paolo understands our market and the opportunities and challenges that open source brings. Furthermore, he has the personality and level of insight to be involved with our development communities, to listen to and engage with them. His appointment is a great endorsement of our product and strategy. I look forward to Paolo playing an important part in our achievements as we work towards 500,000 downloads on SourceForge."

Paolo Juvara, the newly-appointed CPO for Openbravo, said: "I deeply believe in the design and application of open source software and I look forward to applying my experience of development of commercial software into an area that I feel passionately about. Openbravo has a strong team and a strong strategy, and I am proud to be part of one of the most successful projects in SourceForge."

Ismael Ciordia, Chief Technology Officer for Openbravo said: "Paolo has the perfect combination of experiences to take Openbravo to the next level: he is a capable developer; he is used to managing large teams of developers; he has global experience and he has worked on strategy, sales and consulting with companies across Asia Pacific, EMEA, Latin America. While Paolo will take full responsibility on business focused products, such as the ERP, I will focus on evolving and enhancing our powerful development platform in which these products run."

Openbravo is a fully functional integrated web-based open source enterprise management system (ERP), with a proven track record. The ERP has already been installed by a number of innovative SMB enterprises (http://www.openbravo.com/customers/success-stories/).

About Openbravo

Openbravo is the leading professional open source enterprise management (ERP) solution for small and midsize enterprises (SMEs). Driven by open source philosophies and best-in-class services, it delivers a fully integrated, web-based ERP system tailored to the needs of any company, regardless of size or industry sector. The functionality of Openbravo is in continual growth thanks to an expanding international community of users, partners and developers. Openbravo helps companies to manage daily operations, optimize business processes, enhance customer satisfaction and ultimately increase profitability. And because it is open source, Openbravo puts the customer in full control without the overheads of contracts or licenses. In January 2006, Openbravo secured a EUR 5 million ($6.4m) financing agreement with Sodena - record funding for an open source ERP company - to fuel further software development and international growth. Openbravo is a founder member of the Open Solutions Alliance - an independent consortium launched in 2007 to educate and inform businesses deploying Open Source, while promoting best practice and interoperability among vendors. Openbravo is a winner of a 2007 'Red Herring 100 Europe Award' and of the 'LinuxWorld.com Product Excellence Awards 2007' in the Best Integration Solution category.

Source: www.openbravo.com

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Millipore swaps out SAP for Oracle

When life sciences firm Millipore Inc. acquired Serologicals Corp. last summer for its strong focus on drug discovery, nuclear function and stem cell research, one of the first orders of business was to swap out the firm's SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for the Oracle E-Business Suite.

The decision to migrate about 1,000 new Serologicals Corp. users from SAP to Oracle made sense, according to Tom Roy, Millipore's manager of application services, because Millipore has long sought to standardize on Oracle applications throughout its many business units. The company has been an Oracle customer since 1991 and became one of the first firms to achieve a single, global instance of the Oracle E-Business Suite back in 1999.

"We've been pleased with Oracle applications over the years," Roy said, "and so it pretty much seemed a no-brainer that we would bring this acquisition onto Oracle."

The Oracle E-Business Suite implementation at Millipore's new Serologicals division took just under 10 months to complete. Roy said the division is currently running Oracle applications that cover order management, inventory control, manufacturing, shipping and distribution, accounts receivable, general ledger management, project accounting, and purchasing.

"[Serologicals was] pretty much using SAP for their entire ERP," Roy said. "That's all on Oracle now."

Meeting business goals

Millipore decided to standardize on Oracle because it wanted to have consistent and accurate data at its offices and laboratories in 32 countries around the world. The company reports that the consistency it has achieved through standardization has helped to save money and is contributing to the company's ultimate financial goal of doubling in size by 2009.

Millipore's most recent investment in Oracle appears to be paying off. The company says the new Oracle E-Business Suite implementation has helped Serologicals streamline business processes, achieve a consolidated view of customers, and gain critical process manufacturing capabilities.

Some training required

As part of integrating Serologicals into its global operations, Millipore used Oracle's iLearning module to get those 1,000 end users trained on the Oracle E-Business Suite.

According to the company, the iLearning module allowed supervisors to manage, deliver and track training online, and Serologicals employees were able to access the system at their convenience so they could complete training at their own pace.

A supportive message

In addition to running the Oracle E-Business Suite, Millipore currently uses Oracle's Process Manufacturing and Oracle Database 9.2.05.

Roy didn't have any specific complaints about his experience with Oracle thus far, but he said that, in general, all software vendors should strive to improve their support services.

"I think there isn't a software company out there that couldn't do better on support, but I think that compared with the rest, Oracle does very well," Roy said. "Anybody who's done support, whether it's for internal or external customers, knows how difficult it is, and nobody is perfect at it."

Author: Mark Brunelli

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Oracle 11g Ships, But New Features Cost Extra

The recently launched Oracle 11g database server is now shipping but today's release announcement came with a twist: Some of the new features come at an additional cost.

Oracle took the wraps off its next-generation database at an event in New York last month, saying that the first iteration would ship this quarter for Linux. Company officials at the time indicated that the Windows version should follow a quarter later, or by year's end.

The company today declined to comment on the status of the Windows version, which is in beta. Oracle 11g for Windows will boast integration with Microsoft's Visual Studio tool suite.

Also, in a recent white paper, the company said the Windows version will employ a native, thread-based Windows service model and will more tightly integrate with the operating system.

For those running Oracle on Windows, 11g will offer support for large-memory and grid computing. It will support both 32- and 64-bit Windows including Vista, X64-based hardware (client and server) and Intel's Windows-based Itanium server platform.

But the big news today, as mentioned, centers on pricing. Oracle 11g Standard Edition, which allows up to 300 named users, starts at $3,300, while Enterprise Edition is priced at $8,800 for 800 named users. A complete price list is available here.

Some of the key new features of the database are as follows:

* Real Application Testing, which consists of two components. The first is Database Replay, which lets DBAs test, capture and run actual production workloads when executing such tasks as patches and changes to schemas, configuration, storage, network and operating systems. The second component is SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA), which lets developers test the impact of environmental changes. A white paper on RAT is available from Oracle here (PDF). RAT costs $10,000 per processor or $200 per named user.

* Advanced Compression, designed to reduce database storage requirements by two or three times, is priced at $10,000 per processor or $200 per named user.

* Oracle Total Recall, which lets DBAs maintain archives of changed data for those with compliance requirements, is $5,000 per processor or $100 per named user.

* Active Data Guard, a module that provides monitoring, management and automation for data protection and disaster recovery, is priced at $5,000 per processor.

Author: Jeffrey Schwartz

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Top-Kniga selects Oracle Retail applications

Oracle Retail merchandising, planning and data warehousing applications from software solutions provider Oracle have been selected by Top-Kniga, a wholesaler/retailer of books in Russia, to help increase sales, performance and customer service levels across its six wholesale warehouses and 500 stores in 180 cities in Russia, through more effective inventory management.

Top-Kniga, which sells over 3m books each month through its Litera, Las Knigas and Knigomir brands, selected Oracle Retail as the most suitable solution to meet its requirements, following a market applications analysis. The project will focus initially on implementing the Oracle Retail Merchandising System, Oracle Retail Demand Forecasting and Oracle Retail Data Warehouse modules, with Deloitte acting as implementation partner.

Top-Kniga expects the Oracle Retail platform to help improve its forecasting capabilities, provide real-time data and analytics for management and automate stock replenishment, helping to boost inventory turnover and profitability.
The Oracle Retail applications deployment will support Top-Kniga's strategy for improving customer service, sales and efficiency. It is expected to enable the company to bring new stores and locations online quickly and extend its offering of services and printed media books and products.

Source: M2 Best Books

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How Oracle skills can be the base for a good career

What is it?

Oracle is a relational database management system that runs on more than 80 platforms. The Oracle database is Oracle's flagship product: the current version, Oracle10g, was introduced in 2005.

A generic qualification in database technology can be a good foundation for a career, but less likely to appeal to employers than certification from one of the big suppliers. Each stage in the progression from junior to advanced certification involves training and examination fees that can total thousands of pounds.

IBM's DB2 certification is cheapest and simplest of the market leaders. Microsoft, with its regular upheavals between one major release and another, also regularly changes its certification requirements, so staying up to date involves a lot of bother and expense.

The most expensive, however, is Oracle. But Oracle qualifications are also the most marketable, with the widest choice of platforms and employers, and the best rates of pay.

Where did it originate?

Relational technology may have been invented at IBM, but Oracle was the first relational database management system to become commercially available, when a company called Relational Software released it in 1979. Chief executive Larry Ellison and two colleagues took the name from a CIA-funded project they had worked on. The company was renamed Oracle Corporation in 1983. The first version was for Vax VMS, soon extended to Unix, and then to IBM mainframes.

What's it for?

Oracle's proprietary implementation of SQL is PL/SQL (procedural language/structured query language), often used within the rapid application development environment, Oracle Forms.

Oracle insists that it remains committed to Forms and other long-standing technologies: "Oracle Forms and Oracle Reports will continue to be enhanced and will introduce new features in the future versions of the Oracle Application Server. Oracle is already committing development resources that will take Forms and Reports through to at least 2013," the company says.

But the fastest growing development environment is Java/J2EE, which Oracle is supporting with tools and environments like Oracle JDeveloper and the integrated J2EE Application Development Framework.

What makes it special?

Like IBM and Microsoft, Oracle offers an "express edition" of its database, Oracle Database XE, which can be downloaded free for Windows and Linux and used for learning and limited development.

How difficult is it to master?

Oracle has introduced a wizard-driven environment to help novice administrators and non-programmers develop simple applications.

Where is it used?

Oracle is the dominant database in commerce, finance, manufacturing, telecoms and the rest of the private sector, from Boeing and BT, to Egg and the Edinburgh Woollen Mill. It is also widespread in national and local government, police services and other public organisations and charities.

What systems does it run on?

Oracle is available on the widest range of platforms, leading the market in Linux and Unix, and competing with IBM on mainframes and Microsoft on Windows.

What's coming up?

The Oracle 11g database is due later this year.

Author: Nick Langley

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Oracle expands Linux compatibilty

The list of hardware compatible with Oracle's Linux distribution continues to grow, with the software maker certifying six new configurations this week.

The certified products to run Oracle Enterprise Linux include those made by Compellent Technologies, Dell, Egenera, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Pillar Data Systems and Unisys.

Last year, Oracle launched its own distribution of Linux designed to be compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the leading distribution for corporate customers.

Wide hardware compatibility is important for fitting into corporate datacentres.

The company also said it is making a file system tuned for large storage configurations available under an open-source licence. An alpha release of Btrfs was made available on Wednesday.

Oracle also said it is releasing an open-source version of the Yast Linux installation and configuration tool for Oracle Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux under the General Public License (GPL). Yast was originally developed for Novell's Suse Linux.

Oracle hopes to make Oracle Enterprise Linux more appealing to corporate customers and to build credibility and goodwill among the Linux community.

"By developing enhanced capabilities and contributing code, our Linux engineering team continues to make the Linux experience better for all," said Wim Coekaerts, Oracle's vice president of Linux engineering, in a statement.

Author: Martin LaMonica @ CNET News.com

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Orion Health teams with Oracle and Intel in Spain

Auckland-based Orion Health is teaming up with Intel and Oracle in a clinical mobility pilot project being conducted in Spain. The mobile patient information system is being trialled at the Hospital Universitario Son Dureta in Palma de Mallorca.

Using RFID technology, integrated into a mobile tablet device, hospital staff will be able to scan patient wristbands and access information about the patient, such as blood test and scan results, says Ian McCrae, CEO of Orion Health.

Orion’s Concerto medical record software and the device — the Motion C5 MCA (mobile clinical assistant) which uses Intel’s technology — will allow clinicians to access patient data wherever they are in the hospital, regardless of whether the patient is in a bed or being moved on a stretcher or in a wheelchair, says McCrae.

Clinicians from all over the world will come to visit the Son Dureta Hospital to see the system in action, he adds.

The RFID system is just an early phase in a bigger electronic medical record management project that will be conducted over the next five years, he says.
Orion and Oracle technologies, which bring together clinical data from multiple systems across the facility, have already been implemented at Son Dureta Hospital, says McCrae. The joint solution includes a clinical web portal, a central repository for clinical data, and an electronic whiteboard for the accident and emergency department. This system was rolled out in 2006.

Orion and Oracle are looking to sell the system to markets in other parts of Europe, North America and South Africa, says McCrae. This is the first time Orion has partnered with Intel, he says.

Orion has been in the Spanish market for about five years now, says McCrae, and the company has seven staff based in Palma. “We are looking to set up a second office in Spain — in Madrid or Barcelona,” he says. About five staff in New Zealand, in addition to the team in Palma, are involved in the project.

Author: Ulrika Hedquist

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Original Software Unveils Intelligent Data Extraction for Oracle Users

CHICAGO, Aug. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Completing the total software testing
cycle from "keystroke to database," Original Software has unveiled its Intelligent Data Extraction capability which allows Oracle users for the first time test applications at the database level as well as the visual layer. This new functionality is part of the company's flagship TestBench automated software testing solution.

The intelligent data extraction capability automates the creation and extraction of test data subsets from live databases, even from remote locations, with full reference integrity. This capability controls the state of the test data by taking checkpoints of the data set throughout the testing, whilst allowing developers to rollback the data to any prior checkpoint. This eliminates the need to build complex algorithms and external checks to make allowances for changes in the live data. It also protects data in the event of a program failure by restoring the data to its pre-test status. These multiple data subsets can also be easily created for specific projects, reducing the size of data to a manageable volume and building test- beds based on highly targeted scenarios. The integrity of the data is automatically assured with upward and downward schema relationships.The TestBench Suite -- Total Testing "TestBench tests both batch and interactive programs, and is the only software testing solution to allow total management and manipulation of the underlying database, as well as the visual layer of the application," said Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software. "This capability is central to
our "Total Testing" philosophy that covers all aspects of the application from screens and reports to the database and application performance." The company's complete TestBench solution for Oracle delivers a depth of coverage and confidence in testing that has not been available to Oracle database users until now, and extends Original Software's existing support
for data-driven testing which includes table update visibility, data validation rules, environmental roll back and pair-wise input scenarios, all of which are important elements of Original Software's Total Testing approach. Total Testing embraces every element of the test process from test data management, through automation of the visual layer, tracking server and database activity to audit ready reporting.

About Original Software

Original Software offers automated software testing and quality assurance solutions that deliver tangible benefits across a wide range of IT and application environments. As a recognized innovator, Original Software's goal is to reduce business risk and improve application time to
market for IT departments through the development of class leading automated solutions.
Over the last 10 years, more than 400 organizations operating in 25 countries have come to depend on Original Software for their software testing solutions. Current users range from small software development shops to major multinationals, including: Cargill Global Financial Solutions, Circuit City Stores, Pfizer Pharmaceutical (Ireland), DHL, Coca-Cola, Scandia and hundreds of others. Original Software operates central offices near Chicago, and London.
Their solutions can be obtained through these offices or through a network of qualified and knowledgeable business partners throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australasia and the Americas.

Source: Original Software

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Roamfree Ltd Achieves Global Implementation of the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Aug. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Oracle today
announced that Roamfree Ltd, the online global accommodation search
company, has implemented the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 in only four months.

With the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, Roamfree Ltd has streamlined and standardized best-practice administrative and financial processes within its global enterprise, and has built a solid and scalable foundation for automating and integrating additional business functions in
the future. Implemented in partnership with Zensar Technologies, a global software solutions provider and member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, this implementation represents one of the first global go-lives of the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 since its availability in January 2007.

Roamfree enables travelers around the world to search and reserve accommodations online in real-time, from more than 100,000 accommodation providers. Roamfree is owned by former Sydney Swans footballer Tony Smith and currently has about 140 staff, including 65 IT professionals with corporate headquarters in Surfers Paradise, Australia. The company chose
the Oracle E-Business Suite over SAP and Microsoft to provide a fully integrated foundation with a best-practice driven global enterprise that leverages standards-based technology to support the company's continued growth and expansion. Additionally, Roamfree plans to simplify and integrate its core system infrastructure onto one platform to reduce the
number of separate information systems the company must maintain, while improving the quality and timeliness of information used in decision-making across the enterprise. Roamfree is currently focusing on Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, with third-party partnerships expected to deliver accommodation search globally. "The Oracle E-Business Suite is the backbone of our business," said Adrian Van Vliet, Global Chief Information Officer at Roamfree Ltd." With undeniable global strength, standards-based technology and leadership in delivering solid financial systems, Oracle was a natural choice for Roamfree. We believe Oracle not only will meet our needs now, but the company's plans for Oracle Fusion Applications to help ensure that we have a solid, state-of-the-art platform for supporting our business in the future."

Platform for Growth

In April 2007, Roamfree completed the first phase of its implementation of the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12. This included critical financial management functionality, such as general ledger, trust accounting, accounts receivable and accounts payable, in addition to seamless integration between transactions conducted through its Global Accommodation
Search engine and key financial systems. Roamfree's implementation of the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 will continue in two additional phases planned this year. In these phases, Roamfree will focus on deploying internal financial systems, such as purchasing and fixed assets, human resource functionality, including employee self-service, full customer relationship management modules and business intelligence.

About Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12

The newly updated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications of the Oracle E-Business Suite provide a centralized financial architecture that enables higher levels of control and transparency while supporting diverse local accounting, tax and employee regulations and standards. The ERP applications of the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 also help lower
costs with centralized set-up and maintenance of accounting, tax and banking rules. This release is continued proof of Oracle's "Applications Unlimited" program, the company's long-term plan to provide ongoing enhancements to current Oracle Applications.

About Oracle

Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.


Source: www.oracle.com

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In2M Selects Oracle Database Standard to Support its Subscriber Base

In a bid to support its subscriber base, In2M has opted to go with Oracle (News - Alert) Database Standard Edition. In2M Corporation offers financial productivity applications to personal and business users in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.

“We use Linux and open source platforms because it's cost effective,” said Jason Law, Vice President of IT and Systems R & D for In2M, in a statement. "But we were not comfortable with an open source database product for delivering high-availability software as a service.

Law continued: “Oracle Database Standard Edition gives us the reliability we need now, and will scale to meet our future needs for some time to come, even despite our aggressive growth plans. Our target is 99.99 percent availability, and Oracle has not failed us since we started using it.”

In2M has declared that Oracle's support services will be a key part of its total Oracle package for In2M. In fact, its next product, Mvelopes Business will be based on Oracle Database Standard Edition. In addition, In2M aims to benefit from another unique Oracle capability, Oracle Real Application Clusters.

"The possibilities in Real Application Clusters were another big reason for us choosing Oracle," said Law. "Right now we're running a proof-of-concept, merging databases under Real Application Clusters, to check out the architecture before moving forward. We believe that Real Application Clusters makes Oracle Database Standard Edition powerful enough to support us for the next four years, even given our high growth rate, the critical need for high-availability and high performance for our customers."

Over the last 12 months, In2M has enrolled over 50,000 users in Mvelopes Personal. The company hoped to add 100,000 subscribers in the next 12 months.

Author: Niladri Sekhar Nath @ TMCnet

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General Motors' CIO Speaks Out On Oracle's Acquisition Strategy

General Motors spends billions of dollars annually on IT and considers Oracle one of its top vendors. Information Week editor-at-large Mary Hayes Weier sat down with GM CIO Ralph Szygenda recently and asked what he thinks about Oracle's aggressive acquisition strategy, and his opinion of president Charles Phillips, who serves as Oracle's customer advocate and acquisition executor and has emerged as a potential successor to CEO Larry Ellison.

InformationWeek: What's your impression of Oracle's acquisition strategy?

Szygenda: Acquisitions are not always successful for the end customer. I like to see competition; I don't want a monopoly situation. Given that, I like companies doing acquisitions [if it means better integration of software]. If they don't do integration in the GM model, I pay systems integrators to do the work, and it costs money.

In the earlier days of Oracle buying PeopleSoft, there was a lot of consternation [among] CIOs. Some in this town [Detroit] were writing letters not supporting Oracle. I refused to do this. I believe I was right in this result. I have been unbelievably impressed by Oracle's acquisition strategy. I've been thrilled by the benefits I've received because of it.

InformationWeek: What do you think of Charles Phillips' performance as president of Oracle?

Szygenda: I think Charles has brought tremendous customer sensitivity to the company. I remember his history on Wall Street. [Larry Ellison's hiring of Phillips] was a little bit of a surprise because Charles traditionally had not been in the business of supporting customer bases. At least in my relationship, Charles is one of the most customer-sensitive individuals in the IT industry. He listens. He addresses problems. And he still makes [Oracle] money.

Oracle has been known to be difficult negotiators, especially on terms and conditions. We've had difficult times with Oracle, and Charles Phillips has basically smoothed those over from prior history. I thought very highly of him prior to Oracle, but he didn't run a major corporation. So Larry Ellison made one of the best moves in the IT industry.

InformationWeek: What do you think of Oracle's decision to continue to support multiple versions of acquired ERP software?

Szygenda: I sat down with [Phillips] early on and told him, "Don't immediately tell me I have to move to a new platform and change the world." They didn't mesh all these [acquired] companies overnight to get cost reductions; who came up with the idea not to do that, I'm not sure, but someone made some really good decisions. That says if I'm using PeopleSoft, Siebel ,or Hyperion, that No. 1, I will not be disadvantaged by an acquisition; and No. 2, they would extend [the acquired software] and make it better. I don't have a history of saying how wonderful IT companies are all the time, but I say every one of those products has gotten better for General Motors. You would think they would lose focus, but they didn't.

InformationWeek: Do you think Phillips will have Ellison's job one day?

Szygenda: I would not be surprised of anything Charles can do. I've worked with a lot of analysts on Wall Street, but I wouldn't expect them to go be president of company, and be a customer advocate, and he's done an amazing job. I would not sell Charles Phillips short of anything. His discipline must come from his background as a Marine, and he's brought a lot of discipline to Oracle. And it's not the discipline of a dictator, it's more of [discipline] of process. It's a much easier company to work with than 10 years ago.

InformationWeek: What's your biggest concern about Oracle's acquisition strategy?
Szygenda: Whether there is continuity to this vision. All of a sudden, a few quarters Oracle doesn't meet numbers, which puts high pressure on cost containment, and then someone says, "This strategy isn't working and needs to change." So, is there continuity to this strategy? That's my question. It feels good, but will it feel good two years from now? I'm watching, and I will be all over Larry, [CFO and co-president] Safra [Catz], and Charles on continuity. I meet with them several times a year, and one day a year visit the headquarters. In those reviews I will be watching continuity. Are they sticking to their strategy, is it delivering what they want?

I have the same [requirements] for SAP(SAP) and Microsoft. I look for continuity. If I'm trying to put in a two, three, or five year plan at GM, [I need a] commitment of products to do that.

...The other concern is that Oracle doesn't close me in. I have to have competition [among vendors].
InformationWeek: Couldn't Oracle's rapid acquisition rate become a distraction for that company?

Szygenda: They've told me they have a very lean acquisition strategy. Companies [can] send in an army and destroy a company by bringing in too much corporate help. Oracle doesn't put tons of people on an acquisition, and they leverage the organization that's been acquired.

InformationWeek: So if you had to sum up Oracle's acquisition strategy in a word or two, what would you say?

Szygenda: Unbelievably encouraging. A year and a half ago, it felt OK.

Author: Mary Haeys Weier @ InformationWeek

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Vodafone Spain Extends Oracle App to Support MVNOs

Oracle today announced that Vodafone Spain has extended and upgraded its deployment of Oracle Communications Service Activation to activate complex, next-generation subscriber services, enable Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) services and lower operational costs.

As the wireless market evolved and industry competition intensified, Vodafone Spain faced several key challenges including numerous manual processes that reduced service delivery timeframes and increased order fallout, high operating costs, and slow time to market for new services. With Oracle Communications Service Activation, Vodafone Spain has streamlined its operations onto a single convergent platform for rapidly enabling new services, including its MVNO service offering, recognizing significant cost savings through reduced customization and higher levels of product configuration as a result of an integrated service creation environment.

"Oracle Communications Service Activation has been instrumental to our success in delivering high-volume next-generation mobile subscriber services," said Lorenzo Merchan Arevalo, Architecture and Management of Systems, Vodafone Spain. "As the recognized market-leading service activation product, Oracle has enabled the automation of our provisioning process and reduced activation times from hours to seconds. This has enabled Vodafone Spain to launch new services quickly, provide a significant return on our investment while allowing us to maintain a low total cost of ownership."

"Oracle is proud to have partnered with Vodafone Spain as it derives significant value and time-to-market from our activation product," said David Sharpley, vice president, Marketing and Alliances, Oracle Communications. "We continue to see mobile operators worldwide follow the lead of Vodafone in selecting Oracle applications to streamline their systems, enable new services and increase automation resulting in an improved customer experience and reduced churn, as well as a high return on their investment."

Source: www.wirelessiq.com

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Oracle edges out SAP at logistics firm

Oracle beat its chief rival, SAP AG, in the race to provide one of North America's biggest logistics firms with comprehensive new business management systems.

Schneider National, a Green Bay, Wis.-based transportation and logistics outfit with $3.7 billion in annual revenue, announced this week that after a lengthy evaluation process -- during which the company looked closely at both Oracle and SAP -- it has decided to use Oracle applications and infrastructure software to build a fully integrated transaction and data environment.

Schneider, which provides truckload, logistics and intermodal services to customers in more than 28 countries, says it will rely on Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Database, Oracle E-Business Suite applications and Oracle Transportation Management -- a product Oracle acquired when it purchased G-Log -- to help it gain better visibility into its many operations and take advantage of service-oriented architecture (SOA).

"This was a real tight horse race," said Judy Lemke, Schneider's executive vice president and chief information officer. "[SAP] showed well. It's just that Oracle provided a more convincing and compelling set of evidence that they were pretty far ahead in the [transportation management] space with the acquisition of G-Log; they have a compelling case for their middleware; and they certainly provided compelling evidence as to their willingness to partner."

An unusual evaluation

Schneider's management team knew going into the vendor evaluation process that they wanted to build an asset-based transportation management system. But, according to Lemke, neither Oracle nor SAP offered advanced asset management systems. As a result, it became clear that Schneider executives would need to work closely with the winning vendor over time to develop such capabilities.

"It was a little bit different evaluation than you might see if there were fully mature capabilities in both products," Lemke said.

A typical vendor evaluation involves looking at products and deciding which one is best, but for Schneider, Lemke said, choosing between Oracle and SAP meant looking at the differing business goals, strategies and attitudes of each company.

"For us, the first and most important criteria was strategic alignment," Lemke said. "The second thing we looked at was their willingness and ability to partner, because we knew that we were going to rely heavily on each other for the ability to develop the asset-based capabilities."

Lastly, Schneider looked at Oracle's and SAP's technology. While the competition was close, Lemke said Oracle came out ahead in all three areas.

"We are working with Oracle on its [Oracle Transportation Management] product and working with its system development team in terms of co-developing some of the capabilities," Lemke said. "We are helping to define the requirements that they are putting into the system."

Deployment details

In addition to overhauling IT, one of Schneider's main goals is to use Oracle technology to improve the experience of its customers and ensure that shipments are delivered in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible.

Lemke said Schneider purchased Oracle E-Business Suite because it wanted to implement a fully integrated suite of procurement, financials, payroll, human resources, supplier management, enterprise asset management, demand planning and supply chain management applications.

"We wanted to go to more packaged software so that we can focus our resources on the more strategic things and the things that would differentiate us the most," she said.

Oracle Transportation Management will provide Schneider with "end-to-end" planning, execution and visibility into its transportation and logistics operations. Lemke said Oracle Transportation Management is a key aspect of Schneider's plan to improve the customer experience.

On the SOA front, Schneider plans to use the Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Application Server 10g and Oracle Identity Management 10g, Lemke said. The company will also run Oracle Real Application Clusters and Oracle Database 10g.

Schneider, which already runs Oracle-Siebel CRM, an application it purchased long before Oracle bought Siebel, is currently in the process of implementing Oracle Contact Center Anywhere, Siebel Marketing, Oracle Real-Time Decisions and Siebel Partner Relationship Management. The rest of the project is expected to be a multiyear effort, Lemke said.

Pain points

Schneider is about four months into its Oracle implementation project, and thus far the technology has met or exceeded Lemke and crew's expectations. But, Lemke says, dealing with Oracle on licensing and contracts can be a somewhat painful, red-tape-filled process.

"Oracle does have a little bit different makeup than SAP does, and we are more litigious in the United States than others," Lemke said. "But I think [it's] always a little bit more difficult to go through the Oracle machine when you're trying to discuss terms and conditions or get approvals and signatures."

Author: Mark Brunelli

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Oracle expands SaaS offering

Oracle Corporation has launched Siebel on Demand, Release 14, its latest customer relationship management (CRM) solution to take advantage of the tremendous growth in Software as a Service (SaaS) in Thailand in a move that promises more flexibility and rapid deployment while at the same time taking advantage of integration with Oracle's strength in the enterprise back office.

Speaking to journalists here, Oracle Asia-Pacific Vice-President for CRM Will Bosma explained how in the last earnings call, Oracle president Charles Philips had noted that demand for CRM on demand as well as traffic to the Oracle's website for on-demand software, or Software as a Service, was growing, year on year at 74 percent.

While Oracle does not break out figures on a regional- or country-basis, Bosma said that the trend was similar across the Asia-Pacific region.

A number of factors have contributed to this rise.

Today's organisations need to think big, while starting off small. CRM in particular is important as sales and marketing is usually the most dynamic part of an organisation. With companies interacting with customers in more and more ways, through the telephone, call centres, chat, it is important to have a single view during the moment of truth that is the point of contact with the customer.Today, more and more organisations are also looking at business analytics to drive the business, going beyond transactional reports and trend analysis.

One further point Bosma that raised was the need for quick results to win over the usually reluctant sales and marketing staff.

"CRM on demand and SaaS directly address these four points. Typical implementation time is around three to six weeks," he explained.

He said that the reason for picking Siebel on demand was varied. Some wanted the standardisation of sales processes and access to the best practices, in other words, tapping into the experience that Oracle Siebel had in CRM.

Others wanted to be able to roll out CRM at a fraction of the cost of doing the solution in-house. Many needed the quick time to implementation in new markets before they graduated to their own on-premise solution, he said.

He also claimed that Oracle was the only on-demand CRM vendor that had pre-built customisations for many industry-specific verticals such as life sciences, medical, automotive and high tech.

According to Gartner, by 2011, one quarter of all CRM installations will be of an on-demand, SaaS nature. IDC is also similarly bullish and has noted that in the region, half of all new CRM project roll outs were of an on-demand nature.

With the new, more-affordable pricing structure and ease of roll-out, Oracle today is seeing new opportunities in CRM such as for organisations or even simple clubs that need to attract and maintain members.

The latest Release 14 of Siebel on demand features improved usability, ease of administration and customisation through wizards without the need for programming expertise.

It also adds integration into Oracle's enterprise-class e-Business suite so that not only can they share data, but an event in Siebel on-demand can trigger a business process and vice versa. It also features a richer user interface through the latest web 2.0 technologies and Ajax.

As for licensing, two new options are available in addition to the existing US$70 per seat per month option. Companies or organisations that cannot or will not use a multi-tenanted infrastructure (shared server) can opt for R14 private edition, in which the software runs on a dedicated server and database situated within the Oracle data centre.

At the other end of the scale is the partner licensing option at just US$20 per user per month which allows an external partner, dealer or franchisee to share some functionality, and is the one used by the Ford Motor Company for its dealers here in Thailand.

As for Thai language support, Oracle Thailand has delivered this as field customisation to many local customers, including Ford, but Bosma said he hoped to make an announcement as to when Thai would be an officially-supported language within the next couple of weeks.

Author: Don Sambandaraksa

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