Oracle eyes the supply chain

Oracle has turned its focus to providing end-to-end supply chain management (SCM) solutions as well as introducing a new pricing model to tap into companies with no IT department of their own capable of installing its enterprise software.

Speaking to journalists in Bangkok, Jasbir Singh, Oracle senior director for supply chain management in Asia Pacific, explained that the last major shakeup was the introduction of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems which took place 10 years ago. Today, these companies are now looking more at supply chain management to orchestrate the extended supply chain, which spans hundreds, if not thousands of suppliers and logistics partners. He added that procurement is not longer a function that was optimised in isolation.

Singh spoke of the evolution of technology companies such as Texas Instruments and Motorola as a good example of how the world has changed. In the past, research and development from design to manufacturing, testing, packaging and shipping used to be 100 percent done by the company. However, today, design may be done by Motorola, but production is often done by Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC). Another company will do the slicing and packaging of the chips, another will then ship them to the distributors or end customers.

One reason for the change is that logistics used to be an insignificant fraction of the finished product. With today's razor thin margins, however, that figure is now closer to 30 percent.

Today companies like Dell, Nokia, Cisco and Apple have no in-house manufacturing capabilities. When Apple designs a new iPod, for example, the message goes out to a contract manufacturer which then announces the needs for components to 400 or more sub-contractors. Many of these need to secure supplies from their own suppliers and many supply parts to one another.

Procurement needs to be automated as much as possible so that the contract manufacturer can focus only on the few suppliers that say that they cannot meet the required schedule and find alternatives. "It is no longer a supply chain, but a supply network," he said.

Oracle has recently acquired G-Log and Demantra and today claims to be the only software vendor that has an end-to-end SCM suite. Oracle claims that Demantra runs as well on SAP's Netweaver as it does on Fusion.

For the local market, ICE Solution is one of the major system integrator partners that will be preaching the SCM vision to local companies alongside the very popular warehouse management and transportation management solutions, which continue to be in demand.

Oracle says it is going to tap more Thai companies through new BPO (business process outsourcing) pricing. In the past, many system integrators and partners have offered Software as a Service (SaaS) type solutions by buying Oracle software outright and then billing their customers on a per use or per transaction basis. With the new BPO pricing, Oracle will charge the SI with bills settled each month. BPO pricing will start with Human Resources and Logistics software but with the door open for SCM.

One of the reasons for the popularity of hosted solutions is the acute shortage of IT personnel in the Thai market, according to Oracle.

Author: DON SAMBANDARAKSA @ www.bangkokpost.com

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PeopleSoft Users Weigh Risks of Oracle's Rapid Growth

If Oracle is successful in its attempt to acquire BEA Systems, it will be the company's 37th acquisition since 2005, when it began its buying spree with the takeover of PeopleSoft. While Oracle isn't the most acquisitive company in the software pantheon—IBM and Infor have bought nearly as many companies in the same time frame—Oracle is by far the most tenacious in its approach. But outwardly it also takes a highly conciliatory approach to its acquired customer bases.

After early hints that it would acquire PeopleSoft's customer base and then kill the software, Oracle had a lot of customer fears to quell. And quell it did with an offer for unlimited applications support for PeopleSoft and JD Edwards users. But some PeopleSoft customers are expressing concern about Oracle's service quality. And this is raising questions about whether Oracle is as successful as it claims about integrating its many acquisitions. The situation with PeopleSoft could be a barometer for how BEA customers would fare under the Oracle aegis.

"We feel like there is risk in moving forward with PeopleSoft and we're trying to asses that risk," said George Muller, vice president and CIO at Imperial Sugar in Sugar Land, Texas, who is weighing an upgrade to PeopleSoft Enterprise 9 recently released by Oracle. "From my perspective there are a number of companies that have abandoned PeopleSoft and have gone in other directions."

An active member of a number of PeopleSoft (and now Oracle) applications user groups, Muller said that he has seen a drastic reduction in the number of companies represented by at least one organization, Distributors and Manufacturers Users Group, that bills itself as a "product-specific users group comprised of all PeopleSoft customers that have licensed a PeopleSoft Distribution, Manufacturing and/or Supply Chain Product," according to the group's Web site.

In April 2005, Muller said there were approximately 150 companies represented at DMUG's annual meeting in New Orleans. By October 2006, the group had dwindled to half, or about 75 companies represented. "In a year and a half what I witnessed was a 50 percent drop off in participation," said Muller. "They're either holding their own or they are going someplace else."

At the October 2006 meeting, Oracle's PeopleSoft group made a pitch to the DMUG membership that amounted to "we're back," according to Muller. "Why would you have to sell that to me if you're really back, rather than demonstrating to me that you're back by making phone calls to me, by reaching out proactively to me, by addressing issues when I call the help desk?" said Muller.

"When you step back and look at the acquisitions Oracle has made…how does any one organization absorb that much and still execute and service the customer?"

Steve Canter, CIO of Berlin Packaging and the current president of DMUG, said that while he has seen as good or in some areas improved customer service under Oracle's watch of PeopleSoft applications, he believes the functionality upgrades are not what they used to be.

"One of the things we are seeing is in many of the applications lines there is not as much going on in terms of product feature enhancements as there once was," said Canter in Chicago.

"PeopleSoft had decided after the JD Edwards acquisition that they were going to put more marketing behind the JD Edwards line—for manufacturers—so as a result, if they were not going to be leading with PeopleSoft on their go-to-market strategy then there was not as much incentive to make enhancements," Canter said. Oracle appears to be continuing this trend with some of the other product lines, Canter said.

While Canter is staying on PeopleSoft for the foreseeable future because he believes it's too disruptive to move, he is seeing some disturbing trends at Oracle. For one, rather than integrating functionality that it acquires from other companies, as PeopleSoft would have done in the past, Oracle is pointing to its other product lines.

While the strategy to leverage other lines makes sense from a business standpoint, for a midmarket CIO it's a tough pill to swallow. "We don't have the resources to support a lot of different stacks," said Canter. "And no matter how good application integration is, it's better to have everything under a single umbrella; it's one of the reasons we chose a single umbrella. But the world seems to be drifting away from that—led by Oracle."

Customers also point to resources being moved away from core application development to Fusion development as the source for at least some of the issues with PeopleSoft's software. "I definitely have evidence to back this," said Canter. "A lot of strategy and development effort is going toward Fusion, and that can't help but take away from other product lines."

Oracle's intended acquisition of BEA, which develops middleware, has brought Oracle's Fusion efforts into question. The recent departure of John Wookey as head of application development for Fusion Applications has heightened concern about the middleware's prospects. Imperial Sugar's Muller pointed out that after 30 years in the IT business, he's realized there is no perfect system, and Fusion Applications will be no exception to the rule.

"No matter how good your methodologies and processes are, putting something together and bundling something that massive is a huge undertaking and has R-I-S-K in capital letters written across the top."

As the underpinning for Oracle's Fusion Applications, Fusion Middleware is a compilation of integration, business intelligence, business process management, development tools and other software that Oracle has said is its fastest growing product line. It has also pointed to growing market share over BEA given a superior technology stack.

But there are those that question Oracle's tactics in seeking to acquire BEA. "I don't understand the whole BEA thing," said Canter. "If Fusion Middleware were as great as Oracle is saying, why yet another middleware [company]?"

Andrew Albarelle, principal executive officer of Remy Corp., a consulting and executive search company that serves PeopleSoft, Oracle, Lawson and other Human Capital Management users, said that he is thrilled with Oracle's attempt to acquire BEA because it gives his company more continuity with its PeopleSoft implementation, which utilizes BEA's middleware (as do many other PeopleSoft implementations).

Oracle's Fusion Middleware customers could also benefit from the BEA acquisition, according to Albarelle, given that Fusion Middleware's functionality isn't up to specs. "Everybody that's installed it hasn't used it yet," said Albarelle, referring to his customer base. "They didn't feel that it was up to speed for what they needed to do, so they didn't load it yet," said Albarelle.

While the acquisition of BEA might benefit Oracle's bottom line by adding another technology stack and a blue chip customer roster, the PeopleSoft customer experiences naturally raise questions about how BEA customers will fare.

"For BEA customers it's like going to a Halloween haunted house and every door you open there's PeopleSoft, Hyperion, Siebel—there are the skeletons, the cats, the jack-o-lanterns and the witches," Muller said. "As you walk through the haunted house there's the graveyard at the end with all the tombstones with the names of the customers with R.I.P on the tombstones," he said.

Author: Renee Boucher Ferguson @ news.yahoo.com

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Oracle May Acquire Rival BEA Without Raising $6.7 Billion Offer

Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Oracle Corp., the world's third- largest software maker, may land BEA Systems Inc. without raising the $6.7 billion hostile bid rejected by its California rival.

BEA's board says it wants more than $8 billion, and let Oracle's offer expire yesterday at 8 p.m. New York time. Because no other suitors have emerged, Oracle may renew its bid or offer a lower price than its $17 a share proposal, said Peter Goldmacher, a Cowen & Co. analyst in San Francisco.

"BEA is badly miscalculating Oracle's desire,'' said Goldmacher, who rates Oracle shares "outperform'' and doesn't own them. "Oracle doesn't need BEA. At some point, Oracle will buy these guys, but it's completely at Oracle's discretion.''

Oracle said yesterday after the offer expired it is now up to shareholders to take "appropriate action'' if they disagree with the BEA board's decision. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, BEA's largest shareholder, stepped up demands on the company last week, insisting it put Oracle's bid to a shareholder vote if there isn't a higher offer.

"There's so much pressure on BEA from shareholders that they will have to ultimately succumb to an acquisition at $17,'' said Chris Hickey, an analyst for London-based Atlantic Equities. "Time is on Oracle's side.''

A merger with a larger company may help BEA grow faster. BEA's sales of new software licenses, its main indicator of future growth, fell 11 percent in the six months ended July 31. BEA sells so-called middleware programs that help different computer applications share information.

Redwood City, California-based Oracle disclosed its bid Oct. 12. The offer was 25 percent more than BEA's closing price the previous day. Last week, San Jose, California-based BEA said its stock was worth $21, calling Oracle's bid ``unacceptable.''

BEA fell $1.03 to $16.50 on Oct. 26 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. Oracle added 35 cents to $21.35.

No Bidders Likely

BEA's board repeatedly refused to meet Oracle officials to discuss the offer, and shareholders shouldn't assume Oracle will make another offer later, Oracle said in a statement last night.

"BEA's business might materially weaken, the stock market can fall further from its recent record highs or Oracle may have committed its capital elsewhere,'' Oracle said. "If the BEA shareholders are unhappy with the behavior of the BEA board, it is up to those shareholders, not Oracle, to take the appropriate action.''

Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison sought to buy BEA to get its software-maintenance revenue, Goldmacher said. Oracle would cut costs by firing most of BEA's employees, he said.

Oracle spokesman Bob Wynne and BEA's Kevin Hayden didn't return calls seeking comment.

Business Objects

Ellison, whose company trails Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. in total software sales, said last month he wants to ``beat IBM'' in middleware.

No other company will match or exceed Oracle's offer because no one else stands to gain as much from the purchase, said Charles Di Bona, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in New York. He rates BEA ``underperform'' and Oracle "market perform'' and owns neither stock.

BEA's counteroffer of $21 a share would make a deal more expensive than Oracle rival SAP AG's purchase of Business Objects SA, based on the price paid divided by revenue. That wouldn't make sense because Paris-based Business Objects is growing faster than BEA, said Brad Manuilow, an analyst at American Technology Research in San Francisco.

A bid without the BEA board's support wouldn't succeed because of takeover defenses including a so-called "poison pill'', Goldmacher said.

Tailspin

While BEA once dominated its market, the company lost that lead to Armonk, New York-based IBM. BEA plans to restate results to cut profit by $425 million, before taxes, for fiscal 1998 through the first quarter of fiscal 2007 to account for misdated stock-option grants and severance contracts.

"BEA is in a tailspin,'' Goldmacher said. "At $17, it would be a graceful exit for BEA, which has been in rough shape for a while.''

A bright spot is BEA's maintenance fees, which rose 21 percent to $714.9 million in the past four quarters. Such fees are Oracle's "highest-margin business unit,'' the company said in a filing this month.

While lucrative, that revenue isn't central to Oracle's efforts to take customers from IBM and Walldorf, Germany-based SAP. That means Oracle may just walk away from the BEA deal, analysts said.

"The only person who really knows if this gets done is Larry Ellison,'' said Manuilow, who rates Oracle "buy.'' "He's the one who ultimately pulls the trigger.''

Author: Ville Heiskanen @ Bloomberg.com

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Oracle Starts Two New Centres In India

Located at Gurgaon, the two centres will be a part of the 19 R&D and solution centres network spread across Asia Pacific.

Thursday, October 25, 2007: Oracle has launched two new centres – the Oracle Asia Research and Development Center (OARDC) and Partner Solution Center (PSC) – in India. The Gurgaon-based centres will focus on delivering Oracle and partner solutions to the Indian market and also to the Asia Pacific region. The hardware infrastructure at the Oracle PSC has been sponsored by SUN Microsystems and AMD. With today’s launch of the OARDC and PSC, Oracle now has seven development and solution centres in India. Oracle’s investment in India over the past five years has crossed $3 billion.

Oracle Partner Solution Centre will enable strategic partners to build, port, enable and test their solutions on Oracle technologies. With this, independent software vendors (ISVs), system integrators (SIs), value added distributors and resellers (VADs & VARs) can leverage Oracle’s product expertise and tools at PSC to build their industry-specific solutions on top of Oracle’s technology and applications platforms.

OARDC India will engage in research, requirements analysis, prototyping and architecture design with the aim of solving a specific problem through the delivery of a product. OARDCs focus on four main areas: product development, solution development, strategic projects and partner enablement. OARDC India will aim to innovate in the areas of m-governance, inclusive computing and ubiquitous computing.

"The Oracle Asia Research and Development Center and Partner Solution Center will undertake India-specific projects to enhance our capabilities in our E-Governance Center of Excellence, which was established in Gurgaon in 2003," said Krishan Dhawan, managing director, Oracle India. "We expect these three centres which are co-located in Gurgaon, to work towards increasing the scope and usage for Oracle technology and applications amongst Indian industries and governments."

Source: efytimes.com

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Oracle says no to BEA's $8.2 bln pricetag

BEA Systems Inc (BEAS.O) said on Thursday it is willing to sell itself for $8.2 billion, but the price was rejected as "impossibly high" by Oracle Corp (ORCL.O), the only company that has publicly expressed interest in the software maker.

BEA, which is under pressure from billionaire investor Carl Icahn to find a buyer, said it was worth $21 per share, which is a 24 percent premium to the $17-per-share bid that Oracle offered on October 12.

Oracle said BEA's price represented an 80 percent premium to its shares before activist shareholders started pushing for a sale of the company, and nearly 11 times BEA's revenue from software maintenance services in the last 12 months.

"Nobody would seriously consider paying that kind of multiple for a software company with shrinking new license sales," Oracle President Charles Phillips said in a letter to BEA's board.

He said Oracle was standing by its $6.7 billion bid which expires at 5 p.m. California time on Sunday, adding "at which time Oracle will move on and evaluate other potential acquisitions."

When asked to respond to the letter from Phillips, a BEA spokesperson referred to a statement issued earlier in the day in which the BEA's board said "We continue to believe that Oracle's unsolicited proposal to acquire BEA at $17 per share significantly undervalues BEA, and is therefore not in the best interests of BEA shareholders."

Shares of BEA had closed at $17.53 on the Nasdaq, down 2 cents as investors appeared to also believe that the $21 price set by the business software maker may be too optimistic.

Some analysts still thought a deal was possible as BEA's software, called middleware because it helps connect business computer systems, could be added to Oracle's database programs to help it better compete with SAP AG (SAPG.DE)

"Nobody is more interested in this than Oracle," said Bart Narter, an analyst with financial research and consulting firm Celent. "I think there is a lot of posturing. Maybe they'll get a little higher price. Maybe."

The $21 price had marked the first time BEA gave a price point for negotiations with Oracle, the world's third largest software company with a market value of about $100 billion.

"Over the last several weeks, Oracle has repeatedly asked us for the price at which we would be willing to begin negotiations," BEA's board said earlier on Thursday. BEA is "prepared to authorize negotiations with third parties including Oracle at a price of $21.00 per share," it said.

Talk of a buyout for BEA began in August when Icahn said he had begun acquiring shares in the business software maker and called on its board to put the company up for sale. Chief Executive Alfred Chuang had rebuffed the billionaire activist investor, who boosted his stake to about 13 percent, making him the company's biggest shareholder.

Besides Oracle, other companies that have been touted as possible buyers of BEA include International Business Machines (IBM.N), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ.N) and SAP.

An SAP spokesman said the company was not interested in buying BEA, while representatives for Hewlett-Packard and IBM declined comment. Icahn could not be reached for comment.

Jefferies & Co. analyst Katherine Egbert said earlier on Thursday another suitor may be talking to BEA behind the scenes. "For the BEA board to make the claim that they are worth $21 (per share) without any detailed supporting analysis could mean that they have another interested party," she said.

BEA said that after consulting with its investment bank, Goldman Sachs, it believes Oracle or another company would still see earnings benefit if it paid $21 per share or higher.

But Phillips said in his letter, "We believe that your counterproposal at $21 per share price is an impossibly high price for Oracle or any other potential acquirer."

Author: Jim Finkle @ washingtonpost.com

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Oracle buys operational planning firm

In a move designed to beef-up its enterprise performance management offerings, Oracle yesterday agreed to buy privately held operational planning software maker Interlace Systems for an undisclosed sum.

San Mateo, California-based Interlace develops a suite of software called Integrated Business Planning that integrates data from planning and operational systems to uncover gaps between financial and operational plans. The software works by allowing business planners to change operational assumptions and assess the business impact on operations. It uses a "change-based data modeling server" that pulls together data from disparate operational plans into an integrated model to allow multiple users to run what-if scenarios by changing operational assumptions and then see the outcome of the changes on business plans.

Interlace's product is used for a variety of operational planning processes such as sales and operational planning or demand plan creation and is applicable for both mid-market and large enterprises, Oracle said. The software has also gained a strong following in the high-tech and industrial manufacturing sectors, with disk drive maker Seagate Technologies and electrical systems firm Eaton among its customers.

Oracle said that technology combined with its own Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) system will provide an integrated framework for financial and strategic operational planning.

"The combination of Interlace Systems and Oracle will help enable business planners to rapidly evaluate the impact of changes to business assumptions across all plans...and [also allow them to] benefit from flexibility, speed and accuracy not found in traditional spreadsheet-based and function-specific planning tools," said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president of server technologies at Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle.

The deal is expected to close in November and represents Oracle's second acquisition in the performance management space this year. In April it gobbled up Hyperion Solutions for $3.3bn which laid the foundation for its EPM product strategy.

Oracle is likely to absorb Interlace's technology into that core EPM system, which sits as a hot-pluggable component of Oracle's Fusion middleware stack, to provide a common perspective across financial and strategic planning.

"In today's global economy, organizations need a streamlined planning process that links strategic operational plans to the financial plan of record," Kurian said.

Oracle said it will provide details on specific product roadmap of integration timelines after the merger closes next month.

Oracle did however say it will continue to offer Interlace's products as standalone applications and also pledged to continue to work with databases and application servers from other vendors, including Microsoft's SQL Server, IBM's WebSphere, and SAP's NetWeaver.

Interlace is venture backed by Accel and NEA. Oracle said that it would only retain Interlace staff with "significant domain expertise" in its products, meaning that some layoffs are imminent.

Oracle's shopping spree shows no sign of abating. The company continues to snap up smaller companies like Interlace while at the same time fishing for larger ones. Interlace is Oracle's 10th acquisition this year, and its 36th since 2005. It also comes just a day after Oracle re-iterated its $17 per share offer for middleware vendor BEA Systems. Earlier this month BEA had rejected an initial $6.7bn from Oracle as too low and has until Sunday to accept it.

Author: Maden Sheina @ www.cbronline.com

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Oracle issues BEA deal ultimatum

Oracle on Tuesday threatened to walk away from its proposed acquisition of BEA Systems by Sunday unless the embattled software company agreed to a deal.

While the threat wiped nearly 4 per cent from BEA’s share price by mid-afternoon, the stock still stood above the $17-a-share Oracle offer, pointing to a belief on Wall Street that the brinkmanship had not seriously damped the prospect of a deal and that Oracle or another buyer would still end up paying a higher price.

“Oracle has no interest in a long, drawn-out process to acquire BEA,” Chuck Phillips, Oracle’s president, wrote in a letter addressed to the company’s board on Tuesday. The letter followed what Oracle said had been another rejection by the BEA board of its all-cash offer.

BEA rejected the latest approach, repeating its earlier claim that the offer “seriously undervalues” the company and adding that it was open to “a transaction that appropriately reflects BEA’s value, reached through a reasonable process.”

The attempt to bring a quick end to the BEA battle is in stark contrast to the fight over PeopleSoft, the deal that launched Oracle’s ambitious attempt to force consolidation in parts of the business software market. That fight lasted 18 months, in part because Oracle had to persuade a court to overturn a US antitrust objection to the deal.

Though he started by offering $16 a share for PeopleSoft and insisting at one point that that was his “final” price, Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chief executive officer, eventually paid $26.50 a share to win over the PeopleSoft board.

Justifying the offer for BEA, Mr Phillips said it represented a 21 per cent premium to the price the day before the proposal was announced and a 44 per cent premium to the level before activist investor Carl Icahn disclosed in August that he had bought a stake in the company.

Mr Icahn, BEA’s biggest shareholder and a critic of the company’s management, has been pressuring BEA to find another buyer.

Author: Richards Waters @ www.ft.com

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Oracle wins CRM deal with Jafza

Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA) has deployed Oracle's E-Business Suite in a bid to improve its customer service offering and achieve greater operational efficiency.

The free zone, which is located in the Jebel Ali area of Dubai, said the customer relationship management (CRM) solution would enable it to significantly enhance its customer service experience and boost the number of services that is it able to offer online.

"We needed a solution that could scale with our growth and be flexible in adapting to varied requirements of the different economic zones and logistics and industrial parks in our portfolio, while enabling a consistent business process model," Salma Hareb, CEO, Jafra and Economic Zones World commented on the implementation.

"Oracle's ability to meet our requirements efficiently made us choose this solution," she added.

Jafza expects to achieve a 300% return on investment from the implementation within a couple of years, Hareb told ITP.net.

Almost 90% of Jafza's customer services are now online, with the other 10% expected to go online over the next year, Hareb said.

Oracle said the implementation with Jafza was probably one of the most advanced integrations it has done in the region.

"Jafza is transforming itself to meet increasing customer demands and economic pressures to be more responsive, efficient and competitive," Sergio Giacoletto, executive vice president, Oracle, EMEA said.

Owned by investment company Dubai World, Jebel Ali Free Zone is one of the largest business hubs in the Middle East housing approximately 6,000 companies from 120 countries across the world.

Teo Chin Seng, group CIO of Dubai World, said that the Oracle implementation provided a strategic piece of its technology solution, enabling consistent business processes across diverse business units.

"Jafza's business model requires a seamless flow of information across financial, property management, customer relationship and human capital functions," he said. "We have used components across the Oracle E-Business Suite that are pre-integrated, allowing us to deploy a configurable workflow based process model," he added.

The free zone began implenting Oracle's E-Business Suite in 2005 with the final phase of the implementation taking place in fall this year.

Source: ITP.net

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Insurance firm migrates to Oracle 10G database powered by Sun servers

Grepalife, a Yuchengcoowned insurance company, has recently acquired a new generation server computing platform designed to provide faster processing systems and better service turnaround time for clients and its sales force.

The company is among the first in the country to migrate its main application systems from the previous Oracle 8i version to the Oracle Database 10G Enterprise Edition, the most ideal platform for enterprises that need to support high volume online transaction processing and query intensive data warehousing applications.

"Our goal is to make our service ever faster and better for our clients. Our advanced IT infrastructure, coupled with the excellent capabilities of our people, is among the most important springboards that will propel Grepalife to the top of the industry," said Grepalife president and CEO Victor P. Quisumbing.

This one-time multi-million peso investment enabled Grepalife’s online transactions such as logging in, policy inquiry, and loan processing to be faster by 100 percent.

This system has the clustering and load balancing capability that prevents long computer down time and clogging.

Systems running on the new server platform are already being used in Underwriting, New Business, Cash, Premium Accounting, Policyholder Services, Group Administration, Group Accounting, and other departments, with highly positive feedback.

The new server is powered by clustered central database servers consisting of three Sun Microsystems X4200 with X86 64bit Opteron technology processors, Red Hat Linux 4.0 Enterprise Edition, and a redundant array of data storage devices built around the Oracle Database 10G Enterprise Edition computing engine, all with enough capacity to support future expansion.

Author: Edu H. Lopez @ www.mb.com.ph

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SAP Shows Solid Earnings, Firm Stance Against Oracle

SAP on Thursday narrowly topped analyst profit estimates in its third quarter, raking in $579 million on sales of $3.44 billion.

Analysts were looking for sales of $3.46 billion in the quarter, a target the German software giant would surely have met or exceeded if not for currency fluctuations related to the strength of the euro. Most analysts pegged SAP for a third-quarter profit of $575 million.

"Given the current currency situation and the concerns of the market, we would assess the report as a success," DZ Bank analyst Oliver Finger wrote in a research note following SAP's earnings report.

While the story this quarter was the company's 11-percent surge in licensing sales, which rose to $1.02 billion, Chief Financial Officer Werner Brandt cautioned that SAP probably wouldn't hit the upper end of its previous estimates of 15 percent to 17 percent growth for the full fiscal year.

"It appears less likely that product or software revenue growth will reach the upper end of the aforementioned ranges," Brandt said during a conference call with analysts. However, he said, the company expects to still top earnings-per-share estimates for the full year, ranging from $7.32 to $7.54 a share.

During the conference call, CEO Henning Kagermann and Leo Apotheker, SAP's president of customer solutions and operations, spent a considerable amount of time defending the company's performance in head-to-head battles with arch-rival Oracle over large customer accounts.

While Oracle has claimed that it consistently dominated SAP in landing new customer accounts, Apotheker said SAP actually had won in 85 percent of the 247 deals for which the two companies competed during the quarter.

The company also announced Thursday that it beat out Oracle for a large contract with retailing giant Wal-Mart during third quarter. According to SAP executives, Wal-Mart will implement SAP ERP Financials to replace some of its legacy software systems, including its JD Edwards enterprise resource planning (define) applications, and integrate it with other internal systems. The first phase of the installation is planned for completion in 2010.

Reaffirming the company's plan to grow its customer base to more than 100,000 clients by 2010 through aggressively targeting the small- and mid-sized business sector, SAP announced that it would invest more than $560 million in the coming year to market and develop Business By Design, its first software-as-a-service (SaaS) (define) offering, announced last month.

SAP also announced it would be launching a new mid-market product that features a flexible architecture and new deployment models -- and implying it too will be delivered to customers in an on-demand model or both on-demand and on-premise. The company said further details and a specific timeline for the new product's delivery will wait until SAP's annual analyst conference in December.

On Thursday, Kagermann reiterated that SAP would continue to follow its long-time plan of making only small, strategic acquisitions -- rather than follow Oracle's strategy of constant acquisition.

That comment come in spite of SAP's contrary move last week, when it broke from tradition to purchase business intelligence and analytics software vendor Business Objects for $6.8 billion.

Less than a week later, Oracle announced its intention to acquire middleware provider BEA Systems for $6.7 billion. According to some industry insiders, SAP's Business Objects deal inadvertently assisted Oracle's acquisition strategy by ensuring the German company would be unlikely to engage in an expensive bidding war so soon after making a massive purchase of its own.

SAP shares pulled back $1.69 a share, or three percent, to $54.61 in Thursday afternoon trading.

Author: Larry Barrett

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Oracle Patches 51, Updates Vulnerability-Scoring System

Oracle's October Critical Patch Update (CPU) addresses 51 vulnerabilities spread across the company's product portfolio, a marked improvement over last October's update. The quarterly release also introduces an update to the system it uses to score the severity of vulnerabilities.

Oracle's namesake database products, which have 27 disclosed vulnerabilities, get the majority of the 51 fixes. According to Oracle's advisory, seven of the database vulnerabilities may be remotely exploitable without authentication.

Oracle Application Server gets 11 fixes, seven of which are remotely exploitable without authentication. There are eight security fixes for the Oracle E-Business Suite and one is remotely exploitable without authentication. Oracle Collaboration Suite gets seven fixes. Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise PeopleTools gets two security fixes, and one new security fix for PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management.

The 51 flaws addressed in this month's update continue the decrease in reported vulnerabilities, which numbered 65 in the July update and are considerably fewer than the 100 the company fixed last October. That update also marked the first time that Oracle revealed how many flaws were remotely exploitable without authentication. The remote exploit flaws are among the most dangerous in that they are more accessible and hence more easily exploited than local flaws, which first require local access as well as some form of authentication.

This year's update also includes version 2 of the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), which provides a benchmarking base metric system in order to score the relative severity of a reported vulnerability. The company adopted the system last year to expand its security information disclosure method.

"It is worthwhile to reiterate again that CVSS provides a standard-based approach for assessing the criticality of vulnerabilities," Eric Maurice, manager for security in Oracle's global technology business unit, wrote on Oracle's security blog.

"In other words, CVSS assists customers to understand the significance of a given vulnerability in their environment, and assess the priority that should be given to patching that specific vulnerability against production requirements."

With CVSS 2.0, he continued, a number of changes have been introduced that make the standard more representative of real-world vulnerabilities.

But while the new version of CVSS has more parameters, Amichai Shulman, CTO of application data security company Imperva, said that the scores have remained the same.

"Based on our analysis, we recommend that security officers take a close look at the details composing the risk score rather than accepting the score itself," Shulman wrote in an e-mail sent to InternetNews.com.

"For example, the highest-ranked vulnerability is only 6.5 out of 10, yet it is easy to exploit remotely and allows the attacker to take complete control of the database. This is a serious vulnerability, but its score does not reflect that fact."

Regardless of how Oracle actually measures the severity of the vulnerabilities, the imperative for Oracle users is to update and do so quickly.

"Oracle users should understand that the period after a CPU has been issued is ironically more risky than the period before the CPU is published, as it gives black hats who may not have known about certain vulnerabilities directions where to look for them," Slavik Markovich, CTO of database security vendor Sentrigo, wrote in an e-mail sent to InternetNews.com.

"Based on the severity level of the vulnerabilities patched in this CPU, users should be sure to take the steps necessary to protect their organizations' data by heeding the advice of Oracle with regard to patch specifications and procedures."

Author: Sean Micheal Kerner @ internetnews.com

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It's Confirmed: Wookey Out at Oracle

Oracle's executive shuffling leaves many questions regarding the future of the company's Fusion platform. As has been rumored for days, Oracle is replacing the leadership of its application development platform.

Rumblings Oct. 12 that John Wookey, the company's head of application development for Fusion Applications—the project much vaunted at Oracle—is out, have been confirmed in media reports. Thomas Kurian, senior vice president responsible for Oracle's Fusion Middleware, will take his place.

The executive shuffling of the deck around Fusion leads to some big questions around Oracle's Fusion Applications plans, including whether Fusion Applications will be delayed beyond 2008, and whether Oracle is experiencing development problems in trying to bring together "the best of" functionality from at least four major suites of applications: Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel Systems.

The analyst community has long been split on Oracle's momentum with Fusion Applications.
ZDNet blogger Dennis Howlett, who runs the Enterprise Irregular community, sourced an internal letter from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on his blog that detailed the company's moves. The Wall Street Journal later confirmed the departures, quoting sources close to the company.

Oracle officials were not available for comment at press time.

As it stands, Wookey, senior vice president of applications development, is leaving Oracle. Sources close to the company suggested the week of Oct. 8 that Wookey, in a heated argument with Ellison, had already left the company and Oracle was trying to woo him back, though the circumstances around Wookey's departure have not been confirmed.

Fusion Middleware is the underlying platform for Fusion Applications.
The changes come just days after Oracle announced Oct. 12 its intent to acquire BEA Systems for $6.6 billion. BEA, which develops middleware, rebuffed Oracle's overtures, saying the offer undervalued the company. Oracle responded that it would not raise its offer price, despite analyst speculation that it would. The deal, as of Oct. 16, is in limbo, though likely not by any means dead.

The deal for BEA, of San Jose, Calif., led to more questions surrounding Oracle's plans with Fusion—both its middleware platform and applications stack.

As part of the changes with Wookey's departure, Ed Abbo, who had reported to Wookey, will now head application development outside of Fusion—in other words, the continuing development of applications that Oracle, of Redwood Shores, Calif., has acquired, including PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. Through its Applications Unlimited program, Oracle vowed to support those applications forever.

Both Kurian and Abbo will report to Chuck Rozwat, executive vice president at Oracle who will take over responsibility for all product development, according to media reports.

The rumors of Wookey's departure came amidst claims that Oracle would announce at its annual OpenWorld conference in November that Fusion Applications would be delayed through 2009. When Oracle acquired PeopleSoft in 2005, it announced Fusion Applications would be ready sometime in 2008. In January 2006, Oracle officials held a press conference to report that Wookey's teams were "halfway there" with Fusion Applications development.

When asked to comment on the rumors that Wookey was indeed leaving Oracle, Enterprise Applications Consulting principal Joshua Greenbaum (and Enterprise Irregulars blogger) said in an Oct. 12 interview that he would be "shocked" if Wookey were indeed leaving Oracle.

"If I was Oracle and I thought things were in trouble regarding a 2008 release of Fusion, I wouldn't throw in the towel now and act as if it couldn't happen. I would be throwing resources and people at it," said Greenbaum. "It's a little premature to throw in the towel" on Fusion Applications.

Author: Renee Boucher Ferguson @ eWeek.com

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Why Oracle's Tops in Takeovers

It appears it's now just a matter of when -- not if -- Oracle will complete its $6.7 billion takeover of embattled middleware software provider BEA Systems.

Despite the drama of hastily exchanged letters and rebuttals on Friday between the companies' executives, most financial and software industry analysts expect the deal to become official sooner, rather than later.

That's because Oracle -- thanks to a couple of painful, but educational, missteps along the way -- has become an expert at acquiring companies, whether they like it or not.

For now, BEA's management team and most of its shareholders believe -- or at least want Oracle to believe -- the company is still very much in play. However, Oracle's $17-a-share offer, which represents a solid 25 percent premium over BEA's closing price of $13.62 a share before the takeover bid became public, remains the only offer on the table.

SAP, which is surely loath to let Oracle snap up yet another prominent software company, is out. IBM and HP remain mum. EMC or any other long-shot candidate has yet to materialize.

This is no accident and reflects just how serious and seasoned Oracle has become in its quest to unseat SAP as the world's largest vendor of business applications in the enterprise.

Oracle had been pursuing BEA, on and off, for the better part of two years. That CEO Larry Ellison and President Charles Phillips made their intentions known less than a week after SAP said it would pay $6.8 billion to acquire Business Objects comes as even less of a surprise.

Assuming SAP would be likely to pass on a protracted, expensive bidding war so soon after making a massive purchase of its own, Oracle felt confident it could make an aggressive move without SAP's interference.

But the timing of Oracle's move was just one of several new tactics Ellison and company employed this time.

Unlike events leading to the bitter, protracted and largely unsatisfactory resolution to its hostile takeover of PeopleSoft in late 2004, Oracle approached BEA with what most consider a very generous offer. That's a marked difference from the low-balling it tried to do some three years ago in the PeopleSoft coup.

Also, by timing its move on BEA shortly after SAP's uncharacteristically bold purchase of Business Objects, Oracle demonstrated a further willingness to learn from the past. This time, it dodged what might have become another lengthy and expensive bidding war with its German rival, a process Oracle had already endured years earlier, when it sparred over retail software specialist Retek.

"Oracle has learned a great lesson from the PeopleSoft deal and other deals," Yefim Natis, a vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, said in an interview with InternetNews.com. "Nothing like that is happening this time. Oracle now has the vision and aggressive attitude it needs to execute this kind of deal."

Oracle learned further lessons from those turbulent acquisitions. In the PeopleSoft takeover, Oracle initially offered $16 a share to acquire what had been its most bitter rival for the better part of a decade. Two weeks later, it attempted to thwart resistance to the deal by upping the offer to $19 a share. Then, $24 a share.

Eighteen months and a lot of hard feelings later, Oracle finally wrapped up the deal at $26.50 a share, shelling out more than $10.3 billion.

That lengthy, contentious process not only cost Oracle more money upfront, but also cost it dearly in the following months and years. Industry watchers said that in the wake of the sale to Oracle, many of PeopleSoft's enterprise customers stopped doing business with the company, while its key sales reps and managers were giving less-than-stellar efforts on their way out the door.

In the Retek deal, Oracle initially countered SAP's $496 million offer with its own $525 million bid, or $9 per share. SAP went to $11 a share before Oracle prevailed at $11.25 a share.

"With PeopleSoft, Oracle learned that you don't kill the revenue stream to make the deal," Ian Finley, an analyst at AMR Research, said in an interview with InternetNews.com. "You could also say they learned that you don't get into a bidding war with SAP if you can avoid it."

"Today, Oracle is a much smarter acquirer of these large competitive products," he said. "Also, Oracle has become much better at maintaining multiple products that aren't necessarily compatible and merging them over time. You couldn't say the same about the PeopleSoft merger."

For now, BEA shares are still trading well above Oracle's $17-a-share offer. On Monday, the stock closed off 38 cents, or 2 percent, to $18.44 a share. BEA executives continue to insist the company is "worth substantially more to Oracle, to others and, importantly, to BEA shareholders."

Not so, says one industry watcher.

"Oracle came in with a higher-than-normal bid to give BEA a fair shake," Peter Goldmacher, an analyst at Cowen & Co., said in an interview with InternetNews.com. "I'm shocked that BEA is behaving like this is an undervalued asset. This was a $10 stock three months ago. They should consider themselves lucky to get $17 a share."

Author: Larry Barrett @ internetnews.com

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Oracle offers $6.7 billion to buy BEA Systems

Oracle announced on Friday that it has offered to buy middleware vendor BEA Systems for $17 per share in cash.

Oracle said it had written to BEA's board of directors on Tuesday to make the offer, which represents a premium of 25 percent over BEA's closing share price on Thursday. The Wall Street Journal valued the offer at $6.66 billion.

BEA was a pioneer in the market for Java application server software used to deploy and manage business applications, competing with products like IBM Corp.'s WebSphere. It has been rumored to be an acquisition target on numerous occasions but managed to retain its independence.

"This proposal is the culmination of repeated conversations with BEA's management over the last several years," Oracle President Charles Phillips said in Friday's statement. "We look forward to completing a friendly transaction as soon as possible."

BEA executives were not quoted in the statement, however, and there was no indication early Friday as to whether the company was open to being acquired. That raises the possibility of a lengthy takeover battle like the one Oracle waged to buy PeopleSoft a few years ago.

Oracle said buying BEA would help it to beef up its own middleware suite, an important area for the company that is serving to link several families of business applications that it has acquired. Oracle said it would protect the investments of BEA customers if the deal were to go ahead.

"Our continuing support commitment has been amply demonstrated with all of our previous acquisitions, including PeopleSoft and Siebel. BEA will be no different," Phillips said.

Oracle's Fusion middleware already includes many of the products BEA sells, including an application server, portal server and development tools, meaning the acquisition would create considerable overlap.

Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst with RedMonk, said Oracle's primary motive is likely the expansion and solidification of its presence in the middleware market.

"For all that BEA is not at the heights that it once was, it still owns solid accounts across global enterprises, and while Oracle obviously isn't lacking for presence in those accounts, BEA's middleware is often more highly regarded," O'Grady said.

BEA was an early leader in applications servers but saw its lead whittled down gradually by IBM and later by Oracle, which built up a strong middleware business itself. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison often liked to predict BEA's demise, but the company has managed to cling onto a respectable market share by developing new SOA and business process management technologies.

It has been under pressure of late, however, notably from the billionaire investor Carl Icahn, one of BEA's large shareholders. Icahn said last month that he would press for the sale of BEA, believing the business would find it hard to stay afloat as an independent company.

In August BEA reported total revenue for its second quarter of $365 million, up 7 percent from a year earlier, although revenue from new license sales, an important measure of growth for a software company, declined by 9 percent to $123 million. The company didn't report full figures for the quarter because of an ongoing investigation into its stock options grants.

BEA's shares on the Nasdaq closed at $13.62 on Thursday, down from a 52-week high of $16.77. In premarket trading Friday morning the shares had jumped 31 percent on the news of Oracle's offer, to $17.84. Oracle shares were fluctuating around their closing price Thursday of $22.46.

The deal would mark yet another big acquisition for Oracle, which is on an unprecedented buying spree that has netted it more than 30 software companies in the past three years. They include the applications vendors PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards, performance management vendor Hyperion, and database vendors TimesTen and Innobase.

Ellison has said the acquisitions are designed to win the company new customers and increase its economies of scale so that it can invest heavily to become a leader in the applications market.

The deals have catapulted Oracle into second place behind SAP in the business applications market, although analysts question how Oracle can manage so many different product lines and integrate them under one roof.

Oracle indicated earlier this year that it would ease off the blockbuster acquisitions while it integrated the other companies it has bought. However, Ellison has always seemed to covet BEA, and he may feel that the unrest caused by Icahn has given him a chance to act.

Author: James Niccolai @ IDG News Service

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A Success Year for Oracle CRM

Oracle today announced that Oracle’s Siebel CRM On Demand has been heralded by end users as providing unrivalled choice of application deployment scenarios and integration options for organisations of all sizes across Europe, Middle East & Africa. In the last year, Oracle expanded its relationships across the region to include leading brands such as, Amazing Global Technologies, Ambu A/S, Experian, Hôtels B&B, Netstore and SAS Cargo Group A/S.

With more than 12 years experience in delivering CRM solutions, Siebel CRM On Demand was identified by leading independent analyst firm, Forrester Research, as having a unique offering with over five crossvertical and industry specific CRM editions. In the April 2007 report “Oracle’s Siebel CRM On Demand is a Leader in Sales Force Automation”, Liz Herbert, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research wrote, “The vendor understands the needs of a range of industries and can provide best practice expertise in addition to prebuilt industry editions. Siebel CRM On Demand currently sells five vertical editions, which is five more than many of its SaaS CRM competitors.”

“This has been a particularly strong year for Oracle’s Siebel CRM On Demand, as demonstrated by the number of positive analyst reports and the growth of our customer base,” explains Loïc le Guisquet, Senior Vice President for Applications, EMEA. “One of our main differentiators is that customers can operate the Siebel CRM On Demand solution as part of a hybrid strategy that includes Siebel on-premise or other Oracle products. It provides them with a lot of flexibility, which delivers value in their business. Listening to our customers has shown us that on-premise and On Demand is not always a straight choice and that many organisations can benefit from using both solutions in different areas.”

Author: Fiona McGoldrick @ www.irishdev.com

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Oracle's Prescription for Pharma Contact Centers

Oracle connects its Siebel Contact Center application to its Oracle Adverse Event Reporting System, targeting pharmaceutical companies. Software conglomerate Oracle Corp. has added a vertical-specific solution to its contact center options for the pharmaceutical industry. The Siebel Contact Center Integration Pack (CCIP) for Oracle Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS), available now, is designed to aid the capture, reporting, and management of adverse events and product complaints, a mission-critical effort in that sector.

The CCIP is designed not only to help pharmaceutical companies streamline the handling of adverse events, but also to bolster data integrity. Oracle AERS is the company's solution for product-safety monitoring and compliance for the medical-device and pharmaceutical industries. The CCIP is the latest addition to the company's Oracle Application Integration Architecture (OAIA), a set of products that integrate proprietary, third-party, and custom applications, and leverages the Oracle Fusion Middleware services-oriented architecture (SOA) suite.

"Siebel Contact Center Integration Pack for Oracle AERS seamlessly passes customer, product complaint and potential adverse event information from Siebel Contact Center to Oracle AERS, automatically escalating reports, as appropriate," says Neil de Crescenzo, group vice president of healthcare and life sciences at Oracle. "These capabilities drive faster event processing to help pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturers promptly report accurate adverse event and complaint information to the appropriate safety and regulatory [groups] for further evaluation."
The integration pack's closed-loop solution facilitates compliance and more effective management, according to de Crescenzo. "To help ensure product safety, [companies in this sector] are required by regulatory agencies to track and report potential product issues and adverse events both during clinical trials and after a product is introduced to the market," he says. "Rapid detection of events and issues is critical to safety and compliance. Pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers receive [this] information...from many different channels. Without a closed-loop solution, information on potential product issues or adverse events coming into a contact center has to be collected and then re-entered into an organization's [AERS] -- a process that can be time-consuming and costly."

In addition to its benefits in helping ensure public safety and reducing compliance expenses, the CCIP automatically loads event-related information from Siebel Contact Center into Oracle AERS and updates it to reflect changes, facilitating faster and more efficient reporting, de Crescenzo says. "The solution reduces duplicate data entry and provides life sciences organizations with complete, accurate, and synchronized information, helping to reduce costly conflict resolution and reconciliation."

"Pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturers are challenged to cost-effectively ensure compliance within an increasingly complex web of regulations, while working to improve overall operational efficiency and accelerate delivery of safe and effective products to market," says Eric Newmark, research manager at Health Industry Insights, an IDC company. "Automated adverse-event and product-complaint systems can facilitate faster and more efficient reporting, which, in turn, helps to ensure public safety, reduce organizational liability, and contain the cost of compliance."

Author: Coreen Bailor @ destinationCRM.com

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Oracle buys compliance vendor LogicalApps

Oracle sees a growing market for compliance monitoring and has bought LogicalApps, whose compliance software is already optimized for use with Oracle apps. Oracle plans to expand its governance and compliance offering with the acquisition of LogicalApps, announced on Tuesday.

LogicalApps' software helps companies manage compliance with complex regulations. Its technology enables real-time detection, prevention, monitoring, and reporting of financial and operational risk. The software is embedded in enterprise applications and can prevent the misuse of customer data or financial fraud by, for example, preventing employees from processing unsigned requisitions or ensuring they don't inappropriately change financial information.

According to Oracle, a growing range of companies must comply with an increasing number of regulations, in addition to the financial requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley, creating demand for compliance products.

LogialApps' software is already optimized for use with Oracle applications, and the company has made "hundreds" of deployments of the software, it said.

The companies did not disclose financial details of the deal, which is expected to close next month.

Oracle will continue to support LogicalApps' customers after the acquisition and plans to continue to invest in development of the software, Oracle said.

The acquisition is in line with a strategy Oracle discussed when it released financial results in September. At the time, Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison said the company plans to look for continued growth in its applications business by selling a wider array of products mainly to existing large customers. The strategy is different than that of some of Oracle's competitors, which instead appear to be chasing smaller businesses with scaled-down versions of existing products, he said.

Author: Nancy Gohring @ IDG News Service

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Oracle rival SAP to pay $6.8 billion for Business Objects

SAP, the big German software company that competes with Oracle, has agreed to buy Business Objects, a leader in the fast-growing market for business intelligence software, for $6.8 billion.

The move underlines the appeal of companies that make software used to cull through the huge stores of data that corporations accumulate on their own and over the Web to search for insights to help them cut costs, spot sales opportunities and outwit rivals.

Makers of business intelligence software have become takeover targets in recent months. The largest previous deal came in May when Redwood City software maker Oracle bought Hyperion Solutions, a Santa Clara business intelligence software company, for $3.3 billion.

The deal is a departure from SAP's longtime approach of shunning big acquisitions. But in a conference call Sunday, SAP Chief Executive Henning Kagermann said the purchase of Business Objects, which has dual headquarters in Paris and San Jose, was an exceptional case.

"It's a fast-growing market - business intelligence," Kagermann said.

Thomas Hofmann, an analyst at Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart, Germany, said the deal is "a dramatic shift in strategy" for SAP. "They're really moving toward the direction of Oracle and maybe that's because they're feeling Oracle is coming closer."

Business Objects had been rumored to be a takeover target for more than a month. Its share price had risen about 15 percent in the last few weeks, as SAP, Oracle and IBM were all said to be interested in buying the company.

The SAP offer of 42 euros a share in cash is roughly 20 percent above last week's closing price for Business Objects and places a value of more than 4.8 billion euros ($6.8 billion) on the company.

In its most recent quarter, Business Objects reported a 23 percent increase in sales, to $363 million, while profit rose 68 percent to $66 million.

Business Objects CEO John Schwarz said in the conference call that 40 percent of his company's customers are SAP customers. "We have a tremendous opportunity to align and package solutions together," he said.

SAP, analysts say, needs to add more capabilities to its business software to increase sales and prompt customers to buy new versions. The promise that business intelligence software might be able to glean insights from the data flowing through SAP's enterprise software could justify the price of the Business Objects purchase, analysts say.

The goal, Kagermann said, was to put "better analytics" into "our end-to-end business process software." He said he did not anticipate cutting Business Objects' workforce.

The $18-billion-a-year business intelligence market is increasingly moving into the hands of larger companies. Microsoft has made a big push into business intelligence in the last two years.

Author: Steve Lohr @ New York Times

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Oracle Raises Retention Profile

Proactive enterprise CIOs might have Oracle to thank for saving their companies millions, and even billions, of dollars in the event their called to task during civil or criminal litigation.

On Monday, the database software company rolled out Universal Records Management 10g Release 3. The platform includes enhanced retention and management features for e-mail and other files hanging out in corporate datacenters.

Increased regulatory oversight mandated by Sarbanes-Oxley and the like requires records-management software systems to cull data not only from content repositories but also from file stores, archives and a slew of business applications.

"The key thing we look at is organizations have information they need to keep as a matter of record," Brian Dirking, product director for Oracle's universal records management group, told InternetNews.com. "We're offering something that not only manages the retention and disposition of these records but broadly manages it throughout all of a company's applications, archives and content management systems."

Oracle's new platform allows companies to access content, set the parameters for deleting or archiving files and obtain information using the crawling, indexing and search functionality.

The software can also enforce records-management policies in the background to determine what data to keep or delete while users continue using the various applications rather than requiring them to launch a separate records management application.

Another, and perhaps most important feature of Oracle's platform is that it helps save companies money. Companies embroiled in litigation or regulatory reviews are painfully aware of the cost of data recovery.

"Anything electronic is recoverable and admissible in court," Dirking said. "It gets very expensive when you have firms charging more than $1,800 per gigabyte for paralegals to review all your documents in the discovery process "

Gartner expects 50 percent of Global 2000 companies to implement records-management software by 2010, up from about 25 percent in 2005.

"Litigation and e-discovery will drive demand for records management over the next four or five years," Kenneth Chin, an analyst at Gartner, told InternetNews.com. "In the past, records management was mainly targeted at managing physical documents. Now the focus is on electronic documents like e-mail."

Gartner said worldwide spending for enterprise records management software licenses and maintenance totaled $350 million in 2006 and is projected to increase about 30 percent a year through 2011.

This expected demand is music to the ears of established content management software providers like EMC, IBM and Open Text, as well as emerging players, such as Mimosa Systems and Autonomy, which bought content archiving pioneer Zantaz in July.

Oracle Universal Records Management, a component of its Fusion middleware platform, is priced at $100,000 per processor and includes new adapters for out-of-the-box integration with third-party archiving and storage applications.

Author: Larry Barrett @ internetnews.com

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SunGard challenges Oracle in public sector

Oracle is facing tough competition from SunGard Data Systems Inc. in its drive to gain a bigger share of the lucrative public sector software market.

Just ask Judy Owen, the systems manager for the City of St. Petersburg, Fla. Owen deals with both companies on a regular basis, and in her opinion, Oracle has too much going on right now to effectively address the public sector's needs.

"Honestly, I think that Oracle should stay out of [the public sector] for right now because I think they're having a terribly hard time as an organization with direction and with support and with consistency across their product lines," she said. "They're brewing at a tremendous rate and I don't think they're managing it well, so I think that they should slow down."

Both Oracle and SunGard expanded their presence in the public sector through acquisition. Last November, Oracle purchased SPL WorldGroup Inc., a maker of revenue and operations management software for the utilities industry. SunGard, a public sector stalwart in its own right, purchased local government software maker HTE Inc. in early 2003. Both companies also offer a wide range of financials and human resources applications.

The differences between the have to do with size and scope, said Ray Wang, an analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc. SunGard, which is much smaller than Oracle, is more specialized and offers systems that drill down to fill the highly specific needs of government agencies and utilities, he explained.

Oracle, which boasts a large number of Oracle Database customers in the public sector, takes a broader approach in terms of functionality, Wang said, and one of its primary goals is to up-sell those public sector Database users on PeopleSoft and E-Business Suite applications.

"The public sector is a space that Oracle really wants to get their feet into," Wang said. "The SunGard products are a lot more specialized, though. They have the finance products and they've got the human resources stuff. But SunGard also has things like student billing, registration and accounting. And they've got other things, especially for local governments."

Wang said that another player to watch in the public sector applications market is Hansen Information Technologies, which was recently acquired by Infor.

An Oracle-SunGard user speaks out

The City of St. Petersburg -- a longtime user of HTE's land parcel management systems -- became a SunGard customer by default after the acquisition. But according to Owen, the transition has been fairly seamless.

"I don't think that [HTE was] purchased as an independent subsidiary, but that's how they seem to be operating," she said. "We're dealing with the same people and there hasn't been a lot of pain for us in SunGard having bought them."

All city departments that deal with land use SunGard-HTE systems, including the building and permits, occupational tax and licensing, utilities and codes enforcement departments, she said.

SunGard-HTE's utilities suite makes up the core of the city's utility billing system, and it allows citizens to do things like pay bills and apply for inspections and permits online, Owen said.

The SunGard-HTE systems are integrated with the Oracle E-Business Suite Financials applications that cover general ledger accounting and enterprise resource planning. The city, which also uses Oracle E-Business Suite Human Resources applications, went live with Oracle Financials about two years ago. Some of the other financials modules that the city uses cover payroll, purchasing, iProcurement, accounts receivable and accounts payable.

"When we went through the [Oracle ERP implementation] there were lots of challenges with the interfaces," Owen said. "I think there are always interface challenges. But it's working well now."

Owen said her group considered the possibility of standardizing on either Oracle or SunGard, but decided that it wouldn't work out.

"Oracle couldn't do the parcel-based information -- the land-based systems," Owen said. "Oracle just couldn't do it."

Oracle and SunGard square off on support

With few exceptions, SunGard has been good on the technical support side of things, but Owen can't currently say the same for Oracle.

"[Oracle] support is problematic at best," she said. "A lot of times the poor guys on the other end of the support lines don't know what the sales guys are selling."

Author: Mark Brunelli @ SearchOracle.com

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Oracle Continues to Lead IDC's Analytics Pack

The analyst firm ranks the vendors by revenue and market share, and finds SAS Institute and Microsoft continue to make inroads. Oracle remains the leader of the business analytics market, according to the latest forecast report from research firm IDC, as other vendors, such as SAS and Microsoft, continue to make inroads. On top in terms of both revenue and market share, Oracle is nevertheless closely followed by (in descending order) SAS, SAP, IBM, and Microsoft, according to the report.

IDC's definition of business analytics software comprises performance management applications and data warehouse platform software -- specifically, solutions used to access, transform, store, analyze, model, deliver, and track information to enable fact-based decision-making. According to the report, Oracle's analytics offerings took in nearly $2.8 billion in 2006, controlling 14.2 percent of the market. The software giant was followed by SAS, which earned $1.6 billion and had 8.2 percent of market share. Microsoft recorded the strongest growth of all the leaders, increasing its business analytics revenue by 24.6 percent.

While SAS was second behind Oracle, it was noted as the only vendor of the top 5 that focuses almost exclusively on business analytics, ranking at the top in 3 out of the 11 segments of the business analytics market. That, says Dan Vesset, program vice president of IDC's Business Analytics research, "strongly contributes to its number 2 ranking on the solution diversity scale." Finally, SAS had the third-highest momentum in the market in 2006, growing 14 percent.

According to IDC, the business analytics software market reached $19.3 billion in 2006, an 11.2 percent rise. Vesset expects continued growth over the next five years, though at a compound annual growth rate slightly beneath that level: 10.3 percent. Furthermore, IDC made the following predictions about the future of business analytics:

* Business analytic solutions will increasingly incorporate functionality for unified access and analysis of structured data and unstructured content, business process management, collaboration, and workflow management.
* The use of these tools has matured to a point that organizations are beginning to consider business analytics not just as a set of reporting functions, but as a means to gain competitive advantage through better decision management and process optimization.
* As consolidation among the leading business analytics vendors continues, a new generation of software vendors will target specific market segments with innovative new solutions. "These solutions will include not only functionality innovation but also business model innovation," Vesset says, specifically citing open-source and software-as-a-service (SaaS) business analytics.


The report also suggests that a new wave of business analytics deployments will materialize over the next decade and will be focused on addressing two primary demands:

* More data. As awareness increases reagarding the potential of business analytics to influence performance, the need to combine structured transactional data -- with various other forms of rich media content and unstructured and semistructured data -- will become more acute.
* More users. Traditionally, the business intelligence tools market has addressed the needs of business and quantitative analysts, with less attention paid to managers and supervisors, Vesset says. To achieve pervasive BI, organizations and vendors will have to rethink their approaches to technology deployment: They'll have to take into account expectations that users have by embedding business analytics functionality into operational applications, such as CRM and ERP systems.


At the same time, Vesset says, a shortage of IT developers and analytics experts continues to be a problem. "The number of these professionals doesn't seem to be keeping pace with the increased demand from end users. The widening gap between supply and demand will need to be filled with automation, external services firms, hosted/SaaS solutions, or outsourced business analytics solutions."

Author: Colin Beasty @ destinationCRM.com

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Oracle highlights Enterprise 2.0 efforts

Company cites its WebCenter platform as ideal foundation for bringing Web 2.0-style collaboration to businesses and organizations. Oracle officials during a Web conference Tuesday cited collaborative benefits of Enterprise 2.0 and cast the company's WebCenter platform as its product offering in this space.

Enterprise 2.0 from Oracle's perspective brings the benefits of Web 2.0-style collaboration to the enterprise. Other elements include the ability to build mashup applications. While there has been confusion as to what exactly Web 2.0 really is, it has been equated to blogging, AJAX-style development, and even Google, said Sonny Singh, senior vice president of the Industries Business Unit at Oracle.

"The truth of the matter is there are probably as many definitions of Web 2.0 as there are technologies associated with it," Singh said.

"[Web 2.0 is] really about how users can connect and work with each other through the Internet," said Thomas Kurian, Oracle senior vice president of Server Technologies Development. "It's fundamentally about users sharing information with each other, using Web-based social software technology to fundamentally transform how they get access to information and how they work with each other."

But Oracle is looking at Web 2.0's relevance and benefits in the enterprise world, which formed the basis for discussion on Enterprise 2.0 during the Web conference.

"Enterprise 2.0 is basically integrating these Web 2.0 technologies and capabilities with enterprise information systems and applications to transform how we work within the enterprise, as well as across enterprises and with people outside the enterprise," Kurian said.

"For me, Enterprise 2.0 is the use of freeform social software inside organizations," said Andrew McAfee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School and a featured presenter wired into the Oracle event. Rather than being concerned with how software is developed, Enterprise 2.0 is about how software gets used, he said.

Enterprise 2.0 brings new modes of collaboration, McAfee said.

Oracle's strategy for the new generation of Internet computing is to fuse Enterprise 2.0 capabilities into Oracle products, Kurian said. The Oracle WebCenter platform takes center stage in the company's Enterprise 2.0 strategy.

Part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware platform, WebCenter integrates enterprise services in providing a context-aware Web application. Featured capabilities include mashups, tagging, RSS, wiki, VoIP, and discussions; search and community components are offered as well.

One of the basic beliefs around WebCenter, Kurian said, is that the way to build an enterprise application, portal, and Web site is converging. The line between what is a Web site, an enterprise application, or a transaction system is gone, he said. WebCenter provides a standards-based framework and integrates into an application development framework.

Oracle also is bringing Enterprise 2.0 capabilities to its On Demand applications. Information such as what a customer has purchased can be shared with a network of salespersons and others, he said. Also, the next version of Oracle's collaboration suite will include Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 capabilities, Kurian said.

To drive home its point about Internet-based computing, Oracle showed a video of a company using a mashup to compare worldwide shipping costs of FOLED (flexible OLED) systems.

Oracle competitors also are latching onto concepts such as Web 2.0. BEA Systems, for example, offers a social computing suite for ad hoc collaboration and participation-based experiences.

Putting a damper on Oracle's festivities, however, was a questioner in the audience who said Oracle needs to update its existing "Web 1.0-based" licensing model. Oracle currently bases its licensing on the per-processor or named user methods.

"We have certainly had discussions on that," Kurian responded. The company is trying to gauge interest from the user community about this issue, he said.

Author: Paul Krill @ InfoWorld.com

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Oracle's Name Game

The latest Siebel CRM On Demand highlights the software giant's interest in the on-demand market and underscores the strength of the Siebel name.

When Oracle announced the general availability of Siebel CRM On Demand Release 14 on July 25, it marked the company's first major Siebel Systems software-as-a-service (SaaS) release since completing the purchase of its former adversary in January 2006. The release itself -- the 14th in three and a half years--is particularly noteworthy: It's the first installment to run entirely on Oracle's native infrastructure, and it delivers buckets of integration, usability, customization, and administration features. Apart from the functionality enhancements, however, are signs that the product's branding was set for a facelift -- a facelift that never came about.

Release 14 includes prebuilt integrations to Oracle programs such as Oracle E-Business Suite. Also, process-level integration with Siebel CRM On Demand's workflow capabilities automatically triggers cross-application processes based on changes to information, while data-integration enhancements via Web services enable merge-record operations. In addition, the release draws on technologies such as AJAX and in-line edit to simplify user tasks. Release 14 also includes home-page customization, expanded search-configuration tools, mashup support, industry-specific editions, a built-in virtual call center, embedded analytics, and a prebuilt data warehouse for real-time decision-making.

The latest release represents the first formal announcement of the availability of a new Siebel CRM On Demand product since the April 2006 announcement of version 10. Oracle subsequently rolled out Releases 11, 12, and 13 without any formal press announcements.

With Release 14, however, it appears Oracle was planning to switch to the Oracle brand. In fact, according to an industry insider requesting anonymity, a notice was sent to members of the analyst community stating that Oracle was dropping the Siebel name from the SaaS product. "Then I guess somewhere in the organization, [it was decided to] stick with Siebel, but they didn't send out a subsequent email," the pundit says. "So they are sticking with the traditional Oracle Siebel CRM On Demand nomenclature, and they appear to be planning to stick with that for the foreseeable future." (See "What's in a Name? Oracle's Mixed Message With Siebel CRM On Demand," for more product information.)

It's important to note, however, that Oracle uses "Oracle On Demand" (not "Oracle CRM On Demand") as an umbrella term to describe the company's portfolio of services it delivers in its role as an application service provider (ASP). Some of these offerings include subscription applications (Siebel CRM On Demand) and managed applications (Oracle On Demand for Siebel CRM; PeopleSoft Enterprise On Demand; JD Edwards EnterpriseOne On Demand and JD Edwards World On Demand; Oracle Collaboration Suite On Demand; and Oracle E-Business Suite On Demand).

"The Oracle On Demand infrastructure has a whole host of services...that allow Oracle as an entity to take advantage of its understanding of the application, the database, [and] middleware," says Anthony Lye, Oracle senior vice president, CRM On Demand. "I've never had a customer tell me, 'I don't know which [product] to buy.' Oracle On Demand offers customers a huge benefit from a cost of ownership [perspective] and from an overall initiative and business strategy."

Lye's experience notwithstanding, some headscratching on the part of buyers is to be expected. "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," says Rob Bois, a research director at AMR Research. "The more they can distinguish the true SaaS product [Siebel CRM On Demand] from the traditional ASP version [Oracle On Demand for Siebel CRM] would certainly help."

Overall, though, Bois contends 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. The customers end up winning in all of this."

Author: Coreen Bailor @ destinationCRM.com

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