Oracle Issues Alert For WebLogic Plugin Vulnerability

Oracle on Tuesday issued a Security Alert related to a vulnerability that affects the Apache plug-in for Oracle WebLogic, formerly known as BEA WebLogic.

In an online post, Eric Maurice, manager for security in Oracle's global technology business unit, explained that the alert is the first since Oracle introduced its quarterly Critical Patch Update process in January 2005. The alert is necessary, he said, because code designed to exploit the vulnerability has been posted online.

The severity of the exploit, which can be seen at Milw0rm.com, is rated 10 out of 10.

"It is remotely exploitable without authentication, ... and it can result in compromising the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the targeted system," said Maurice.

The vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2008-3257.

Oracle has posted file to limit the maximum URL length to less than 4,000 bytes. If that's not feasible, Oracle suggests installing the mod_security Apache module.

Oracle plans to release an out-of-cycle patch to address the issue as soon as the patch is ready.

The exploit code was released July 17, two days after Oracle issued its second-quarter Critical Patch Update.

"Unfortunately, the person(s) who published this vulnerability and associated exploit codes did not contact Oracle before publicly disclosing this issue," said Maurice. "This means that the vulnerability was made public before providing Oracle an opportunity to develop an appropriate fix for this issue and notify its customers."

Author: Thomas Claburn @ www.InformationWeek.com

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Oracle increases accusations in SAP lawsuit

We're finally getting a look into what Oracle has discovered in the discovery phase of its lawsuit against SAP and its subsidiary TomorrowNow (TN), which provided third-party maintenance and support contracts for Oracle products.

In an amended complaint filed today, Oracle paints a vivid picture of TN knowingly misappropriating Oracle's intellectual property and SAP knowingly choosing to allow TN to continue in its allegedly illegal operations. Oracle claims that documents uncovered during the discovery phase have "revealed that [SAP] knew from the start that SAP TN's business depended on this extensive illegal scheme...One of the key members of SAP's due diligence team--a former PeopleSoft employee--reported directly to board member [Shai] Agassi: "I am not sure how TomorrowNow gets access to Peoplesoft software, but its [sic] very likely that TomorrowNow is using the software outside the contractual use rights granted to them."

Oracle also claims that during the acquisition of TN by SAP that TN's owners "flatly refused to give any such assurances" that TN respected Oracle's IP rights.

Furthermore, Oracle claims to have uncovered evidence of an effort within SAP to move to a more conservative approach to delivering support services, a so-called "Project Blue." As I read Oracle's complaint, it appears that Project Blue would have involved TN giving up the maintenance of centralized copies of PeopleSoft and JDE and doing all customer support remotely on the customer's system. Oracle claims that SAP and TN eventually decided against Project Blue.


The complaint is now 70 pages, with substantial detail, and is quite an interesting read. Computerworld has a short article on it. But read Oracle's complaint to get a full picture.

Oracle chose to file this amended complaint today, the day before SAP reports its second quarter earnings, guaranteeing that analysts will be asking questions about this tomorrow.

This case puts a real obstacle in the path of the third-party maintenance model, a model that I hope will prove viable in the long run. Major software vendors, such as both Oracle and SAP, have too much power, too much control over their installed base customers and too little competition. Third-party maintenance gives customers another option and leverage over the unrestrained pricing power of the major vendors. When you buy a Lexus, you are not obligated to go to the Lexus dealer for maintenance. Why should enterprise software be any different?

Nevertheless, third-party service providers have to operate within the restraints of fair competition. Hopefully this case will be resolved in a way that makes the boundaries clear, so that clients have choices.

Author: Frank Scavo @ fscavo.blogspot.com

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Oracle adds Bruce Chizen to its board

Database software giant Oracle Corp. put former Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen on its board.

Chizen becomes the 13th director at Redwood City-based Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL).

Other members of Oracle's board include:

* CEO Larry Ellison
* CFO Safra Catz
* Chairman Jeff Henley
* Stanford economics professor Michael Boskin
* Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp.

Chizen, 52, was CEO of Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) from December 2000 until November 2007. He also sits on the board at Synopsys Inc. (NASDAQ: SNPS).

Source: sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com

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Microsoft 'leapfrogs' Oracle with DATAllegro buy, analyst says

Microsoft Corp. said today it will buy data warehouse appliance maker DATAllegro Inc., a move that one analyst said should help the software maker gain a technical edge over market leader Oracle Corp. in the high-performance business intelligence market.

Financial terms were not disclosed. Microsoft said it will integrate DATAllegro's technology into its SQL Server database, for which a new version, SQL Server 2008, is expected in several months.

"For the first time ever, Microsoft has leapfrogged Oracle at the high end of the database market," wrote independent database analyst, Curt Monash, a former Computerworld columnist, in an e-mail. "Of all the data warehouse start-ups, DATAllegro was the one whose technology could be most smoothly rolled into Microsoft's or Oracle's product line. Microsoft was smart to snatch DATAllegro up."

DATAllegro specializes in server appliances that come installed with a version of the Ingres database optimized to handle as much as hundreds of terabytes of data.

One DATAllegro customer reportedly runs data warehouses totaling 450TB.

"While several other data warehouse start-ups have achieved more overall customer success, DATAllegro is second only to Teradata in proven high-end data warehouse scalability," Monash wrote.

James Kobielus, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., also praised the buy "as a smart one."

DATAllegro has "a strong product, robust technology, skilled engineering team, and world-class hardware partnerships (including EMC, Dell, Cisco and Bull)," he wrote. It also greatly boosts Microsoft, which was a "relative laggard" in the growing data warehousing appliance market, he said.

Kobielus added that this also "sets the stage for rapid data warehousing vendor consolidation" and driving companies such as "Oracle, SAP and HP, in particular, to make strategic acquisitions" of DATAllegro's competitors, which include Netezza Corp., Greenplum and Dataupia Inc.

The 5-year-old Aliso Viejo, Calif., start-up was probably not hurting for cash. It received nearly $20 million in Series D funding in May, and has taken about $64 million in venture capital since its founding.

Most of DATAllegro's team will remain in California, and existing customers will be supported.

This article has been corrected since initial publication to reflect that Ingres is in fact the underlying database for DATallegro.

Author: Eric Lai @ www.computerworld.com

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Oracle Makes Secure Web Access Management Push

The Oracle identity and access management bundle is a shot at securing Web-based cloud environments better than Oracle rivals Sun, CA, IBM and Novell.

Oracle has bundled together a suite of access management products in a bid to help enterprises secure their Web-based environments and to challenge its main rivals in the space.

The new offering is called Oracle Access Management Suite, and combines Oracle Access Manager, Adaptive Access Manager, Identity Federation and Entitlements Server into one integrated suite, with each also being sold separately. The plan, according to officials at Oracle, is to distance the company from competitors by targeting Web-based architectures with a broad, integrated collection of products.

"A large number of our customers … use the Web as a channel to deliver services to their communities, which could be consumers, partners, students and employees," said Amit Jasuja, vice president of identity management at Oracle. "For them security and the cost of delivering security is an important concern. With the suite, we're offering our customers an integrated approach that can lower the cost and complexity of the solution and deliver a higher level of security."

The Web focus provides several key benefits, Jasuja explained, such as real-time theft prevention through continuous session monitoring, the use of single sign-on for all Web applications and standards-based cross-company boundary single sign-on for partners that are Web-based service providers.

Of the four products, Oracle Entitlements Server (PDF) is the only new entry to the company's product lineup. The product was acquired from BEA Systems, where it was called BEA AquaLogic Enterprise Security. According to Oracle, Entitlements Server enables application developers to externalize and centralize authorization policies that previously would have been embedded within applications. The product supports a number of environments, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Microsoft .NET Framework and IBM WebSphere Application Server.

"What this set of products does provide early indication of is how access decisions are going to move away from being based solely on static account privileges within applications," said Forrester Research analyst Jonathan Penn. "These decisions will move to a more centralized environment—the entitlements management system—where real-time data regarding user context and other information will contribute to the decision-making."

Challenge to Competition

In tying all these products together, Oracle is issuing a challenge to its main competitors in the identity and access management space, which include Sun Microsystems, IBM, CA and Novell. Jasuja contends that none of the other companies can offer as broad a product suite as Oracle. However, CA, for example, has made a push around Web access management with its Secure Web Business Enablement suite through products such as CA SiteMinder Web Access Manager, which includes Web SSO (single sign-on) and entitlements management.

"From a marketing and customer acquisition perspective, [Oracle has] moved aggressively against Sun and IBM," said Gartner analyst Earl Perkins. "I don't know that these particular capabilities are differentiating enough, but it does expand their portfolio into areas that Sun and IBM haven't addressed comprehensively."

Oracle's move comes as analysts continue to predict the growth of the identity and access management market, which according to estimates from Forrester Research should hit $12.3 billion by 2014. Enterprises, Perkins said, are seeking a means of addressing complex federation requirements as they delve further into the Web and its services.

"The fine-grained entitlements server is a significant step in addressing a common approach to externalizing authorization decisions from applications rather than embedding them as most enterprise apps do," Perkins said. "This is a required step in preparing for SOA [service-oriented architecture] secure access going forward."

Author: Brian Prince @ www.eweek.com

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Quantix win Oracle Support Contract with First Bank of Nigeria (FBN Bank UK Ltd)

Quantix Ltd, a leading Oracle Support & Managed Services specialist, announces a contract win with FBN Bank Ltd.

FBN Bank’s core business application, Flexcube, (now owned by Oracle Corporation) is a mission critical application central to the banks trading activities. Traditionally this solution has been supported by a combination of in-house generalists and 3rd party support providers. To further enhance their levels of customer service and increase application resilience, FBN Bank reviewed their current support procedures and determined a more specialist Oracle support provider was required.

Quantix were invited to tender for the support of Oracle database and Oracle application systems and after a stringent due-diligence process and service evaluation period, it was agreed by FBN Bank’s senior UK management team to award the support contract to Quantix. The due-diligence process consisted of an in-depth of review of Quantix’s financial stability, market position and internal support and security procedures, along with discussions with existing clients of Quantix in the Banking and Finance industry.

Simon Goodenough, Sales Director at Quantix said:
“Quantix are delighted to have FBN Bank onboard as a new client and are looking forward to delivering a range of Oracle database support services for them. We are proud of our specialist Oracle service which gives us the ability to deliver pro-active, real-time support and identify database and application issues before they become a problem. Due to our size, location and experience we are finding that there is substantial interest in the City currently for our cost-effective range of remote Oracle (and Microsoft SQL Server) Services and FBN Bank is just one of the latest financial organisations to deploy this support solution.”
The pro-active services provided by Quantix for i-flex customers have already seen immediate benefits for FBN Bank in the areas of application performance and business continuity. In addition, Quantix have implemented a real-time, 24x7 pro-active management solution to deliver best-in-class mission critical Oracle support. Internally this has enabled FBN Bank to make significant costs savings, whilst receiving the peace-of-mind that their i-flex environment is optimised and stable.

The Head of IT at FBN Bank said:
"Previous to engaging the Oracle database support services of Quantix we had been reliant on an unreliable and unprofessional DBA services company who could not appreciate the critical nature of our banking systems. Quantix have introduced real-time monitoring and remote management to our Oracle systems and understand how important it is to keep a constant watch on the performance and operation of our systems. We are always impressed by the availability of Quantix support staff who are ready to respond to any support needs we may have. It is vital to a financial services business like FBN Bank (UK) to have that constant reassurance that in any Oracle database eventuality a reliable and credible IT services company such as Quantix is there to call on."

About Quantix:

Quantix, an Oracle Certified Advantage Partner and Microsoft Gold Partner, specialise in the provision of enterprise applications support and managed services to the Mid Market. Incorporated in 2002, Quantix has seen consistently strong growth in its range of support services and can now lay claim to a managed services contract base of over £4m. Quantix has a turnover of circa £7.5m and currently works with over 400 clients across numerous vertical markets, including Finance & Banking, Transport, Public Services, Business Services, Retail, Manufacturing and Telecoms.

Contact:

Jonathan Cowling
Quantix Ltd
Tel: 0115 983 6200
Email: JonathanC@quantix-uk.com

Source: www.sourcewire.com

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IBM, Oracle and SAP sued over server software technology patents

IBM, SAP and Adobe Systems are the latest targets of patent lawsuits filed by Implicit Networks.

Implicit claims the companies "are violating two patents for computer-server software that performs faster security functions," Bloomberg News reported. Implicit filed its lawsuit in Washington Western District Court on July 15, just five months after suing AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Sun, Raza Microelectronics and RealNetworks in the same venue.

While the first Implicit Networks lawsuit puts rivals AMD and Intel on the same side in court, the July lawsuit also places rivals Oracle and SAP together as defendants. Oracle, meanwhile, is still pursuing a legal action against SAP, which claims SAP illegally accessed Oracle's customer support systems.

The Implicit lawsuit against AMD and Intel centers around a 2003 patent covering technology for "demultiplexing packets of a message."

In the new lawsuit, Bloomberg reports that Implicit Networks is seeking royalties from such products as IBM's Websphere Application Server, Oracle's Application Server and BEA WebLogic Server, SAP's NetWeaver and Adobe's JRun and ColdFusion. The suit centers around two patents issued to Implicit after applications filed by the company in 1998 and 2001. IBM, Oracle, SAP and Adobe are expected to issue formal responses in court by Sept. 18, Bloomberg reports.

Source: www.networkworld.com

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Eaton Steel accelerates business processes with Oracle

Eaton Steel, a distributor and processor of engineered steel bars, has announced that it relying on the Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Database and Oracle SOA Suite, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, to gain insight into its supply chain network and financial results, simplify transactions with its network of partners and help reduce costs by automating key business processes.

Using Oracle Financials, Eaton Steel gained a unified view of its financial performance and transactions across all six of its subsidiaries. As a result, the company has better insight into organizational performance and can consistently refine processes to improve results.

With Oracle Discrete Manufacturing, Eaton Steel is able to manage its entire steel production process, from heat-treating and sizing the material to work-in-process to cost and quality management. Additionally, the company relies on Oracle to automatically transfer engineering specifications into production items, bills of material, and routing.

Building on its successful implementation of the Oracle E-Business Suite, Eaton Steel used Oracle SOA Suite to develop a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that simplifies EDI transactions with the company's wide range of business partners and helps automate the business processes around those transactions.
Using Oracle SOA Suite, Eaton Steel will develop a series of Web Services based on easily reusable code that allows its subsidiaries and partners to call up a simple Web-based interface and quickly enter the relevant information, which will then be automatically routed into the Oracle E-Business Suite. This will enable Eaton Steel to automate business processes in multiple areas, such as purchase orders, invoices, and inventory management.

Source: www.cbronline.com

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i-flex Solutions Becomes Oracle Financial Services Software

(RTTNews) - Wednesday, i-flex Solutions said that the company approved to change the name of the company to 'Oracle Financial Services Software'. The company said that the EGM would be convened on August 11, 2008 to seek members' approval for the same.

Source: www.nasdaq.com

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Askari Bank to use Oracle software to modernize its operations

Askari Bank of Pakistan has selected Oracle software to modernise its banking operations, provide world-class service to its customers and compete better with local and international banks operating in Pakistan. Askari Bank has selected Oracle Applications for the banking industry including Oracle’s FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Solution, Reveleus Basel II Solution, FLEXCUBE Islamic Banking and Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Techlogix, an Oracle Partner, will implement the software over a period of 18 months.

Oracle Applications will help Askari Bank become compliant with Pakistan State Bank regulations and with important international risk management standards such as those specified in Basel II guidelines. Oracle’s Siebel CRM software will help Askari Bank manage end-to-end relationships with its customers.

“With increasing competition in the Pakistani banking industry, we have to make our operations more efficient and compliant with the global banking industry best practices”, said President of Askari Bank Ltd., M. R. Mehkari.

“We believe our choice of the best banking industry software from Oracle and Techlogix, the local implementation experts, will help us roll out this complex IT project and will eventually streamline our operations and help us stay profitable.”

“Banking is a strategic industry for Oracle with 17 of the top 20 banks globally already running Oracle Applications”, said Oracle’s Regional Director for SAGE-West, Samina Rizwan. “Oracle has been delivering demonstrable value to its customers in banking industry for decades.

Our software will serve the unique needs of Askari Bank such as performance analysis, activity based management, financial data management, risk management, budgeting and planning to help them in effective resource management”.

“We look forward to partnership with Askari Bank to realize its strategic vision as it migrates towards a best in class application and technology platform”, said Salman Akhtar, Co-CEO of Techlogix. “We believe the solution rollout at Askari Bank will set the benchmark for the banking industry in Pakistan “.

Source: www.app.com.pk

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Oracle still top dog in tough database market

However, open source offerings are nipping at its heels. The relational database market is a lot less crowded than it used to be, and that's no surprise, considering the players have to contend with a massive software juggernaut like Oracle. According to the latest numbers from research firm IDC, Oracle still rules the roost in databases, capturing in excess of 44% of the overall market for 2007.

Not even Oracle can afford to rest on its laurels, however; not in a market this competitive. In addition to pressure from the other two top vendors — IBM and Microsoft — Oracle must contend with increasing competition from open source software. For example, Sun Microsystems, which acquired MySQL in January, recently announced an aggressive new pricing structure that allows customers to install as many instances of the open source database as they want, including enterprise-class service and support for a single, flat rate.

Included in the deal is Sun's GlassFish Java application server, which can be used to host custom enterprise applications that store their data in the database. Pricing reportedly begins at US$65,000 (NZ$85,000) per year and scales up based on the number of employees in the organization. (Sun already uses similar, headcount-based pricing for much of its software portfolio.)

If that sounds like a lot of money, consider that the latest pricing for the Oracle 11g database starts at around US$47,500 per CPU, following a price hike that took effect earlier this month. By comparison, Sun is offering site-licence pricing — you can install MySQL on as many CPUs as you want for the one rate.
MySQL can't compete with Oracle on a feature-for-feature basis, especially when it comes to the advanced capabilities needed by heavy enterprise users, such as data integrity and replication. But many applications don't need the high-end features offered by top-tier database. For example, many web applications need nothing more than simple data storage, which MySQL offers in spades.

It can be difficult to properly analyse MySQL's true market share, because you don't have to be a Sun Microsystems customer to use it. MySQL is open source, so you can generally download and use the database for free (although some licensing restrictions may apply). Even if it was possible to count every single instance of MySQL that is currently in use, there's no way of knowing how many of those users represent potential business for Sun.

As a rule, however, users who have extensive experience using open source software for prototype or "off the record" projects are good candidates to become paying customers of open source vendors in the future. What they get for their money is commercial-grade support, which can be invaluable when open source software is used to power mission-critical applications. Open source support contracts usually come at much lower price tags than equivalent offerings from proprietary vendors such as Oracle.

MySQL isn't the only low-cost contender on the market, either. PostgreSQL is similarly open source, and offers a feature set that's more comparable to Oracle, IBM DB2, or Microsoft SQL Server. Given how easy it has become to install and use a database for free, it's entirely possible that relational databases may soon become a commodity market, especially among those mid-tier customers who don't need the most advanced capabilities.

Author: Neil McAllister @ http://computerworld.co.nz

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Oracle Introduces BI Application for iPhone

Oracle is catching up in the area of mobile business intelligence (BI) by riding the coattails of the red-hot iPhone. With Apple's highly anticipated G3 iPhones set to hit stores on Friday, Oracle announced today the release Oracle Business Indicators, an iPhone-native application that will enable executives and managers to access "key metrics and analytical data" from Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE). Oracle also promised transactional ERP and CRM applications that will support decision-making within the context of analytic information.

Oracle's new Business Indicators iPhone app counters smartphone-delivery options introduced last year by Business Objects, Cognos, Microstrategy and Information Builders Inc. (IBI). Business Objects and Microstrategy support the Research in Motion (RIM) BlackBerry platform while Cognos has platform-native apps for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian. IBI's Mobile Favorites supports Web-based delivery to any mobile browser, though it lacks platform-specific API integration.

RIM BlackBerry held a commanding 41 percent of the U.S. smartphone market in Q4 2007, according to research firm Canalys, but iPhone has moved up quickly to grab 28 percent, besting Windows Mobile's 21-percent share. So why start with the iPhone rather than the market-leading BlackBerry platform?

"This is not about not doing RIM so much as it's about seeing the rapid acceptance of the iPhone," says Lenley Hensarling, a group vice president at Oracle. "Even though companies are currently paying for Blackberry, people are buying iPhones, so it's going to be there as a platform. Apple also offered a strong development kit with really good support for Web services."

Oracle Business Indicators uses the serviced-oriented architecture capabilities of OBIEE and Oracle Business Intelligence Web Services to tap into metrics and reports available in the OBIEE catalog, though Hensarling stopped short of promising seamless delivery of existing customized reports.

"This is not intended to be a complete dashboard experience; it's about delivering selected, targeted metrics and reports from the OBIEE catalog," he says.
Access and security controls for Business Indicators users are handled in OBIEE in the same way they are administered for desktop users. The English-language application is available at no charge at the iPhone App Store, and it's supported in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, Australia and New Zealand.

Oracle hasn't disclosed release dates for its planned ERP and CRM apps, but Hensarling says they'll support two-way interaction rather than the read-only approach of Business Indicators. "An 'Approvals' app will be the next offering, and it will provide in-context analytic information around specific transactions, so executives will be able to confidently approve hires, purchases and expense reports on the go," he explains. "The mobile CRM apps will enable you to manage leads, contacts and accounts, and it will support mobile forecasting."

Oracle is the second BI player to announce iPhone support this week, as open-source vendor Pentaho yesterday announced an iPhone app developed using the iUI project, which is currently hosted on Google Code.

Author: Doug Henschen @ http://news.yahoo.com

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Cobb Energy implements Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing services

Oracle has announced that Cobb Energy, a provider of diversified energy-related and non-energy-related products, has implemented Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing to replace several inflexible and expensive-to-maintain legacy systems. The company is running this application on Oracle database.

With Oracle, Cobb Energy has greatly improved operational efficiency, reducing the time needed to complete nightly batch processes, including uploading meter reads and payments and bill creation, by nearly 80% - from 36 hours to seven hours. Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing allows Cobb Energy to monitor bill accuracy with much less manual effort and train staff efficiently on the application to increase user adoption.

Cobb Energy has experienced a significant reduction in turn-around time for configuration changes - allowing the company to reduce its IT costs and bring its bill design in-house.

Cobb Energy offers the Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing application to other organizations, including Cobb Electric, Gas South and Interlink Controls on a hosted, application-service-provider basis, allowing access to a billing system with less investment in infrastructure and personnel.

Source: www.cbronline.com

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Comstar Implements ERP System Oracle E-Business Suite

COMSTAR – United TeleSystems” JSC (“Comstar” or “the Company”), the leading integrated telecommunications operator in Russia and the CIS, today announced that it has implemented Oracle E-business Suite, the full-scale Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) system from Oracle. The total investment in the project amounted to US$ 12 million.

Comstar commenced the introduction of the ERP system in 2005. The project was implemented in several stages, with Kvazar-Micro (now renamed as SITRONICS Information Technologies) acting as a prime contractor. Over 500 Comstar employees have been trained to work in the new system as users.

Comstar implemented the process automation stage which included contract management, procurement payments and other treasury functions, between 2005 and 2006. The second stage of the project commenced in the Autumn of 2006 and involved the automation of financial, tax and accounting management, legacy IT-systems replacement and the introduction of unified accounting and management data to the centralized Oracle E-business Suite system. The management team was thereby equipped with a powerful tool to control and execute the Company’s operations, based on the best enterprise business process management practices. The system users operate in an integrated information infrastructure which eliminates duplication and provides an end-to-end control at all levels of accounting and reporting. The current implementation includes the following modules of ERP system: Oracle Purchasing, Oracle Account Payables, Oracle Warehouse Management, Oracle Treasury, Oracle Projects, Oracle Fixed Assets, Oracle General Ledger and Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub.

Alexey Goncharuk, First Vice President of Comstar UTS, commented: “The introduction of the ERP system has enabled us to create an integrated information infrastructure and optimize the business processes within the Company. This is of great benefit to Comstar as one of the leading players in the Russian telecommunications market and a public Company listed on the London Stock Exchange.”

Irina Matveeva, Chief Financial Officer of Comstar UTS, added: “The ERP system increases management efficiency and provides greater transparency, both of which should have a positive impact on Comstar’s market capitalization.”

Source: www.businesswire.com

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Oracle may seek more than $1 billion damages from SAP in IPR lawsuit

Another war between software giants is set to begin, and it will be fought not on consumers' minds and computers, but in the US law courts. Database pioneer Oracle Corp. is reportedly seeking damages exceeding $1 billion (500 million pounds) in an intellectual property rights (IPR) lawsuit it has brought against arch-rival SAP AG, according to a court filing.

Oracle is suing TomorrowNow, an American subsidiary of Germany-based SAP, for corporate theft and alleges it illegally downloaded masses of Oracle customer service materials and passed those documents to SAP.

"Because defendants have not provided Oracle with critical information relevant to liability and resulting damages, Oracle does not yet know its damages with precision," Oracle said in a filing this week to the US District Court in San Francisco, California.

"But, even so, it appears Oracle's damages are, at a minimum, well into the several hundreds of millions of dollars and likely are at least a billion dollars."

SAP countered the charges in the joint discovery statement, saying, "Oracle speculates wildly about the amount of its damages 'claim' in this discovery report, even though more than a year after this case was filed, Oracle still refuses to identify with any precision the nature or amount of its alleged harm or even to provide the theory on which its damage claim is based."

SAP has said that employees of TomorrowNow, which specialises in customer support for PeopleSoft and JD Edwards software, authorized to download materials from Oracle's Web site on behalf of TomorrowNow's customers, but also acknowledged that "some inappropriate downloads of fixes and support documents occurred.''

But this information remained in TomorrowNow's systems, and SAP did not gain access to Oracle's intellectual property, according to SAP. In addition, SAP has already produced about 2.3 million pages of documents from 42 custodians, and under its proposed limit of 115 custodians, will turn over another 4 million records, according to the German major.

That total does not include an "additional 6 terabytes of data already produced in native form and non-custodian based documents and information to be produced from central repositories and the like," it said. "If Defendants' alleged wrongdoing is as pervasive as Oracle claims, that surely is enough discovery to allow Oracle to present its case."

SAP bought TomorrowNow in 2005 after Oracle bought PeopleSoft, which in turn had acquired JD Edwards - hoping to exploit uncertainty among PeopleSoft and JD Edwards customers as to how Oracle would support them.

An Oracle spokeswoman said the company would have no additional comment.

Andy Kendzie, a spokesman for SAP, also called Oracle's damages claims speculative.

"What I would stress is that these are strictly allegations, they haven't been proved," he said. "Our intent is not to litigate this in the press. We have said all along this is going to be the court's decision, and we're going to abide by the courts."

A joint discovery conference for the case is scheduled for 1 July, according to the filing.

Oracle specialies in developing and marketing enterprise software products, particularly database management systems. The corporation has arguably become best-known due to association with its flagship Oracle database.

The company also builds tools for database development, middle-tier software, enterprise resource planning software (ERP), customer relationship management software (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) software.

For the last few years, Oracle has spent billions on acquisitions over the last few years to challenge SAP's leadership in ERP and CRM. It is the second largest software company in the world after Microsoft with annual revenues of $18 billion last year.

SAP is the world's largest business software company and the third-largest independent software provider in terms of revenues. It focuses on six industry sectors: process industries, discrete industries, consumer industries, service industries, financial services, and public services. It reported 2007 revenues of €10.25 billion ($16 billion).

Source: www.domain-b.com

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