Millipore swaps out SAP for Oracle

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

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

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

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

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

Meeting business goals

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

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

Some training required

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

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

A supportive message

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

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

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

Author: Mark Brunelli

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Oracle 11g Ships, But New Features Cost Extra

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author: Jeffrey Schwartz

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Top-Kniga selects Oracle Retail applications

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

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

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

Source: M2 Best Books

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