Oracle to Put Moniforce Into Its Web App Mix

Oracle opened up its pocketbook again today, this time to snap up Dutch software firm Moniforce for an undisclosed price.

Moniforce's webStress and webProbe software lets companies monitor and evaluate the performance and availability of their Web applications by tracking a company's total network traffic.

Oracle officials said Moniforce's applications will help round out its Enterprise Manager application performance management suite, giving users the ability to detect and resolve end-user experience and application logic issues.

Moniforce's UXinsight software, developed by its UXTechnology subsidiary, detects errors in application logic and provides diagnostics and alerts for custom applications built on multiple software platforms.

"The transaction underscores Oracle's strategy of lowering total cost of ownership and delivering higher quality of service for customers running packaged or custom applications in Oracle or non- Oracle environments," Chuck Rozwat, Oracle's executive vice president of product development, said in a prepared release.
In a June research report, Forrester Research analyst Jean-Pierre Garbani wrote that Moniforce's webProbe software "forms a key element in managing service levels and supporting mission-critical Web applications. Although Moniforce is a European vendor, it offers a world-class suite of Web application management solutions."

In the past four years, Oracle has acquired more than 45 companies. During last month's OpenWorld conference, Oracle executives repeated the company's commitment to enter new markets such as virtualization and make strategic acquisitions to round out its enterprise software portfolio.

In the application performance management sector, Oracle competes against the likes of HP, which picked up Mercury Interactive for $4.5 billion last year, IBM, Corvil and Quest Software.

Oracle shares dipped 8 cents a share, or less than 1 percent, to $21.14 a share in Thursday afternoon trading after the deal was announced.

Author: Larry Barrett @ www.internetnews.com

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City of Las Vegas implements Oracle BPEL Process Manager

The City of Las Vegas has implemented Oracle BPEL Process Manager, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, to integrate various applications and business processes, as well as to provide a seamless user experience to city employees.

The city worked with Innowave, a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, on the implementation. The City of Las Vegas first used Oracle business process execution language (BPEL) Process Manager to streamline business processes within its water pollution control facility. The facility recently implemented Oracle Utilities Work and Asset Management to enhance efficiencies in maintaining public assets and managing the respective city workforce.

The city used Oracle BPEL Process Manager to integrate the utilities solution with the Oracle E-Business Suite's financial, human resources, payroll and purchasing applications, delivering a comprehensive view of the facility's numerous infrastructure assets and enabling more strategic management decisions.

Fauerbach, enterprise project manager for City of Las Vegas, said: "We have been looking for ways to become more efficient, increase employee proficiency and make improvements to the physical plant as we strive to economize wastewater management. Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle Utilities Work and Asset Management provided us the tools to do exactly that."

Source: www.cbronline.com

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Oracle clarifies VMware support...plans sort of

Confusion over Larry Ellison's comments at OpenWorld leads to clarifications from Oracle and VMware. Oracle Corp. is attempting to clarify its support plan for non-Oracle virtual servers to dispel confusion caused by conflicting statements from executives during its OpenWorld user conference in San Francisco last month.

After the Oracle VM virtual server was unveiled during the conference, CEO Larry Ellison said that the company would "essentially" continue providing support for Oracle software running on rival VMware Inc.'s virtual machines.

Ellison appeared to contradict earlier comments by Ed Screven, chief corporate development architect at Oracle, who said that the vendor would not offer support for such systems.

In an e-mailed response to Computerworld, Oracle contended that there is "no change" in its support policy for customers running Oracle applications on VMware. The statement asserted that such users have never been guaranteed full support.

"Oracle has not certified any Oracle software on VMware virtualized environments," the company said. Oracle said it will fix problems in non-Oracle virtualized environments only if they are unrelated to the virtualization platform.

VMware contended last week that its customers running Oracle software needn't worry about the database vendor's support policy. "Oracle has been responsive [to] and supportive of customers who are running Oracle products in VMware environments," said Parag Patel, vice-president for alliances at VMware, in an e-mail to Computerworld last week.

"We haven't seen many referrals from Oracle (even though Oracle's official policy mentions sending referrals to VMware), which seems to indicate that Oracle is engaging with our mutual customers," Patel wrote.

Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc., noted that Oracle tends to work with its customers despite such support policies.

"Like Microsoft, Oracle doesn't especially like to play in other children's sandboxes, but in practice, it does what it has to for important customers -- even if it does so reluctantly," he said. "This isn't exactly nice behavior. But it's hard to argue that it's hurt them to any significant degree."

Source: www.itbusiness.ca

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