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(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
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
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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