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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