Ex-Oracle director moves to consultancy’s board

A FORMER senior director of the Oracle Corporation is to strengthen the board of leading procurement consultancy Source42.

Charles Courquin joins Source42 as non-executive director, a major boost for the business whose directors also include former Cardiff International Airport managing director Jon Horne and entrepreneur Sir Roger Jones OBE, who is a former chairman of the Welsh Development Agency.

Steve Watts, chief executive of Cwmbran-based Source42, said: “We are extremely pleased that Charles has joined our board of directors. We are structuring the company for serious growth, bringing in the high-calibre management and business skills to support that aim.”

Mr Watts added; “Charles was instrumental in founding our strategic partnership with Oracle and will play a major role in maximising that global relationship. He is a key figure in our plans.”

Mr Courquin gained an honours degree at the University of Oxford in biochemistry as well as being president of the rowing club at St Catherine’s College before joining the Price Waterhouse IT consulting practice.

After a number of years at PwC he moved to Oracle Corporation, where he held a number of key roles, including senior director for general business.

He said: “I believe that every business can benefit from the services provided by Source42 – the impact the organisation can make on the bottom line is one of the best-kept secrets in the Industry.

“Our opportunities are not confined to the UK or Europe; we have the ability to build a brand synonymous with efficiency and value.”

The company has recently announced the creation of more than 30 high-quality consulting jobs.

It has established its procurement services in the corporate market with clients including bmi, Arriva and HBoS, while also achieving benefits for smaller leading firms like Harding Evans of Newport.

Sir Roger said: “Source42 has the capability to deliver double digit percentage savings to the bottom line, making its propositions to reduce supply chain costs extremely compelling in the current downturn. Source42 has excellent potential as a business, its services are very much in demand in both public and private sectors. Charles is a major asset in achieving our global objectives.”

Author: Sion Barry @ www.walesonline.co.uk

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What recession? Oracle support provider quadrupled its customer base

In a year when a lot of other companies floundered, Rimini Street, Inc. -- a services provider for PeopleSoft and other Oracle-owned software products -- picked up 150 new business customers in 2008, four times its 2007 number.

How did Rimini Street pull off that feat? A "significant number" of new customers came to Rimini from Tomorrow Now (TN), a SAP business unit which disbanded last year in the wake of an acrimonious lawsuit with Oracle. But other customers, fed up with Oracle's high software maintenance and upgrade fees, migrated to Rimini directly from Oracle, said David Rowe, Rimini's senior VP of global partnerships and alliances, in an interview this week with Betanews.

Founded in 2005 by ex-TN executive Seth Ravin, Rimini has seen its sales bookings mushroom from $1 million in 2006, to $9 million in 2007, to $86 million in 2008, according to Rowe. Sales bookings for multi-year contracts are counted according to when they get signed.

The year 2009 could shape up into a lucrative one for Rimini Street, too. The third-party services provider is now launching a SAP practice, adding to its existing practices for disaffected users of Oracle's PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel CRM, ERP, and sales automation software. Sales bookings for the new SAP practice aren't even included in the company's 2008 numbers, Rowe noted.

SAP originally purchased TN back in 2005, using the business unit to provide customer support for both its own software and products garnered by major rival Oracle Corp. through a string of buyouts.

But in mid-2007, SAP admitted that members of its TN unit had improperly downloaded materials from Oracle's Web site by posing as Oracle customers. By November of that year, SAP announced that several of TN's top executives had resigned, including Andrew Nelson, its CEO and founder.

After trying fruitlessly to sell TN, SAP pulled the plug on the unit in October of 2008, giving TN's remaining customers just two or three months to "find a new home" for software maintenance and support, according to Rowe.

Rimini Street inked some TN customers even in 2007, Rowe said, during an earlier interview. But a lot more came on board in 2008, particularly at the end of the year, the senior vice president told Betanews this week.

In any case, the market is ripe right now for third-party maintenance and support, according to Rowe. With budgets strained from the economic crisis, fewer customers than ever are willing to fork over Oracle's software maintenance fees, which amount to 22% of the cost of software licenses, he said.

Users also tend to be less interested in costly upgrades by Oracle to solutions aimed at providing better integration with Oracle's own brand of applications and middleware.

Many businesses want to maintain their existing investments in Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel software and customizations for the next five or even ten years, contended Rowe. "At that point, they might look at SaaS solutions like Workday or NetSuite, once these things are widely deployed and more mature," he conceded.

SAP, too, is now charging maintenance fees of 22%, up from its previous level of 17%, according to Rowe. "But their timing isn't good. It's terrible," he added.

As for its own new SAP practice, Rimini Street isn't targeting customers of the German-based software vendor that are based overseas.

The third-party provider is taking its time, starting out right now with a small group of reference customers. "Customers are giving you their mission-critical systems. You need to make sure you get it right," Betanews was told.

But Rowe claimed that Rimini Street already has a growing waiting list of potential SAP customers. "We have a methodology for building third-party support, and we connect that methodology with specific applications. We're building a support program for SAP now, for full roll-out later this year," he elaborated.

Author: Jacqueline Emigh @ www.betanews.com

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Kapital Bank implements Oracle Flexcube

Optimizes business performance across its network of 88 branches. Azerbaijan-based Kapital Bank has implemented Oracle Flexcube universal banking system to help expand the size and depth of its banking operations across its network of 88 branches.

Oracle Flexcube's process-centric approach has enabled the bank to optimize business performance by using best practices with an ability to define, implement and monitor the effectiveness of its processes. The system has helped provide the bank with an application platform that enables it to conduct its operations in both domestic and international markets.

Oracle Flexcube has also helped the bank enhance its risk management practices through audit trails and limit tracking across customer segments.

Rauf Razayev, chairman of Kapital Bank, said: "We wanted to roll out Oracle Flexcube to help expand the size of our banking operations and completed the project in under 11 months. This solution is a complete banking product suite covering all areas of banking needs and has enabled us to adopt international standards and meet regulatory requirements. Our association with Oracle Financial Services Software, over the past 18 months, has helped us to translate opportunities in the market into tangible results.

Mustafa Moonim, vice president of Europe and Middle East sales at Oracle Financial Services Software, said: "Kapital Bank was our first deployment in the country and we had a tremendous success in the joint engagement with the bank. We are very pleased with the outcome for Kapital Bank. Banks in the region have shown great acceptance of Oracle Flexcube and the success at Kapital Bank has helped provide us with the foundation for this achievement."

Source: http://enterpriseapplications.cbronline.com

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