New Oracle Enterprise Manager Cuts Down On Apps Management Cost

Delivering on its commitment to help customers realize greater value from their application and infrastructure software investments and drive down I.T. costs, Oracle today announced availability of Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Release 5 (10gR5).

Oracle Enterprise Manager provides a comprehensive set of solutions to simplify the management of the full Oracle software stack. In addition to management enhancements across the stack, this release adds support for virtual environments.

Oracle's unique top-down approach to application management enables customers to reduce IT complexity and to increase efficiencies resulting in better performance and lower management costs for their enterprise applications.

"Customers are battling economic conditions that require a rigorous focus on delivering business operations and IT efficiencies at a lower cost,” said Richard Sarwal, Oracle senior vice president Product Development. “Oracle Enterprise Manager supports both endeavors through automated management of business workflows, processes and services, as well as supporting the full Oracle software stack through its unique top-down application management approach.”

Enhanced Applications Management With Support For The Latest Siebel CRM Release And More

The new application management enhancements in Oracle Enterprise Manager 10gR5 further support Oracle's Applications Unlimited strategy and help to provide a superior ownership experience to customers.

New certification with Siebel CRM 8.1.1 provides unique monitoring and diagnostics capabilities for Siebel business workflows, enabling higher availability and better throughput for business processes.

New Management Pack for Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management helps significantly reduce administration costs.

Additionally, the recently introduced Oracle Real User Experience Insight Accelerators for Oracle's Siebel CRM and Oracle E-Business Suite, simplify the process of deploying real user monitoring for these applications.

Increased Efficiency In Database Management Through Automation And Essential Tools

With this release, Oracle Enterprise Manager rounds out Oracle Database 11g management capabilities with tools that can enhance database administrator (DBA) productivity and reduce costs through increased automation, higher availability and improved compliance. Key new capabilities include:

o Real-time SQL monitoring and support for new Oracle Database 11g advisors;

o Deployment automation for highly available grid computing infrastructure;

o Enhanced support for Oracle Database Vault; and

o Automated database testing workflow that integrates database software provisioning, data masking, database workload capture and workload replay tasks.

Expanded Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware And Oracle VM

Featuring tighter integration with Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Beehive, Oracle Service Bus and Oracle Coherence, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10gR5 delivers the most comprehensive and complete management solution for applications built on Oracle Fusion Middleware. See related release dated today.

Further extending its top-down reach to virtualized environments, Oracle Enterprise Manager's new Oracle VM Management Pack provides customers a complete management solution for Oracle VM. See related release dated today.

For more information, visit www.oracle.com.

Read more ...

MSI-ECS Hosts Oracle Database Audit And Database Vault Seminar

To assist businesses seeking to further mitigate security risks, satisfy compliance regulations, and protect their enterprise databases, MSI-ECS organized a seminar to select banks and insurance companies featuring Oracle Database Audit and Database Vault.

Oracle Audit Vault offered organizations a centralized auditing and activity monitoring solution for their Oracle and third party databases. Audit data is consolidated automatically into a secure, centralized repository built using Oracle's proven data warehousing software, and analyzed in real-time against enterprise-defined policies. Any unauthorized activities can be detected immediately using Oracle Audit Vault's alerts dashboard. Also, Oracle Audit Vault can be used to monitor privileged user activities as well as privileged user controls enforced by Oracle Database Vault, the industry's only native solution for real-time enforcement of preventive database controls. By using Oracle Audit Vault, Oracle Database Vault customers are further assured of the integrity of their preventive controls.

On the other hand, Oracle Database Vault is the industry's leading database security solution for addressing regulatory compliance and concerns over the insider threat. Oracle Database Vault helps address access control requirements associated with regulations such as PCI and Sarbanes-Oxley. Oracle Database Vault is available for Oracle Database 9i Release 2, Oracle Database 10g Release 2 and Oracle Database 11g Release 1. Oracle Database Vault has been validated with Oracle PeopleSoft Applications. Validation with additional applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite and Siebel, is currently underway. Using Oracle Database Vault, highly privileged database users can be prevented from accessing application data. In addition, access to applications, databases and data can be tightly controlled based on such variables as time of day, IP address or subnet. In summary, Oracle Database Vault provides the flexible, transparent and highly adaptable security controls required in today's global economy. For more information, about Oracle's business solutions, visit www.oracle.com.

Read more ...

Oracle expected to post gains despite slump

Oracle Corp. is expected to post small gains in profit and sales when it reports fiscal third-quarter results next week, despite concern about the company's ability to drum up business amid a generally bleak winter for the high-tech industry.

Analysts on average estimate Oracle will post earnings excluding special items of 32 cents a share for the three-month period ended in February, on $5.47 billion in revenue, according to FactSet Research. That compares to earnings excluding special items of 30 cents a share and $5.35 billion in revenue in the same period year earlier.

In December, Oracle itself forecast earnings for the quarter between 31 and 33 cents a share and revenue growth between 1% and 4%, while attributing the results to a strengthening U.S. dollar likely to impact foreign sales.

Wall Street is bracing for the worst. Shares of Oracle have slumped more than 13% in the last month. The stock closed trading Thursday up nearly 2% at $15.63.

In recent weeks, a number of analysts have expressed concern that Oracle's sales of new software licenses - a key metric that reflects the company's ability to draw in new customers - have been undercut by the downturn.

Earlier this month, one analyst went so far as to predict the worst quarter for Oracle since the early 1990s. "The tone of the commentary from our industry sources regarding new license revenue is the worst we have ever heard," wrote Patrick Walravens of JMP Securities in a report, in which he scaled back his earnings estimates for the company.

Still, a number of analysts also point to the company's dependable stream of maintenance revenue from existing customers, while noting that it may well emerge from the downturn in a stronger position.

"The recent sell-off" in Oracle shares is "overdone," Barclays Capital analyst Israel Hernandez wrote in a note to clients earlier this week. While Hernandez said his research points to a "weak" third quarter for the company, particularly for its sales of applications software, it wasn't bad enough "to break [the] stock."

"Oracle remains well-positioned to consolidate share through [the] downturn," Hernandez wrote, though he lowered his third-quarter estimate for earnings excluding special items to 32 cents a share from 33, and revenue to $5.3 billion from $5.5 billion.
Oracle, which originated as a purveyor of database software, has expanded in recent years through a series of acquisitions to also become a powerhouse in business applications software.
That's drawn it into more direct competition with German rival SAP AG.

In January, SAP reported a 13% gain in fourth-quarter profit for the period ended in December, though it also announced it would be cutting over 3,000 jobs this year in an effort to lower costs. See related story on SAP's quarterly earnings.
Oracle has continued to buy other companies during the economic downturn. Last month, it snapped up closely-held mValent Inc. in an effort to bolster its applications business.

Author: John Letzing @ www.marketwatch.com

Read more ...