Google lures Oracle vet for Lenoir center

(News & Observer, The (Raleigh, NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jul. 7--Google has hired a veteran of Oracle to manage the $600 million data center the company is building in Lenoir and start hiring for the first round of positions.

The facility is one of five the California company has announced in the past year, including one in South Carolina.

Tom Jacobik, 41, will oversee functions ranging from construction and hiring to hardware installation and day-to-day support once operations get under way in December.

"Tom has created a name for himself as an IT problem solver and leader," Andy Johnson, Google's East Coast regional manager, said in a statement. "This appointment is crucial to the success of the data center."

Google, which operates the world's largest Internet search engine, needs the server farm to store copious amounts of data such as pictures, video and other media moving on the Internet. For Internet users, the extra capacity will ensure all searches run smoothly and dependably, according to the company.

Jacobik, who started this week, was reached by phone in Atlanta, where he is training for the new job.

"The opportunity to build out a data center for a company like Google was way too much to turn down," Jacobik said. He plans to move his wife and seven children to Lenoir this year from Austin, Texas, where he was technical operations director for Oracle.

Jacobik has also worked for Cisco Systems and was chief information officer on special missions for the U.S. Air Force, where he managed the maintenance of communication systems and oversaw more than 300 people.

The new Google executive will begin posting positions for the Lenoir center in August and start hiring in December for 75 to 125 workers. Google promised to create 210 jobs in Lenoir within four years in exchange for up to $260 million in state and local tax breaks over 30 years.

Positions will include systems administrators, hardware managers, electricians and ventilation and air-conditioning experts -- these are needed to keep the facility cool amid hundreds, possibly thousands of hot-running servers. The new jobs will pay an average of $48,300 annually, nearly twice the Caldwell County average, according to state employment data.

"If growth continues, we will have capacity at our sites for further expansion," said Google spokesman Matt Dunne. That would be beyond the 210 workers.

While the first of two construction phases isn't scheduled to finish until mid-2008, the company will be able to erect work stations starting in December. "We're taking a good look at local talent because it's cost-effective in terms of not having to move people around and because it's the right thing to do," Jacobik said.

He could not say how many of the new workers will come from Lenoir or surrounding Caldwell County, which is about 200 miles west of Raleigh.

Sue Land, who manages the Employment Security Commission office in Lenoir, said Google is on schedule for building and hiring. She said she met Jacobik at a chamber event in Lenoir and discussed plans to employ as many local workers as possible.

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Understanding the ROI of ERP

If a companies wants to succeed with ERP, they must know how to properly implement it. However, this is only one of the things that a company must deal with if they want to succeed with this system. They must also have the resources to properly train their staff on using it.

The company as a whole must be determined to make use of this system. If this is not done, there is little point in setting up the system to begin with. If you wish to set up ERP, you must look at your return on investment. If you cannot see a reasonable return on your investment by using it, it may not be a good idea to spend money and time implementing it.

There are three things companies will want to pay attention to when they are deciding whether or not ERP will be a good return on their investment. When these three things are taken into consideration, the company will ensure that the system that is picked will allow them to achieve their goals. To do this, a company will first need to pay attention to the methods involved with implementing the system. Failing to do this will put them at a severe disadvantage. The biggest mistake made by most businesses is choosing can ERP system by placing an emphasis on the functionality and architecture. This is like purchasing a used car based on how it looks on the outside. When this is done, the results are always the same. The system is installed, the payment is made, but no one is happy with the results. The goals that the company originally set out to achieve by implementing the system are not realized. A tremendous amount of capital and time has been wasted. Because of the company wasted time and money on a system that didn't work, they now find themselves in a situation where they are losing the edge against their competitors. What is wrong with this situation? The answer is implementation. The vendor did not present a proven method of successfully implementing the system in a way that would allow it to be useful to the company.

It is important to realize that implementation and installation are two different concepts. Getting the two confused can lead to a number of complications. Installation can be defined as the process of moving from one software to another while keeping problems at a minimum. Implementation can be defined as a method that a company uses to achieve their goals by transforming the way they carry out operations. With implementation, the software is the tool that is used to achieve this objective. The process of implementation does not start while a company is looking for ERP vendors. It begins when the company present a goal that the ERP system will be used to achieve. The goal is the key. If there is no clear goal, selecting a vendor is a waste of time.

Once a company has come up with a clear goal they wish to achieve, the next step is to find a vendor that can help them achieve it. The only time a vendor should be chosen is if the company does not already have the necessary technology to achieve their objectives. Once a company begins the process of choosing an ERP vendor, they must look at more than the functionality of the system.

They must also look at the ability of the vendor to help them change their business processes in a way that can allow them to reach their goals. How can the company evaluate the vendor? There are three methods available.

The first method is to look at their sales efforts. Pay attention to how they want to assist their customers. The second strategy is to request the references of the vendor. If they are a quality company, they should have a solid reputation. The third thing companies will want to do is analyze the implementation methods of the vendor. Are they consistent in helping you achieve your goals? If they are, you will want to consider them. If they aren't, you will want to find another vendor. You must find a vendor that is able to help you based on work they've done with clients in the past.

Source: www.exforsys.com

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Oracle rolls out first fusion-born BI offering for SMBs

Oracle has announced a new packaging of its business intelligence technology that is aimed at small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) previously priced-out by its enterprise-class platform.
The Oracle BI Standard Edition One (SE One) builds on the same Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition (EE) product the company introduced a year and a half ago that incorporates technology acquired from Siebel Analytics and home-grown Oracle reporting tools.

SE One includes Oracle's core OLAP analysis, ad hoc and production reporting, and role-based interactive dashboard tools as well as a Standard Edition One of the Oracle's 10g database, the Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) ETL tool for building data warehouses and marts, and Oracle's core BI Server infrastructure that provides a unified metadata layer across all the end-user products.

Dave Planeaux, director of BI product marketing at Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle, said the SE was specially tailored for SMBs and large workgroups within organisations in terms of packaging, functionality and price.

"We have basically included everything you need - reporting, analysis, dashboarding and building data marts to get a BI and data warehousing system running. And at a price-point that is approachable for SMBs."

Pricing for the SE One software starts at $1000 per user - with a minimum of five users and maximum of 50 users.That is a much lower entry cost than the EE which sells for $15 000 users (or $225 000 per processor) with a minimum of 50 users.

Planeaux also said that SE One comes with a greatly simplified installation process. "We are providing a single install for all the suite's components that run on a single server."

Oracle had been selling another BI product at this same market for several years - Oracle BI Standard Edition which is based on Oracle's Discoverer product packaged up with the Oracle Application Server Enterprise Edition.

But Planeaux said the new SE was the first Fusion-led BI foray into the SMB space. Fusion is the name for Oracle's modern SOA-based architecture for tying together all its various applications and tools.

Functionally the SE One includes more or less the same capabilities as EE but without some bells and whistles like proactive alerting and disconnected analysis.

Also in SE One's BI Server, the number of data sources that customers can connect to is also limited to an Oracle database plus one other relational source. Access to flat file sources is however unlimited.

While Planeaux believes that connecting to a multitude of data sources will not a pressing issue for most SMBs, he does point out that SE One customers can use the included OWB tool to integrate data from other sources into an Oracle database.

Because SE One is built on more or less the same technology as the EE, Planeaux said that customers can easily upgrade when user-scale demands it.

"Because SE One shares the same core technology as EE, companies that outgrow it can just acquire a license with no re-implementation needed. They can continue to use the same reports, multidimensional analysis, and dashboards they already have."



Our view

With Oracle BI Suite SE One it seems as if Oracle has simply lowered the price-bar for its EE software. Sure cost has always been a major barrier for the adoption of BI and data warehousing technologies among budget-constrained SMBs. But there are other factors that need to be taken into consideration, not least packaging and ease of use.

Oracle said it has included all the 'right' components needed for BI - which is a bit of a generalisation. More importantly perhaps is the pre-configuration of these components to work with one another. Oracle also claims to have 'dramatically simplified' installation, which is important for companies that are constrained in terms of in-house IT skills. But the area where Oracle needs to be a lot more convincing is in ease of use.

Oracle BI Suite EE is not the most complex suite on the market. But it certainly carries a learning curve. Customers should press Oracle on what they intend to do in terms of supporting customers with tutorials, training and education. If not, then they risk getting their hands on a complex set of BI technologies, albeit at a bargain price, that they struggle to use.

Finally Oracle could do with a serious re-think of its BI branding. 'BI Suite' appended with 'SE, EE, and/or One' make for a confusing mix. Surely there is a more simplified branding to go with the various packaging.

Source: Computergram

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