Where next for Oracle's Ellison?

Oracle Corp Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison has spent $33.5 billion buying the software maker's way into markets for telecommunications, retail and financial-services programs.

To keep his promise to double sales to $50 billion by 2012, Ellison needs to find a target in another big-spending industry, says Sarah Friar, an analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co, and the likely choice is healthcare.

"If you're chasing dollars, there's probably nothing bigger than healthcare," said Friar in San Francisco. "The software that healthcare companies use is archaic. That's a big opportunity for Oracle."

It's also not a new idea for Ellison. The 63-year-old architect of 40 takeovers since 2005 had considered the sector five years ago. Oracle's board reviewed a list of potential acquisitions that included Cerner Corp.

The healthcare software maker with programs for handling electronic medical records, accounting and billing now has a market value of $3.71 billion. While Oracle hasn't made a public bid for Cerner, it has already bought the two largest companies on the target list - PeopleSoft Inc and BEA Systems Inc. The board's April 2003 presentation was released during the federal antitrust lawsuit that tried to stop Oracle from buying PeopleSoft.

Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Redwood City, California-based Oracle, didn't respond to requests for comment.

In the United States alone, technology spending by heathcare companies will jump 16 percent to $50.2 billion by 2011, according to researcher Gartner Inc in Stamford, Connecticut. Hospitals and physicians' offices will account for almost two-thirds, based largely on a switch to electronic record keeping from paper. Insurance companies will make up the rest.

Analysts haven't published any recent reports about Oracle's plans for heathcare software. Friar first advised buying Oracle shares in April 2007, when the stock was 23 percent lower than today. She also recommended shares of Microsoft Corp ahead of the software maker's first and second-quarter earnings, correctly predicting increases in the stock.

"If Oracle made a large push into the healthcare space, it would be viewed very positively," said Daniel Niles, CEO of Neuberger Berman Technology Management in San Francisco. Neuberger Berman LLC, the parent company, added 7.96 million Oracle shares in the first quarter, bringing its holding to 36.3 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. "Health care is a growth industry, especially as more technology is used to tie medical data together."

Oracle was unchanged at $22.91 on Wednesday in NASDAQ Stock Market trading. The shares have advanced 1.5 percent this year.

Source: China Daily/Agencies

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DS Group Deploys Oracle Content Management

To secure and protect information assets, Dharampal Satyapal Group (DS Group), manufacturer of pan masala (Rajnigandha), adopted Oracle Content Management.

The organization opted for Oracle over vendors like Microsoft, Adobe, and EMC because of its advanced capabilities such as interoperability with different applications and also its ability to seal and protect any type of electronic document.

DS comprises of more than 2000 employees, 3 manufacturing units in Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, North East; 16 depots; 35 consignee sales agents and 1800 authorized dealers. This involves exchange of confidential data between DS and external vendors. The Oracle Information Rights Management (IRM), a component of Oracle Content Management, will help the company to secure, track, and protect sensitive and classified documents containing intellectual property, business proposals and proprietary communications between its employee base and extended business network.


Santosh Singh, GM (IT) of DS Group said, "With the group on an expansion mode, our directors and managers increasingly transmit sensitive documents among branches and departments. That's why we require a software solution which is user-friendly, secure and capable of helping us to track sensitive information irrespective of where it is stored and how it is used."

The solution will allow authorized users to add and securely exchange information via Internet. It will also allow prevent unauthorized saving and printing of documents. Oracle IRM software will manage and secure data both on the server side and at the end user device point. Every copy of the information - be it on the desktop, laptop, mobile wireless device, inside or outside the firewall - will be encrypted.

According to Harshal Pendse, director (Technology Initiatives) of Oracle India, the growing importance of the subsidiaries within the group, it was essential for DS to maintain a robust and secure data management system.

Oracle IRM protects all types of documents - from MS Office files to images to PDF files. It includes features such as expiry, print, and copy protection. These help to assure nobody other than the users access and work on these documents. It also allows tracing of any unauthorized user who tries to access these documents.

Source: www.cxotoday.com

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DMTF Announces CA, Oracle and VMware As New Board Members

The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF(R)), the industry organization leading the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management standards and initiatives, today announced the addition of three new companies to its board of directors. Oracle, VMware and CA step up to the board level - joining industry heavyweights AMD, Broadcom, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi, Ltd., IBM, Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Novell, Sun Microsystems, and Symantec Corporation - to help drive the overall direction, strategy and activity of DMTF.

These three new board members join DMTF to collaborate with other industry-leading companies on systems management-specification development, validation, promotion and industry-wide adoption. Together the board of directors will collaborate to set cross-industry priorities, promote interoperability for enterprise and Internet environments, foster alliance partnerships, and lead the organization's committee work.

"The DMTF specifications and its key principles of interoperability and portability are an important enabler to the evolution of the virtualization market," said Winston Bumpus, director of standards architecture for VMware. "As a new DMTF board member, VMware looks forward to bringing an important perspective to the future direction of the organization."

"The standards being developed by DMTF will help organizations minimize operational costs and optimize their systems investments by unifying and streamlining management of their IT resources," said James Saliba, vice president, intellectual property at CA. "With DMTF board membership, CA can now more effectively influence these standards to address the real-world needs of the heterogeneous enterprise."
"Open management standards are the key to achieving integrated management across the levels of the solution stack," said Tony DiCenzo, Director Standards, Systems and Applications Management Products Group, Oracle. "Oracle is pleased to join the DMTF board of directors to support the development and promotion of industry standards that support the enterprise management ecosystem."

James Saliba from CA, Tony DiCenzo from Oracle, and Winston Bumpus from VMware join DMTF as board representatives. Other individuals representing the board member companies include:

-- Valerie Kane, AMD

-- Uri Elzur, Broadcom

-- Jon Hass, Dell

-- Wayne Adams, EMC

-- Hiro Kishimoto, Fujitsu

-- Jishnu Mukerji, HP

-- Nobutoshi Sagawa, Hitachi, Ltd.

-- Mike Baskey, IBM

-- Kevin Cline, Intel Corporation

-- Josh Cohen, Microsoft Corporation

-- Larry Russon, Novell

-- Mark Carlson, Sun Microsystems

-- Gary Phillips, Symantec Corporation

"We are thrilled to welcome Oracle, CA and VMware to the DMTF board of directors. As new board members, they will bring additional energy and leadership into the organization," said Mike Baskey, DMTF chairman. "The past achievements and current goals of these companies make them ideal board members for DMTF to help increase our innovation and maintain our leadership in collaborative development of global standards for IT management."

About DMTF

With more than 4,000 active participants representing 44 countries and nearly 200 organizations, the Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) is the industry organization leading the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management standards and initiatives. DMTF management technologies are critical to enabling management interoperability among multi-vendor systems, tools, and solutions within the enterprise. By deploying solutions that support DMTF standards, IT managers can choose to deploy a mix of systems and solutions that best meet their users' needs, while reducing management complexity and total cost of ownership. Information about the DMTF technologies and activities can be found at www.dmtf.org.

Source: Business Wire

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