BMW ORACLE Win In Marseille

BMW ORACLE Racing came, saw and conquered on Marseille's Rade Sud, winning the City of Marseille Trophy Regatta, the second event of the 2008 Audi MedCup Circuit.
I came, I saw, I conquered – then I left. USA-17, the American boat of BMW ORACLE Racing owned by Larry ELLISON and skippered by three times America’s Cup winner Russell COUTTS (NZL), the current MedCup Circuit champion skipper, won on her first and only outing planned for the 2008 series. The brand new all white TP52 missed the opening regatta of the season three weeks ago in Alicante and will take no further part in the six-regatta international Audi MedCup Circuit as the BMW ORACLE race crew focus on their main goal, winning the 33rd America’s Cup.

The City of Marseille Trophy Regatta came to a premature end on Saturday afternoon with the famous Mistral wind still blowing strong. At more than 28 knots on the Rade Sud race area, racing was abandoned without anyone even leaving the Vieux Port of Marseille, and USA-17, the overnight leaders, ended their one and only regatta Audi MedCup Circuit with a win. Just behind them was the Swedish boat Artemis with BMW ORACLE Racing team-mates on the identical Reichel/Pugh-designed hull. Artemis was six points adrift of the lead after eight races including one 40-miles coastal race.

The partnership between the two boats USA-17 and Artemis– the new TP52 of the Torbjörn TORNQVIST’s (SWE) 2007 champions – has been a key part of the American boat’s success in Marseille, which was helmed through parts of most races by ELLISON himself. Although the new USA-17 was only launched on 21 May, the settings and tuning notes gathered from Artemis in Alicante earlier last month were be applied directly to USA-17 to get her up to speed quickly.

After a modest sixth and fifth on the opening day, USA-17 won three races to complement their two third places, a second and a fourth places, always looking quick and at home over a regatta where the wind speed never fell below 15 knots.

“Marseille has been an awesome race track, really interesting with plenty of breeze, but the good thing as well is that it has always been changing with the shifts, so there has never been a ‘must-have’ side of the course. It has been about playing the shifts all the time,” said USA-17’s helm and co-strategist James SPITHILL (AUS).
“We exceeded our expectations by a lot at this event. We are more than happy to win. I think obviously Reichel/Pugh designers did a good job giving us a nice design especially in the conditions we had. We had the boat moving along nicely. The team combined well, quickly, and we can still improve a lot more, but we did enough to get there in the end,” said COUTTS.

“I would love to do more on this Circuit. It is a great circuit. It is not that we don’t want to do more, but we have to focus on the multihull for the America’s Cup. That’s obvious, but there will be a time when we come back into this class and enjoy it again.”

“And it is great for Artemis, our team effectively finished first and second, which is good. We really have exceeded my expectations. I was seriously saying to the guys beforehand that a mid-fleet place would be a result for us, given we practiced for just one day!!!

“We were fortunate that nothing broke because it is a brand new boat, and that the sails fitted. We were able to sail the boat reasonably effectively, those three factors really combined to make our success.”

Jose CUSI’s (ESP) Bribón, steered by Dean BARKER (NZL) with double Olympic medallist Ross MACDONALD (CAN) on tactics, arrived in Marseille in second place in the Audi MedCup Circuit standings. Bribón leaves France’s third city with a seven point lead over Artemis, the boat that moved furthest up the rankings.

Over a challenging regatta where three boats were eliminated from racing due to damage inflicted from collisions at the first mark of Thursday’s coastal race from which two boats were subsequently disqualified, Bribón finished third overall in the regatta. In spite of many requests for redress and a reduced fleet size at the end of the week Bribón’s consistency continues to prevail.

“We are more satisfied with the result than the performance in reality,” said Ignacio TRIAY, Bribón’s project manager and trimmer, “We had been suffering a lot with the conditions of wind and waves because we could feel that the boat was not going as well as the boats leading here in France. We have been working hard all week trying to find the right settings for the rig and also improving the crew work on board. We were not good enough to win the event here and we feel that maybe we could do better with these conditions, but on the other hand we are really satisfied because the boats that were going well in light airs in Alicante, were not so good here and vice versa. The boats with problems in light airs have done well here in Marseille. So we have been consistent – never brilliant, but always there, which is why we are leading the Audi MedCup circuit.”

Marseille has offered fabulous race conditions to the 14 TP52’s that participated. Strong winds, bright sunshine and an unique setting are but a few of the components of the regatta’s success. The race course area is peppered with an array of challenging shifts and is always able to produce great tactical racing, while the coastal race to the south east to picturesque Cassis, was set against one of the most stunning, rocky backdrops in the Mediterranean. Marseille is a great venue for the Audi MedCup and it is the intention of the Audi MedCup organisers to return here next year.

Source: Audi MedCup - http://2008.medcup.org

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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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