Oracle's CEO tops pay scale

Revision of rankings places Ellison ahead of other leaders. Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, a longtime fixture on the list of the world's richest people, is now ensconced atop the Associated Press' rankings of the top-paid chief executives in the United States.

Never shy about flaunting his estimated $25 billion fortune, Ellison established himself as the best-paid CEO among major U.S. companies by persuading Oracle to award him a fiscal 2008 pay package valued at $84.6 million, according to the Associated Press' calculations.

The total compensation, disclosed late Wednesday in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, catapulted Ellison to the top of the Associated Press' annual analysis of CEO pay.

With a pay package valued at $83.1 million, Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain held that distinction in June when the Associated Press released its 2008 analysis of executive compensation at more than 400 large companies.

The details about Ellison's compensation weren't available at that time because Oracle operates on an unusual fiscal year ending in May. The anomaly lets Oracle wait until late summer to make the SEC-mandated disclosures about Ellison's pay.

The rankings cover disclosures made within the same calendar year, meaning Ellison could be surpassed if an SEC filing during the next four months reveals that another CEO received an even bigger pay package.

For now, there are only two changes in the list of the 10 best-paid executives. With Ellison taking No. 1, Occidental Petroleum Corp. CEO Ray Irani fell out of the top 10.

In another revision lower on the pay ladder, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch now occupies the 14th spot on the list, with a compensation package valued at $30.1 million. News Corp., which operates on a fiscal year ending in June, also disclosed Murdoch's awards this week.

The calculations of total pay include executives' salaries, bonuses, incentives, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year. The figure often differs from the numbers listed by companies.

Most of Ellison's fiscal 2008 compensation consisted of 7 million stock options designed to give him an incentive to increase Oracle's future market value. The options, valued at $71.2 million, vest during the next four years and expire in July 2017.

The analysis doesn't factor in windfalls the executives generate by exercising stock options awarded in previous years.

Ellison stood out in this category, too, raking in nearly $544 million by cashing in 36 million stock options during Oracle's last fiscal year.

Excluding those stock option gains, Ellison's latest pay package represented a 38 percent raise from fiscal 2007, when his compensation was valued at $61.2 million. That ranked Ellison as the second-best paid CEO, behind Yahoo's then-CEO, Terry Semel, who got a package valued at $71.7 million.

While Semel resigned as Yahoo's CEO 14 months ago under shareholder pressure, Ellison, 64, hasn't given any indication that he plans to end his 31-year reign at Oracle any time soon.

Author: Michael Liedtke @ www.chron.com

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Oracle to star in NAB's online plans

NATIONAL Australia Bank has given a crucial component of its legacy systems overhaul to Indian banking software developer i-flex, which may result in some of the bank's staff being left out of the early stages of the project.

NAB's new Star Bank project does not have physical branches and offers banking services through call centres and the internet.

It will be developed using i-flex banking software technology.

The Indian banking software company will be involved in designing the platform that will replace NAB's core banking systems and will plan the replacement process. I-flex will deliver a range of services, including support activities such as professional and application management, analytics and consulting, according to its local office.

Typically, i-flex uses both onshore and offshore resources to complete a project, but it is uncertain how this would break down for the NAB project.

Oracle staff were on-site at NAB last week sizing up the technology landscape, and the bank's employees have expressed concern over their future after comments from the management that they would not be involved in the first phase.

NAB spokeswoman Kerrina Lawrence said the development work would be split between its staff and Oracle, but the final make-up had not been decided.

At this stage there were no plans to host Star Bank offshore, she said.

"NAB has not decided against using its staff in the process. It is anticipated that NAB will use a mix of internal and external skills," Ms Lawrence said.
The bank moved a step closer to identifying that balance yesterday, as it combined two of its biggest technology teams, enterprise services technology and technology banking Australia, to improve the bank's capability to service the next-generation platform.

The plans are detailed in an internal memo obtained by The Australian.

"It recognises that we'll be rebalancing our investment between business as usual and NexGen and must therefore consolidate our capabilities to free up capacity to focus on the significant transition activity ahead," NAB chief information officer Michelle Tredenick writes.

The combined division has about 1300 staff, half of NAB's IT workforce, with leadership teams reporting to technology banking managing director Craig Bright. Former enterprise services technology head Stephen Phillips has been appointed as technology lead for Star Bank.

The restructure will be bedded down over the next two months, under the watch of an integration manager and Mr Bright, and Ms Tredenick said more structural changes could be rolled out to other business units.

"We'll continue to progressively evolve our model over time as we further progress our transformation agendas."

NAB has embarked on an offshoring program over the past couple of years. It started with back office and finance and credit card processing functions, but gathered pace this year with the IT outsourcing program.

The first wave of IT outsourcing affected jobs in several legacy banking system areas.

As well, some payments and enterprise resource planning functions were sent offshore to Indian outsourcers Satyam and Infosys.

NAB is in the final stages of reviewing outsourcing wave two, which could lead to up to 400 jobs in technology banking and the MLC wealth management business going offshore.

Planning is believed to have begun on outsourcing wave three.

Several sources have said any legacy replacement work that is not done by Oracle will be sent offshore to Infosys and Satyam.

Ms Tredenick told staff the offshore trend would continue in line with its technology transformation program, code-named NEOS.

She also said it would use offshore resources to do some of the work for the core banking project.

"NAB has always used hosting and still uses a combination of hosting, having some of our internal people host the platforms and develop the platforms, and working with external suppliers," Ms Tredenick said. "We've done that for the past 10 to 15 years and will continue to do that."

However, she also expected the next-generation project to create more local jobs as the scale and intensity of work increased over five years.

Technology banking general manager Craig Bright said recently that technology staff numbers could fall to less than 1000 over the next five years.

The figure was noted by several NAB employees during an exchange in an informal question and answer session at a technology team event.

Author: Mahesh Sharma @ www.australianit.news.com.au

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Oracle launches VM templates

Oracle has launched its VM templates to enable rapid deployment of enterprise software.

They offer a time-saving approach to deploying a fully configured software stack by providing pre-installed and pre-configured images of enterprise software.

They also enable customers to reduce installation, configuration, and ongoing maintenance costs.

Oracle VM supports both Oracle and non-Oracle applications and offers customers scalable, low-cost server virtualization backed by the IT major’s world-class support.

The templates also help eliminate the need to install new products from scratch thereby offering faster time to market. Customers can simply copy Oracle VM templates to the server where Oracle VM resides and they will have a fully installed and configured software environment.

“Customers are experiencing increased challenges as the volume of information in their data centre continues to grow rapidly, leading to added hardware and energy costs and a depletion of server resources,” said Wim Coekaerts, vice president Linux Engineering, Oracle.

“The combination of Oracle VM templates and Oracle VM offers customers the full benefits of server virtualization, leading to further lowering the cost of data centre operations and contributing to green IT,’ he added.

Source: www.tradearabia.com

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