Pacific Crest Says Oracle Earnings Could Come in Short

Concerns are growing about Oracle (ORCL). In the latest in a series of cautious Street comments on its upcoming earnings report, Pacific Crest’s Brendan Barnicle Monday morning warned that revenues for the fiscal first quarter ended August could come in short of Street expectations. He says that the quarter closed weaker than he expected. Barnicle says that the company likely to have a 2% headwind from currency in the quarter, after a 6% benefit last quarter.

Barnicle says the weakness reflects “nothing more than seasonality and currency,” and there has been no change in the company’s business fundamentally. But he does say the company faces a difficult comparison with the year-earlier quarter. “Our contacts report that the pipeline remains solid for Q2, and management has not demonstrated an excessive reaction to Q1,” he writes. “Nevertheless, Q1 is likely to be lackluster, at best, and Q2 guidance is also likely to be at best in line with current expectations.”

Barnicle trimmed his revenue estimate for Q1 to $5.44 billion from $5.52 billion; the Street is at $5.45 billion. For Q2, he goes to $6.4 billion, from $6.47 billion. For the full fiscal year ending May 2009, his EPS estimate slips to $1.56 from $1.57; for fiscal 2010 he goes to $1.85, from $1.88.

Oracle will report earnings on September 18.

Oracle closed Monday down 81 cents, or 4%, to $19.26.

Source: seekingalpha.com

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SOA buy for Oracle

Oracle is to buy ClearApp, a maker of software for managing the performance of composite applications in SOA (service-oriented architecture) environments.

ClearApp's software automatically discovers application components and their dependencies at runtime and monitors performance.

ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg says ClearApp's technology provides "deep visibility into the components underlying SOA-based composite applications", but the acquisition also raises questions, as it follows related purchases by Oracle of companies like Auptyma and Moniforce, he says.

"Oracle does have quite a bit of experience in assimilating acquired technologies, and they're also known for taking care of the customers that come along as a result, but every such acquisition sets the bar of success higher for them," Bloomberg says.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Author: Chris Kanaracus @ computerworld.co.nz

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Oracle Audit Vault 10.2.3 Released!

With this latest release, Oracle Audit Vault customers can now also monitor Microsoft SQL Server databases. Oracle has announced the general availability of Oracle Audit Vault Release 10.2.3. This latest release of Oracle Audit Vault now collects audit data from Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and 2005, in addition to Oracle Databases, addressing the lack of a Microsoft solution for enterprise database auditing and activity monitoring.

"Oracle Audit Vault 10.2.3 allows organisations to turn database audit data into mission-critical business intelligence for enabling enterprise security and regulatory compliance," said Vipin Samar, vice president, database security, Oracle.

With Oracle Audit Vault, audit data is automatically consolidated into a secure and centralised repository based on Oracle's data warehousing technology, and analysed in real-time against enterprise-defined policies. Any unauthorised activities can be immediately detected using Oracle Audit Vault's dashboard alerts capabilities.

Oracle Audit Vault also features built-in and customisable reports to address the need for reliable compliance reporting for regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS). This latest release introduces additional pre-built reports, and now captures before-and-after changes to sensitive data to help organisation save time and costs related to compliance reporting, says the company.

Oracle Audit Vault 10.2.3 delivers improved reporting capabilities such as filtering audit data, highlighting rows with condition values, as well as generating charts and graphs. Custom reports can be saved and shared within the enterprise or with external auditors. It also increases privileged user monitoring by auditing Oracle Database Vault.

Oracle Audit Vault 10.2.3 is priced at $57,500 per processor and the Oracle Audit Vault Collection Agent for Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Databases is available for $3,500 per processor.

Source: www.efytimes.com

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