Oracle enters into partnership with Datawatch

Oracle has formed a records-management partnership with enterprise information management firm Datawatch.

It said it has combined its Universal Records Management Adapter with Datawatch's BDS Enterprise Content Management product suite to create a single environment to control records and retention policies for all content stored in the Datawatch BDS archive.

It also provides records managers with a single view into retention schedules, disposition actions and audit histories, facilitates the process of discovering and declaring records, and helps ensure that the enterprise conforms to both regulatory mandates and internal corporate policies.

Oracle said the integration will provide a complete document lifecycle product that will enable users to reduce the cost of storing and managing unstructured content. Oracle said users can also access, manage, and produce data in a legally defensible manner when responding to litigation, antitrust inquiries, regulatory compliance, or investigation.

Harvey Gross, vice president of enterprise product development at Datawatch, said: "Our technology relationship with Oracle enhances the Datawatch BDS Enterprise Content Management product suite and enables a significant cost reduction to our customers for their critical business functions, helps ensure legal and regulatory compliance, and fulfills the need for technology to provide authenticity, access and longevity."

Source: http://contentmanagement.cbronline.com

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Oracle cuts several hundred jobs, sources say

Oracle Corp (ORCL.O), the world's No. 3 software maker, has fired "several hundred" of its more than 86,000 workers, according to two sources close to the situation, as the business software maker struggles in an economic downturn.

Redwood City, California-based Oracle laid off the employees on Friday, trimming its force of sales consultants who advise clients on how to integrate its business management software and database programs into their operations, the sources said on Tuesday.

Oracle declined comment.

The scale of the job cuts is far smaller than some investors had expected. Rumors surfaced last week that the company was preparing to lay off thousands of its workers.

While Oracle joined a growing list of technology industry giants that are cutting workers, the scope of the reductions is smaller than ones planned by peers.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Tuesday Oracle has cut around 500 positions.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle @ uk.reuters.com)

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Oracle to issue 41 security patches

Vulnerabilities, of which 15 are severe, are across 'hundreds' of its products. Oracle Corp. will issue 41 security patches next Tuesday addressing vulnerabilities across "hundreds" of its products, the company said in a pre-release announcement.

More than 15 of those patches address flaws that were described by the company as being remotely executable without the need for authentication -- a class of vulnerability to which Oracle usually assigns its highest severity rating. Of these, nine are slated for Oracle Secure Backup, two for its Application Server product and five for its BEA Product Suite.

The company's Critical Patch Update next week will also include fixes for 10 vulnerabilities in its database products. None of these exploits, however, can be taken advantage of remotely without the attacker having access to a username and password first, the company said.

Among the affected products that were listed by Oracle in its pre-announcement were multiple versions of its database going back to Oracle database 9i, its E-business suite products and several versions of Oracle's WebLogic Server and Portal products.

The number of patches being released by Oracle in this round is about the same as the last quarter, when the company issued 36 security fixes.

By Oracle's standards those number are relatively small. There have been occasions when the company has issued considerably more patches in its quarterly updates. Its January 2006 update had 82 patches, while the same year's October update had 101.

As with every release, Oracle is imploring administrators to install the patches as soon as possible. But if history is any indication, a large number of the database patches, at least, are unlikely to be installed in a hurry.

A study of 305 database administrators released in January 2008 by security vendor Sentrigo Inc. found that two-thirds of those surveyed did not install Oracle's security patches at all, no matter how critical the vulnerabilities were.

Most appeared to be reluctant to bring production environments down for any length of time to implement security patches and were also concerned about the possibility of the fixes breaking applications.

Author: Jaikumar Vijayan @ www.computerworld.com

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