'Big one' coming for Oracle database users?
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Hoodies hit Microsoft, big lads do Larry Oracle users could be headed for a Microsoft-scale hack or a major database breach as master criminals begin to target valuable business systems.â¦
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Blog: After nearly a nine-month beta, Oracle Database 11g is set to launch Wednesday.
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At Oracle OpenWorld, the database software giant touts the application server aimed at midsize companies.
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle is releasing its first version of the core Berkeley DB embedded database since acquiring the software through its FebruaryÂ purchase of open-source developer Sleepycat Software. Oracle is due to make Berkeley DB release 4.5 generally available on Wednesday. The focus is around improving performance, availability, and ease of use, according to Rex Wang, vice president of embedded systems marketing at Oracle and Sleepycat's former vice president of marketing. The new functionality was already on the road map at Sleepycat, he said. First developed in 1991, Berkeley DB is the core version of the Sleepycat embedded database, but the open-source vendor alsoÂ began offering XMLÂ (extensible markup language) andÂ Java versions of its databaseÂ in recent years. Oracle already put out a new release of Berkeley DB Java Edition, version 3.0, in May and plans a refresh of Berkeley DB XML shortly, Wang said. New in Berkeley DB release 4.5 are the ability for users to upgrade or patch a replicated Berkeley DB without having to take the entire system down, multiversion concurrency controls to handle changes being made to the database by many users, and a replication framework to help developers build highly available systems. Oracle is actively looking at how to get Berkeley DB to work with the rest of its product portfolio, but has no news on that front as yet. Unlike other areas of its business, notably applications, where Oracle is looking to consolidate disparate products into a single code base, the vendor's approach to the embedded database market is rather different. "We offer customers a range of products to meet very different needs," Wang said. As well as Berkeley DB, Oracle has its TimesTen In-Memory Database and Oracle Database Lite 10g and the company can also embed its higher end Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Application Server 10g software. Berkeley DB is complementary to Oracle's other embedded databases, but differs in having no SQL (structured query language) layer and is able to store data in memory or on disk. There's a whole host of different organizations looking to embed databases in very different environments from cell phones to networking equipment to hosted applications. The beauty of embedded databases is that they're designed to run "unattended," without any need for management by database administrators, effectively disappearing from view into other applications, he added. Oracle'sÂ prime reason for acquiring SleepycatÂ was and remains the vendor's desire to gain more presence in the embedded database arena, Wang said. Earlier this week, open-source database vendor MySQL AB confirmed that it had discontinued support for Berkeley DB as one of its storage engines. "That was due to our request to them which they readily agreed to," Wang said. He doesn't believe there was a significant amount of customer use. "It was an interface that neither party was maintaining," Wang added. "For years, no work was done on the interface." Â
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Oracle Corp. ORCL.O, the  world's biggest database software company, on Wednesday  forecast profits at the high end of Wall Street estimates,  aided by subscriber growth tied to its $10.3 billion  acquisition of PeopleSoft.
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You don't bring me flowers anymore International florist FTD is calling on fellow Oracle users to switch database vendors. It dumped the company in favor of EnterpriseDB in its latest project, after meeting with "indifference" from the enterprise giant.â¦
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SAN FRANCISCO - Oracle President Charles Phillips opened Oracle's largest user show to date with a keynote address that avoided controversial topics like Oracle's hostile bid for PeopleSoftÂ and focused instead on a high-level overview of Oracle's vision for flexible, integrated IT systems.
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InfoWorld - Oracle at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco the week of Dec. 5 plans to unveil Oracle Integration, a product that combines the company&#8217;s application server with several other technologies for integration and enablement of SOAs (service-oriented architectures).
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It may be one of the software industry&#39;s largest acquisitions to date, but Oracle expects to work out its merger plans with PeopleSoft by the end of the year and will &quot;hit
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NEW YORK - PeopleSoft's acceptance of an Oracle takeover finally ends 18 months of uncertainty for both companies' customers, but opens new challenges for the victor. As Oracle embarks on one of the software industry's largest acquisitions in history, it needs to prove it can chew what it has bitten off.ADVERTISEMENTSolaris 10(TM) OS: Position your business ten moves ahead.Solaris 10 OS has arrived and provides even more reasons for the world's most demanding businesses to operate on this, the leading UNIX platform. Like the fact you can run Linux and Solaris applications side-by-side and run the same OS on SPARC(R), AMD Opteron(TM), and Intel processor-based systems. Discover more reasons and how Solaris 10 OS can move your business ahead today.
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(InfoWorld) - When it comes to Oracle Corp.'s on-demand software business, the normally outspoken vendor has tended to be somewhat reticent about how it defines both the scope and focus of its operation. Recently, however, the company has begun to talk more openly about software-as-a-service (SaaS), an approach that it sees as applicable to all Oracle offerings. Earlier this month, Oracle revealed it had more than 2,200 on-demand customers, representingÂ more thanÂ 1.7 million users. In its most recent financial quarter ended Aug. 31, 2006, the vendor reported that its on-demand revenue rose 48.8 percent to $125 million, compared with the year-ago quarter. IDG News Service talked this week to the man who heads up Oracle's on-demand operations, Juergen Rottler, the company's executive vice president of Oracle Customer Services. An edited transcript of that conversation follows. IDGNS: What's Oracle's take on on-demand software? Rottler: There's a lot of interest and hype in the marketplace around on-demand, particularly in the salesforce automation space, whether it's RightNow [Technologies Inc.] or Salesforce.com Inc. or our Siebel CRM On Demand. Oracle is the only company that can offer an overarching on-demand platform for all applications and for all business processes and for different technologies -- database and middleware -- it doesn't have to just be applications. IDGNS: At last month's OpenWorld conference, Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison described the company's on-demand business as the same size as Salesforce.com's; is that correct? Rottler: It's very hard to compare our businesses; it's a bit like an apples-to-oranges comparison. We have so many different deployment options and we don't count software licenses and support as part of on-demand revenue. I'll stick with Larry's statement from OpenWorld. We're a very large company. As a part of Oracle, on-demand isn't a huge business, but we have a very significant interest in it. IDGNS: How does your approach differ from that of, say, SAP AG, which appears to be adopting a more cautious approach to on-demand? Rottler: SAP is struggling in this space. They see it more as an on-ramp as driving users to more traditional [on-premise] software. We've been in the on-demand business for nearly seven years. It's influenced our development priorities, how we run our business and it's influenced our data centers. We really have an on-demand platform. We see partners take that platform for applications across the entire enterprise. We have on-demand versions for all of our applications including the ones we acquired. We've a revamped release of PeopleSoft Enterprise On Demand and we have Oracle On Demand for Siebel CRM as well as Siebel CRM On Demand. We have all our retail 'on-demanded' -- Retek and ProfitLogic -- and our G-Log logistics. We're working on a Portal solution. IDGNS: Who does the bulk of the hosting of your on-demand software -- Oracle or your partners -- in percentage terms? Rottler: In most cases where partners are hosting, it's because the customer already has someone to outsource their software. Depending on the geography, it's in the 20 to 30 percent range. The majority of our business is hosted out of our data centers. IDGNS: Where are your data centers and do you expect to open more outside the U.S. as your on-demand operation grows? Rottler: Our most well-known data center is in Austin, Texas. Our other data centers serve as disaster recovery or back-up sites. We don't talk about them or their location a lot of time for security reasons. For local capabilities, we tend to partner. We're fortunate that we can look at all options, but we'll most likely go with partners. IDGNS: How does your on-demand business look on a regional basis, is it dominated by the U.S.? Rottler: It mirrors the regional themes for broader [IT] outsourcing adoption. North America today is sort of ahead, but Europe is definitely not lagging. It's fast catching up to North America and is led by the U.K. We have a very strong business in Latin America and lots of success in Asia-Pacific anchored in Australia. Our four strongest markets are North America, the U.K., Latin America and Australia. IDGNS: Is there an average size for your on-demand customers? Rottler: It ranges from a few individuals to thousands of users. In general, our on-demand customers and the number of users are growing bigger, quite a bit bigger. We're seeing great interest among Fortune 100 companies. On-demand isn't just for small to midsize businesses. IDGNS: Larry Ellison is an investor in both Salesforce.com and NetSuite Inc. Has it been useful for Oracle to observe what those on-demand companies have been doing? Rottler: Larry's been a believer in this new way of doing business for many years. He's made significant investments in us and in other on-demand companies. We believe this is a market worth developing to create a broader ecosystem. We're also a very important platform provider. Salesforce.com runs on our databases and middleware. They're a customer, NetSuite similarly. We're in competition; in other areas, but they're also customers of ours. We participate in the market in multiple ways. IDGNS: Who do you see as your primary competition both now and in future? Rottler: Ultimately, it will be the same people we compete against today. SAP has been a bit unfocused and haphazard and it'll take them some years to come up to scratch. We're waiting to see if Microsoft [Corp.] can successfully enter the market. The rest of the competition are niche players. The challenge for them is can they broaden their products and be relevant in a broader context? We're a huge company that can provide an individual on-demand service or a multitenant solution securely; others don't have those options. Some players won't be around in future. IDGNS: Oracle has yet to really talk up its on-demand business, is that likely to change? Rottler: You will see us continue to raise the noise level a little. We've had a lot of other Oracle news to cover in the past quarters. On-demand is picking up, there's a lot of activity. IDGNS: What about Oracle's own internal on-demand deployments? Does the company's fondness for eating its own dog food extend to hosted software? Rottler: We look at Oracle as one big on-demand customer. There are many parts of our business running the same platform and products as our on-demand customers.
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Recognizing the increasing importance of mobility in the enterprise, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) has unveiled a database product that promises to extend the company's grid computing platform to workers on the move.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Oracle at the OpenWorld conference here on Tuesday is making several product rollouts, including a new version of its database and grid computing enhancements.
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Will Sun's $1 billion buyout of open source database vendor SQL drive down pricing on enterprise databases from IBM, Microsoft of Oracle?
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The database giant reveals its plans for a new product line, support of PeopleSoft products and other details.
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Oracle's recently completed consolidation to a single, global system for enterprise data took five years, Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison told OpenWorld attendees Wednesday during his keynote address at Oracle's user conference being held in San Francisco.
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InfoWorld - Oracle&#160;has unveiled the first major version of the TimesTen in-memory relational database developed in house since&#160;acquiring the technology&#160;in June 2005, emphasizing increased integration and caching with its enterprise-level Oracle Database 10g.