The product offers an environment for accessing relational, online analytical processing and XML data sources. It also improves integration with Oracle tools such as Essbase and Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g, Oracle said in its announcement. Essbase, a multi-dimensional database management system, was acquired with Hyperion in 2007.

Key to Oracle’s strategy with the product is the integration of different business intelligence tools to give a coherent overall picture, the company said.

The 59 patches in the “critical patch update” fall across products ranges from the Oracle Database – 13 fixes – Fusion Middleware – seven fixes – Applications – 16 fixes – and Enterprise Manager Grid Control – one fix.

However, the most fixes are for the Solaris product suite, acquired by Oracle when it bought out Sun Microsystems in January this year.

“Seven of these vulnerabilities may be remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e. may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password,” warned a security advisory from the company.

“Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply Critical Patch Update fixes as soon as possible.”

The large patch by Oracle has filled the whole left by Adobe which would have normally conducted its quarterly patch today. However it had to bring the patch forward to the end of June after critical flaws were found in its Acrobat and Reader products.

Oracle has unveiled Business Process Management Suite 11g, which includes a native implementation of BPMN 2.0 and supports all types of processes with a new unified process foundation, user-centric design approach and social BPM capabilities.

According to Oracle, the new unified process foundation simplifies process development, deployment, monitoring and execution. It includes components such as unified process engine that executes BPEL and BPMN 2.0 processes, human workflow and rules; universal content management for document-centric processes; and management and monitoring of business processes to extend problem management beyond the process boundary.

The company said that the new offering is integrated with Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Business Activity Monitoring and Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus.

The user-centric design approach in Business Process Management Suite 11g simplifies the process management lifecycle with tools that address user role requirements. Key components include, BPM Studio for role-based modeling and design, process composer for web-based process modeling, and deployment; and process analysis and reporting.

Finally, the social BPM capabilities in the new offering enables collaboration among users by incorporating social computing and Enterprise 2.0 technologies, including wikis and blogs.

Oracle said that the new offering includes features such as, customised team spaces for business and IT through all phases of the business process management lifecycle; business process guides that provide a milestone-centered view of processes that simplifies understanding and communication of process flow; and unstructured process support that helps users address unanticipated process changes by adding and delegating to additional process participants.

David Shaffer, vice president for product management at Oracle Fusion Middleware, said: “Built on a unified process foundation, Oracle Business Process Management Suite 11g enables organisations to engage both business and IT users more easily in the management of core business processes and simplify the complete business process lifecycle. Now, businesses can innovate more easily and improve the processes that are critical to their organisations.”
via CBR

Building upon its solid base in the data center, Dell is taking on competitors Cisco, HP, IBM and Oracle with new servers, storage solutions and software that ’shatter the virtualization glass ceiling’ and offer intelligent data management, simplified infrastructure management and intelligent infrastructure.

Dell is updating its Advanced Infrastructure Management data center initiative announced last December with new server, storage and software solutions, and services.

This is a hotly contested market where IBM has a strong base, Cisco and HP are rolling out competitive initiatives and Oracle is seeking to breathe new life into its Sun Microsystems acquisition. According to AHV Associates LLP, data centers accounted for more than $15 billion last year, so there’s no shortage of opportunity.

Dell is looking to ’shatter the virtualization glass ceiling’ with a data-center lineup that offers intelligent data management, simplified infrastructure management and intelligent infrastructure, says Dell’s Travis Vigil, Senior Product Manager, Storage (EqualLogic). “Last quarter we started talking about the virtual era.” The data-center market is in transition to the virtual era, and “we want to be a winner in that transition.”

Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst, Enderle Group, believes there is more than enough room in the data center market for Dell.

“The market likes choice and specialization,” he tells Channel Insider. “No one vendor, since IBM owned this market, has been able to be expert enough at all business sizes and types providing room for each vendor to specialize and carve out a market.”

What should be good news for the channel is the customer segment that Dell appeals to, adds Enderle.

“Dell tends to favor firms who want to do much of the work themselves, aren’t particularly interested in global services, and want a hardware vendor who is at arm’s length from software to avoid lock-in,” he says. “There appear to be enough of those folks to sustain Dell.” 

Charles King, Principal Analyst, Pund-IT, Inc., agrees that there can never be enough systems vendors.

“If nothing else, a competitive vendor ecosystem tends to keeps business technology interesting and serves as an antidote to IT-related BS. In addition, no single vendor has all the answers for every organization. Diverse offerings from multiple vendors help to ensure that businesses can reliably get the most appropriate and cost-effective solutions to their computing problems.”

Being the alternative to business as usual in the data center – typically proprietary and complex solutions – is a Dell differentiator, states Vigil. “If you look at the history of computing… the open architecture is always the one that wins.”

Dell already has a significant data-center footprint, says King.

“The company has long specialized in x86-based solutions that constitute the largest portion of the server market,” he says. “It was the first vendor to launch a dedicated cloud computing product/sales division; and Dell has reported on numerous occasions that it is the largest reseller of VMware solutions, which have found their greatest success among enterprise clients. Additionally, unlike many data-center players, Dell has no legacy hardware platforms threatened by x86 so its server/data-center strategy is more straightforward and less likely to be compromised.”

Among the products being announced — and scheduled to ship this quarter — are: PowerEdge M610x PCIe expansion module; PowerEdge M710HD blade; PowerEdge R715; Dell EqualLogic Array Software which automatically virtualizes and optimizes resources within the SAN; Dell EqualLogic Host Software which can deliver advanced data protection, high availability and performance and simplified management of application data and virtual machines for Microsoft and VMware environments; Dell EqualLogic PS6000XVS and PS6010XVS PS6000-6010 virtualized iSCSI SANs, that combine low-latency Solid State Disk (SSD) and high performance SAS drives within one array to deliver intuitive data responsiveness for tiered workloads; and the Dell PowerVault MD3200 Series of 6Gb shared storage solutions and MD3200i solution for entry-level storage consolidation in virtualized environments that require high availability.

IDG News Service — Oracle (ORCL) is planning to release one of the most significant updates to its BI (business intelligence) platform in years at a July 7 event in London, according to the company’s Web site.

Company President Charles Phillips and Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of product development, will deliver presentations at the event.

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 11g will include improvements in analytic processing, reporting, scalability, performance and system management, according to the blog post. The release also delivers an “unrivaled” end-user experience, according to Oracle.

A rundown of breakout sessions planned for the event provides further clues to the release’s feature set, which appears to foster tight connectivity between BI and ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems.

Attendees can learn about an “industry-first innovation that connects business intelligence directly to your business processes,” according to a statement. “You can spot an opportunity or issue, and immediately initiate appropriate action directly from your dashboard.”

Oracle has indicated that its next-generation Fusion Applications, which are supposed to surface this year after a long delay, will incorporate pervasive BI capabilities.

Users have been hotly anticipating the OBIEE 11g product launch, with some even participating in a betting page on the general availability date.

Oracle’s announcement does not specifically state such a date, although it would presumably closely coincide with the launch event. An Oracle spokeswoman declined to comment.

The product should live up to the hype, with “game-changing” enhancements that no other vendors have, said Forrester Research analyst Boris Evelson.

Evelson declined to elaborate further, citing a nondisclosure agreement with Oracle.

Oracle Database 11g has achieved a world record result of more than 1.6 million query navigation steps per hour on the SAP Business Intelligence-Data Mart standard application benchmark, beating the highest competitor by eight times the performance. Oracle Database with Oracle Real Application Clusters also demonstrated high performance and availability with 90 percent scalability when measured from a one-node to a two-node configuration.

Phase Forward, the top maker of programs that help drugmakers run clinical trials, said in a regulatory filing on Friday the U.S. Department of Justice asked for additional information as it reviews the acquisition to see it hurts competition in the software market.

Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger declined to comment on the government’s request. Officials with Phase Forward could not immediately be reached to elaborate on the disclosure, which was made in an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Had the government not made the request, it would have been obliged to approve the deal within 30 days of Oracle and Phase Forward’s first filing for anti-trust approval. The companies have not said when they filed.

Buying Phase Forward would help billionaire Larry Ellison’s Oracle expand its portfolio of programs that help drugmakers boost the efficiency at a time when they are anxious to slash costs.

Drug companies are looking to offset revenue declines, as many profitable brand-name drugs will soon face competition from low-cost generics.

Phase Forward is the top producer of programs for managing clinical trials, ahead of Medidata Solutions Inc (MDSO.O) and Oracle.

Healthcare is one of several key areas where Oracle has focused on building a portfolio of software specific to an industry’s needs.

Database cloud safety has risen to a new level as Cirrhus9, a privately-held cloud computing and consulting firm, and SecuCloud, a leader in database security and compliance solutions, have joined together. The C9 SecuCloud system:

• Runs on major databases Oracle, DB2, MS-SQL, and Sybase via Amazon Web Services and 3Tera’s Applogic cloud computing platforms
• Provides quick protection from data theft, privacy breaches, and non-compliance
• Allows users to generate regular reports with effective tools to make sure database audit requirements are met
• And is cost effective

Oracle has announced it has reached an agreement to acquire database security firm Secerno.

“Organisations require a comprehensive security solution which includes database firewall functionality to prevent sophisticated attacks from reaching databases,” Oracle said in a statement.

Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed, but the acquisition is expected to close before the end of June.

Analysts said the deal will put Oracle in a stronger position to compete against IBM, which made a similar acquisition in December when it bought Guardium.

“The Secerno acquisition is in direct response to increasing customer challenges around mitigating database security risk,” said Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice-president, Oracle Database Server Technologies.

“Secerno’s database firewall product acts as a first line of defence against external threats and unauthorised internal access, with a protective perimeter around Oracle and non-Oracle databases,” he said.

No wonder PC vendors like HP and Asus are in a hurry to get slate devices out in the market. A consumer survey quoted by PC World suggests that the Apple iPad alone may put a significant dent in netbook sales.

Consumer electronics shopping guide Retrevo organized the survey, which involved “more than 1,000 U.S. consumers.” The results are interesting, to say the least. Retrevo found that, when asked if they held off on buying a netbook after the iPad launched in January, 30% of respondents said they did… and subsequently purchased an iPad. Meanwhile, 40% held off but grabbed a netbook anyway, while only 30% were unshaken by the launch.

More interesting still, when asked if they were planning to buy an iPad or a netbook, a whopping 78% of respondents leaned toward the Apple device. The remaining 22% sided with netbooks. And when asked about what feature in particular made netbooks attractive, 54% of folks said “small & light,” while price and battery life got 20% and 19% of responses, respectively. “Other” attributes (like, oh, maybe being able to run Windows) accounted for only 7% of responses.