Posts Tagged ‘oracle’
Oracle launched version 11g of its Oracle Business Intelligence offering on Wednesday, the result of three years of work integrating technologies acquired with the buyouts of companies such as Siebel and Hyperion.
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.
Oracle is releasing a huge number of security patches to its customers today, addressing flaws in hundreds of its products.
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 unveils Business Process Management Suite 11g
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
Dell Adds Storage, Servers and Software to Data Center Assault on Cisco, HP, IBM and Oracle
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.
Major Oracle BI Launch Next Month
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.
