Information Assets

Egypt's ASSET Technology is building its enterprise information management software business using the latest Oracle technologies. We talk to ASSET CEO Essam El-Badry about the benefits of partnering with Oracle.

In the information age, simply having information is not good enough. What matters is the speed with which accurate information can be retrieved. It's this principle that is driving the success of Egypt's ASSET Technology, an international vendor of enterprise software for document management, content management, workflow and free text search.

Formed in 1991, ASSET has built up a strong customer base in Egypt and across the Middle East. It has also expanded into the United States where it has several customers and a subsidiary office. Now employing 100 engineers, it is a successful part of the Mansour Group conglomerate, which realises $2bn in annual revenues.

ASSET offers solutions that address the needs of specific industries, particularly the government and financial services sectors. "There is a need in these sectors to find information quickly that was previously difficult to find," says Essam El-Badry, CEO of ASSET Technology.

He explains that these sectors rely on a lot of unstructured information that they nevertheless need to be able to locate, retrieve and share quickly and easily. This type of information range from paper forms such as credit card agreements and employee contracts, to Microsoft Office documents, emails, faxes, CAD drawings, microfilm and microfiche.

ASSET's Jupiter enterprise information management software enables this kind of content to be stored electronically; subjected to automated business workflow processes (such as routing documents for approval) and searched with Jupiter's powerful free text search facility. In addition to bringing unstructured data "into the fold" of enterprise systems where it can be easily located, using Jupiter also frees up physical space for its users. The Bank of Alexandria, for example, used to store reams of paper forms until it implemented Jupiter. "It's a great boon to customer service, as call centre agent can now call up the relevant documents within seconds and give the customer an instantaneous answer to an enquiry," says Mr El-Badry.

Another of ASSET's initiatives has been to deliver Enterprise portals providing corporate customers, employees and partners with the information they need through a web browser using Oracle's powerful Portal engine. Moreover, its software suite integrates with the Oracle Collaboration Suite, to create a rich environment for enterprise document sharing and project collaboration. Mr El-Badry says that Oracle Collaboration Suite is starting to encroach on the dominance of Microsoft Exchange Server and Lotus Notes in the Middle East region. "Oracle is really pushing the Collaboration Suite and the market is starting to move," he says.

Underpinning ASSET's content and document management software is Oracle Database 10g. Oracle Application Server 10g and Oracle Portal are used to deliver the applications in an internet environment and to enable end-users to integrate ASSET's applications easily with other enterprise software systems, while Oracle Workflow Server - with added functionality built by ASSET - is used to create and manage the business processes around the unstructured data.

Choosing Oracle was a strategic decision for ASSET, according to Mr El-Badry. "We used to support a range of databases: Oracle, Sybase, DB2 and SQL Server, but when we released the enterprise version of our software in 2001 we chose to standardise on Oracle."

The reasons for choosing Oracle were many, including the size of the existing Oracle installed base in the Middle East - "we wouldn't want to use a database that nobody uses, and everyone uses Oracle" - the superior technical support available. ASSET has also found Oracle's pricing and licensing structure very favourable in comparison with, for example, IBM. For example, the fact that Oracle's workflow engine is embedded in Oracle Database makes it much easier and less expensive to license than similar software from other vendors. "We would have had to pay three to four times as much for IBM's workflow software as we do for Oracle Workflow Server," Mr El-Badry says.

At the same time as it chose to standardise on Oracle, ASSET also started to get more closely involved in the Oracle PartnerNetwork and to conduct joint sales and marketing initiatives with Oracle. "We have done some successful joint events and seminars, and are approaching key prospects together, particularly in Dubai," says Mr El-Badry. Currently, ASSET is working with Oracle's sales force to start building a presence in Europe.

When asked for his advice to other ISVs considering a partnership with Oracle, Mr El-Badry advises that the more they dedicate to the relationship, the richer the rewards will be. "The commitment we put in has been matched by Oracle," he says. "They are also very responsive; if we ever find we need information that is not already available on the OPN portal, we just send an email and they respond immediately, and always with excellent documentation."

Where Next?

Read more about Asset Technology on the Asset website

Read more about Oracle Application Server

Read more about Oracle Collaboration Suite

Find out more about partnering with Oracle at a forthcoming OPN Day