As Published In May/June 2009

AT ORACLE: Oracle News Briefs

Oracle Unveils Oracle CRM On Demand 16

Oracle CRM On Demand 16, the latest release of Oracle’s on-demand CRM service, is now available. It features advanced customization capabilities and new partner relationship management functionalities so that organizations can extend their applications and CRM systems to meet unique business requirements. A hosted solution, Oracle CRM On Demand, Standard Edition for single tenant, is also available.

Oracle CRM On Demand 16 allows organizations to customize applications at the user interface, business process, and data layers. Built on a foundation for enabling unlimited custom objects, it provides additional prebuilt custom objects and delivers a high degree of flexibility to define relationships between custom and prebuilt objects.

New partner relationship management functionality in Oracle CRM On Demand 16 leverages and extends the current partner license option to provide a broad set of indirect channel management capabilities, as well as enhancements that support key functionality and business processes critical to the management of an indirect sales channel.

“Oracle continues to lead the industry with the most complete best-of-breed CRM-on-demand service that helps organizations of all sizes and industries maximize their business needs,”says Anthony Lye, Oracle senior vice president of CRM. “Oracle CRM On Demand 16 and the new customization capabilities are indicative of how only Oracle offers the flexibility and choice organizations need to drive measurable business results at every customer touchpoint.”

Oracle’s hosted solution, Oracle CRM On Demand, Standard Edition for single tenant, enables organizations to access a fully dedicated hardware and software stack, unlimited custom objects, and optional enterprise disaster recovery. The private hosting model provides a cost-effective option that is easy to use and fast to deploy with virtually seamless automatic upgrades, requiring little or no upfront IT investment.

Oracle Sourcing On Demand Now Available

Oracle has introduced Oracle Sourcing On Demand, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that drives more-efficient and more-effective strategic sourcing. Based on Oracle Sourcing and Oracle Sourcing Optimization, Oracle Sourcing On Demand is preconfigured and hosted by Oracle, which reduces time to value and accelerates return on investment.

Oracle Sourcing On Demand cuts the time necessary for sourcing by making it easier for organizations to complete sourcing events, to ensure that agreements are implemented as soon as they are signed, and to generate more-effective contracts. The new service also supports sourcing for lowest total cost by enabling cross-functional collaboration among experts from finance, purchasing, and lines of business in order to easily optimize cost, quality, risk, and innovation. Oracle Sourcing On Demand also includes packaged integration to and from Oracle Purchasing to ensure that the right information is available within the relevant system.

Customers can go live rapidly because they need only a browser in order to utilize Oracle Sourcing On Demand. Oracle hosts and manages all of the additional functionality, hardware, databases, servers, firewall settings, and preconfigured applications.

Oracle Sourcing On Demand delivers self-paced, online training targeted at developing the skills users need to drive effective sourcing outcomes. It also provides a dedicated, functional help desk with 24/7 access to subject matter experts.

“The current economic environment presents a unique opportunity to drive mammoth savings from strategic sourcing,”says Cliff Godwin, senior vice president of applications technology at Oracle. “Oracle Sourcing On Demand can deliver immediate impact to an organization’s bottom line, helping offset the effects of shrinking revenue, inflationary pressures, and new risks.”

Oracle Broadens Database Auditing and Monitoring Capabilities

Now available, Oracle Audit Vault 10.2.3 includes support for collecting audit data from IBM DB/2 and Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) database servers.

Oracle Audit Vault offers organizations a centralized auditing and activity monitoring solution for their third-party and Oracle databases. Oracle Audit Vault now captures audit data from IBM DB2 versions 8.2 and 9.5 and Sybase ASE versions 12.5 and 15.0, in addition to Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and 2005 and Oracle Database 11g and earlier releases.

With Oracle Audit Vault, audit data is consolidated automatically into a secure, centralized repository built using Oracle’s data warehousing software and analyzed in real time against enterprise-defined policies. Any unauthorized activities can be detected immediately using Oracle Audit Vault’s alerts dashboard.

In addition, Oracle Audit Vault delivers prebuilt, customizable reports to help address the need for comprehensive compliance reporting for regulations such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Oracle Audit Vault’s reports can be saved and shared within the enterprise and with external auditors.

“Customers can further improve the security of their enterprise databases with Oracle Audit Vault,”says Vipin Samar, vice president of database security at Oracle. “Oracle Audit Vault’s database activity monitoring and reporting capabilities turn real-time audit data generated natively by heterogeneous databases into a key security resource for detecting unauthorized activity as well as automating time-consuming regulatory compliance reporting functions.”

Oracle Delivers Oracle Beehive On Demand

Oracle is now offering Oracle Beehive—Oracle’s complete and open platform for secure communications and integrated collaboration—as a SaaS solution: Oracle Beehive On Demand.

Designed to help organizations secure communications and add collaboration into business processes, Oracle Beehive On Demand integrates team workspaces, calendars, instant messaging, and e-mail into a unified object model. It leverages the security capabilities native to Oracle Database, resulting in a centralized, secure, and auditable collaboration platform. The cross-platform, open standards-based architecture of Oracle Beehive supports familiar clients such as Microsoft Outlook and can coexist with Microsoft Exchange. It is also designed to operate with existing infrastructures such as LDAP directories and voice mail systems.

In addition, each Oracle Beehive On Demand customer gains a dedicated environment, ensuring maximum privacy and security while also facilitating integration with other on-premises and on-demand applications. Customers also leverage Oracle’s Statement on Auditing Standard 70 audited operations to meet their own compliance requirements.

“This new offering enables customers to conserve capital and benefit from predictable, competitive pricing—paying only for what they use while still making the necessary improvements to their enterprise collaboration infrastructure,”says Marc Schwarz, senior vice president, Oracle On Demand.

Oracle Financial Analytics Adds Capabilities for Public Sector Agencies

Oracle Financial Analytics 7.9.5.1, an Oracle Business Intelligence Applications module, includes new capabilities that give public sector agencies insight into their operational budgets and funds management. The new release helps these agencies detect exceptions quickly by monitoring budget spending effectively. It also provides senior executives and program managers with real-time information to support trend analysis and critical decision-making.

“Maximizing budget and payment performance is a priority for all organizations, including public sector agencies,”says Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management, Oracle Business Intelligence. “To help these agencies gain a tighter grasp over their budgets and payments, Oracle Financial Analytics allows for timely insight into financial performance, enables strict management of timely payments, and supports financial accountability and best practices. Featuring integration with the Oracle E-Business Suite, support for third-party datasources, and prebuilt ETL [extract, transform, and load] maps as well as financial dashboards and reports, Oracle Business Intelligence Applications can be deployed quickly to enable public sector agencies to achieve rapid return on investment.” 

Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance 11 Available

Oracle has released Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance 11, a financial modeling application that helps executives understand the full financial impact of alternative corporate strategies.

The new release features integration with Oracle Crystal Ball, a spreadsheet-based application for predictive modeling, forecasting, and optimization. This integration allows organizations to manage risk and uncertainty in capital investment and financing decisions.

The product also includes integration with Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management, which enables automated data sourcing from general ledgers and budgeting and consolidation systems.

“Businesses are looking for ways to better manage risk and improve the accuracy of their forecasts,”says Bill Guilmart, vice president of product management at Oracle. “Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance 11 allows analysts to improve their forecasts by using Oracle Crystal Ball’s simulation capabilities in their financial models and better understand the risk factors impacting their business.”

Oracle’s PeopleSoft Workforce Communications Unveiled

Oracle has released PeopleSoft Workforce Communications, a comprehensive solution for planning and delivering human resources (HR) programs and surveys to the workforce. PeopleSoft Workforce Communications is a fully integrated, bundled solution that allows HR organizations to deliver the right message to the right audience, capture workforce feedback and take action on it, gain program insight, and quantify success.

Using PeopleSoft Workforce Communications, HR departments can reduce the risk of noncompliance, improve productivity, identify underperforming areas, identify workforce segments that need additional training and development, and reduce program costs. “PeopleSoft Workforce Communications has the potential to offer great value to organizations through improved employee engagement and the ability to understand where your organization is being successful and where you need to apply more attention or refocus efforts,”says John Webb, vice president, product management at Oracle.

Oracle to Buy mValent

Oracle has agreed to acquire mValent, a provider of application configuration management solutions. The acquisition is expected to enhance Oracle Enterprise Manager with extensive capabilities for managing application configurations across IT environments.

“Effective application configuration management is increasingly important as businesses look to improve operating efficiencies,”says Richard Sarwal, senior vice president of product development at Oracle. “With the addition of mValent, Oracle expects to be able to address this need by providing customers with the ability to collect, compare, and reconcile deep configuration information of complex systems. This acquisition is consistent with Oracle’s strategy for delivering cost-effective solutions for managing applications that enable customers to adopt new, innovative technology with reduced risk.”