As Published In November/December 2004

New Edition of Oracle Application Server
By Caroline Kvitka

Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One lets businesses start small at lower price.

Small and medium-size enterprises looking for basic application server functionality—including application and portal development—can now turn to a new version of Oracle Application Server 10g. Oracle already offers a version of Oracle Database for smaller enterprises, and the company is now releasing Oracle Application Server 10g Standard Edition One, targeted at small to medium-size businesses and departmental customers and offering all of the functionality of Oracle Application Server Standard Edition at half the price.

Like Oracle Database Standard Edition One, Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One meets the needs of customers looking for an easier-to-install, lower-priced product that lets them start small. The new version is priced at US$4,995 per processor for one- or two-processor systems running Microsoft Windows or Linux.

Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One provides a complete Web site infrastructure to build intranet or extranet sites and a prebuilt portal with built-in facilities that enable sharing of information within the organization as well as with business partners. "Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One with this 'instant portal' functionality and a complete J2EE and Web services environment provides small to medium-size businesses and departmental customers with limited resources a complete platform solution along with Oracle Database Standard Edition One," says Vijay Tella, vice president and chief strategy officer for Oracle Application Server.

"Small and medium-size enterprises are demanding application server functionality to write Java code, to build internet applications and Web sites, and to build secure portals quickly. They are not looking to do complex enterprise application integration or sophisticated business analytics," Tella says. "Rather, they want to offer a simple, secure portal that their employees, partners, and customers can participate in."

Portals are one of the core technologies that smaller organizations are looking to adopt, says Rob Cheng, product director for Oracle Application Server. They serve several purposes, from internal portals that do things like expense reporting, managing benefits, and disseminating information to employees, to customer portals offering self-service support.

Next Steps Learn more about Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One Oracle Application Server 10g solutions

"For smaller companies, building a portal from scratch means coming up with resources or hiring consultants. It's easier to start with a prepackaged solution," says Cheng. "With Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One, customers are up and running instantly." The instant-portal capability of Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One gives customers an entry point into Oracle Application Server Portal, with the ability to use the core portal functionality to build custom solutions down the road. Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One provides a set of content pages specific to several lines of business, including marketing, sales, and human resources. These prebuilt pages, which include a set of folders relevant to a specific line of business, are intended as starting points to which users can add extra folders or pages. A companywide home page, which can be tailored to reflect the customer's corporate identity, is also provided. All portal pages are based on templates with an automatically generated layout and navigation.

Security management has been simplified, says Cheng. Both user management and content security are controlled through simple dialog boxes launched from the portal.

Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One also features easier installation, Cheng adds, with automatic creation of necessary startup and shutdown scripts and automatic configuration. Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One is certified to work with any edition of Oracle Database, including Enterprise Edition. J2EE applications developed on Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One also work with non-Oracle databases.