As Published In November/December 2005

Editors' Choice Awards
By David A. Kelly
 
Additional interviews by Claire Dessaux and Jason Pepper

Selecting the recipients for Oracle Magazine's Editors' Choice Awards has become a complex, consuming, yet thoroughly rewarding experience. Now in its fourth year, our awards program has grown in every way imaginable and this year comprises more than 40 winners in 31 categories.

One thing hasn't changed over the years, however, and that is the high caliber and impressive credentials of each nominee and winner. We editors of Oracle Magazine are extremely proud of this year's winners. They represent some of the most visionary, engaging, forward-thinking people working with Oracle technology, from every region of the world. Our hats off to this year's Editors' Choice Awards winners.

The Editors of Oracle Magazine

Fiona Balfour
Barry Libenson
Maribel Picó
Maryvonne Cronier
Laurence Grant and Vishal Anand
Robert Leaman
Sue Diehl
Beth Perlman
Håkan Arpfors
Dan Chisarick
Dennis Avondet Jr.
Ivy Lim
Wez Furlong
Tony Jedlinski
Yves Coene
Joseph R. Seppi
Stany Blanvalet and Thomas Ligny
Jim Lombardi
Euro Beinat
Stephan Fischli
Philip Smart
Bert Dondertman
Tony Miller
Aris Prassinos
Gregory Partyka
Bill Camp
Warren Kerrigan
Andrew Rose and David Russell
Mark Euler
Mark Rittman
Kirtikumar Deshpande, K Gopalakrishnan, and Richmond Shee

Fiona Balfour
CIO of the Year, Asia Pacific

Winner Specs Name: Fiona Balfour Job Title/Description: Chief Information Officer Company: Qantas Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Award: CIO of the Year, Asia Pacific 2005

Qantas CIO initiates reform, transforming IT into a services organization.

The older you are, the harder it can be to change—which doesn't necessarily make the job of CIO easy.

"We're an 85-year-old airline, which means we are one of the oldest airline IT shops and one of the oldest IT shops in the world—we're a 50-year-old IT organization," says Fiona Balfour, Oracle Magazine's CIO of the Year for the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. "I'm very much aware of the history that is involved with that."

Qantas, an AU$13 billion-per-year company, has historically been a "build, run, and operate shop" where the IT department did absolutely everything in-house.

After reporting to the previous CIO since 1992, Balfour was appointed CIO four years ago and initiated a reform program that has transformed the Qantas IT department into a customer-facing, internal professional services organization. Some previously closely held IT components like networks, the data center, and airline applications have been outsourced to allow Qantas to focus on its core business processes.

"We've selected Oracle as a key partner to take us forward," says Balfour. "About three years ago, we decided to replace all of our corporate applications—including ones that have been running for twenty years on mainframes—with Oracle E-Business Suite running on Linux."

Qantas is currently about 40 percent of the way through that transition and has at least another year to go on the financial ledger transition.

"It's been quite challenging for us, because, as a 50-year-old IT shop, some of the systems we're replacing are actually highly tuned for what they do. They run well and are quite efficient from a technology perspective," Balfour explains. "But because they're old-fashioned mainframe systems, they're also inflexible and inadequate and can't take our business where we need to go into the future."

Even though Qantas hasn't finished deploying Oracle Applications, the benefits have started to accrue. For example, the new Oracle-based Human Resources system was cut over gradually during 2004 and now provides the full range of online HR services for Qantas' 35,000 employees. It is the backbone of the new PeopleConnect services at Qantas. Kiosks and internet access have been installed to facilitate self-service for mobile staff such as flight crew. The Oracle suite has replaced 38 separate HR databases and a 25-year-old mainframe application and has vastly improved the airline's ability to manage its human capital. The software is the enabler of the new HR business model, with transactional services being delivered from PeopleConnect and the line HR function focusing on strategic issues and business change.

Barry Libenson
CIO of the Year, North America

Winner Specs Name: Barry Libenson Job Title/Description: Vice President and Chief Information Officer Company: Ingersoll-Rand Location: Davidson, North Carolina Award: CIO of the Year, North America 2005

Consolidation helps CIO Crane raise the bar.

Just because you're a US$11 billion company and have been incredibly successful for more than 100 years doesn't mean that you can always keep doing business the same way.

"A few years ago, the business units that make up Ingersoll-Rand realized that their existing legacy systems could no longer support the growth they needed to achieve the new initiatives they were planning, and the demands that were being placed on them from the corporation," says Barry Libenson, vice president and CIO of Ingersoll-Rand and Oracle Magazine's CIO of the Year for North America.

For a company the size of Ingersoll-Rand, with approximately 150 factories around the world that produce a wide range of products—from refrigeration and temperature control equipment to construction machinery—wholesale change takes everyone working together. Instigating that change took work and new thinking on the IT side as well, since Ingersoll-Rand uses a federated operating model. Libenson sets the corporate direction and IT strategy for the company, but he needs to work with the business units and sectors to make sure the strategy is being implemented and working correctly.

"At the same time, we really upgraded the IT organization and brought in very talented people who were better at aligning business objectives with the technology so that people could see the real value of making changes to our technology platforms," says Libenson. "We also worked with the business unit leaders to get them to sponsor these initiatives so that they'd have a good level of ownership."

As a result, over the past two years Ingersoll-Rand has been going through a big transformation process, from a portfolio of 30 companies running their IT and financial systems independently to a company with an integrated financial and manufacturing applications platform composed of Oracle E-Business Suite components. Ingersoll-Rand has also used Oracle Human Resources Management System to streamline its HR processes at its corporate locations.

But there's still a ways to go, according to Libenson. Based on volume and the importance of the factories that have already been migrated, the project is about 50 percent complete and expected to be finished sometime in 2007.

"On both the manufacturing and financial sides, what was important to us was to find a platform that would be very robust," remarks Libenson. "We wanted something with a solid track record and that we wouldn't have to wrestle with in terms of bugs and issues, and Oracle does really well in that regard for us."

Maribel Picó
CIO of the Year, Latin America

Winner Specs Name: Maribel Picó Job Title/Description: Chief Information Officer Company: Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) Location: Puerto Rico Award: CIO of the Year, Latin America 2005

CIO of Puerto Rico's only electric utility brings IT unity to business complexity.

For Maribel Picó, CIO of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and Oracle Magazine's CIO of the Year for Latin America, a good CIO must be not only a leader but also someone who can facilitate a complex process and even at times be a pubic-relations person.

"A CIO also has to be good at managing people, which I think is the hardest part," says Picó. "In addition, of course, you have to be an expert in both the technology and the business itself, so you can understand how to map your business goals to your IT infrastructure."

As CIO of PREPA, the only electric company in Puerto Rico, Picó bears the responsibility of aligning technology initiatives across all business units with the strategic common goals of the Authority—which is no simple task. "Our structural organization is extremely complex," explains Picó. "The Authority has a lot of platforms and applications to fulfill its strategic goals. Our organizational structure is decentralized in such a way that all business units have technology departments, while my central office is where all policies, strategies, and standards are set so we can integrate those diverse applications."

For Picó, the technology often ends up being the easy part, while managing the human aspect is more challenging. "The most difficult part of my job is trying to join all these very privileged minds toward a common objective and creating an infrastructure that will be able to support our mission and a common vision," Picó comments.

Currently, PREPA's key business objectives are to improve efficiency, increase productivity, and reduce costs. One way Picó's group is enabling this is through Oracle technologies.

"Our main challenge is to maintain a robust infrastructure and make sure it's available to move the business forward," Picó observes. "PREPA is making investments in technology like Oracle so we can obtain greater efficiency in our operations." Over the years, the Authority has made important commitments to Oracle technologies, including Oracle Database, Oracle Data Warehouse, Oracle Business Intelligence, and Oracle E-Business Suite. "Implementing Oracle's technologies has helped us create an IT infrastructure that allows us to automate processes faster through automatic workflows and enables us to serve the people of Puerto Rico better."

For Picó, the payback for her successful management of such diverse technology initiatives isn't limited to corporate recognition. "The most gratifying part of my position is that I'm contributing not only to the Authority but to the economy and development of Puerto Rico," says Picó. "To the extent that the Authority is efficient and effective, it can be translated into providing economic development to industries and companies as well as providing advantages for our residential and lower-income customers."

Maryvonne Cronier
CIO of the Year, Europe, Middle East, and Africa

Winner Specs Name: Maryvonne Cronier Job Title/Description: Chief Information Officer Company: Caisse Nationale d'Assurance Maladie des Travailleurs Salariés (CNAMTS) Location: Paris, France Award: CIO of the Year, Europe, Middle East, and Africa 2005

CNAMTS CIO brings curiosity and focus to her IT department.

For Maryvonne Cronier, Oracle Magazine's CIO of the Year for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and CIO of France's Caisse Nationale d'Assurance Maladie des Travailleurs Salariés (CNAMTS), curiosity is a critical part of the job.

"You need curiosity to discover what the business users are actually doing and identify ways to help them improve their processes without adding too much complexity. Users like to make things complicated—they want to do grand, complex things that will cover every situation imaginable, but it's impossible to sustain those types of solutions," says Cronier. "The challenge for any good CIO is to balance efficiency and simplicity with the needs of the business."

Balancing simplicity with the needs of the business is no small task for an organization that's the biggest healthcare insurance payer in Europe and accounts for 80 percent of French healthcare expenditure. The former CIO of BULL, Cronier joined CNAMTS in February 2002 and launched a "renovation" project to modernize the CNAMTS infrastructure through a migration to an Oracle UNIX platform, which currently supports more than 80,000 users.

A key goal of the project was to use Oracle Portal to create a Web portal that could link 117,000 physicians to a variety of appropriate applications, as dictated by patient needs.

"It's a bit revolutionary in France for physicians to obtain online access to information regarding their patient's progress. Next year we'll expand it to include new functions, such as online work accident reports for worker's compensation and reports for people with chronic diseases," notes Cronier. When complete, it will become the biggest online physician service and will contribute significantly to the strategy for future medication and chronic disease management services.

As with any healthcare-related application, security is a critical issue. "The evolution of our portal into one that can be accessed more broadly is the big challenge for our future. We need to make our data accessible to our medical partners, such as doctors, hospitals, and other institutions," explains Cronier. "To do that, we need very secure and well-structured applications that can guarantee a high level of security, which we can do by using Oracle Portal as the framework."

But security is not the only issue. "The Oracle products we use are fundamentally very solid and give us the guarantee of reliable data, which is critical when you manage 56 million insured people, and one and a half billion healthcare transactions are made every year," concludes Cronier. "With that many transactions, you need systems with a high level of redundancy, stability, and security. That's what Oracle gives us."

Laurence Grant and Vishal Anand
CTOS OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Laurence Grant and Vishal Anand Job Title/Description: Vice President of Enterprise Computing Systems and Director of Database Systems, respectively Company: Talk America Location: New Hope, Pennsylvania Award: CTOs of the Year 2005

Technologists create grid-based system supporting billions of telephone call records.

Talk America is a telecommunications company providing both long-distance and local service around the country. Over the past five years, it has grown rapidly and added more and more local services. "As a local telephone company, you have about 20 times the call volume you have with long-distance, so our IT requirements from a systems perspective have grown exponentially," says Laurence Grant, Talk America's vice president of enterprise computing systems; he and coworker Vishal Anand are Oracle Magazine's CTOs of the Year. "We were struggling and throwing hardware at various performance and high-availability issues and didn't have good solutions until we started deploying Oracle 10g."

Before Talk America entered the local service market, it was averaging about 400 million call records a year. Now it averages more than 2 billion call records a year and has 60 terabytes of storage locally and 30 terabytes in its disaster recovery site.

"The great thing about Oracle 10g technology is that now we can grow on demand," says Vishal Anand, director of database systems. "Instead of throwing hardware at our problems, we can take control and add what we really need. That's the beauty behind Oracle 10g and grid computing."

Talk America implemented a full grid infrastructure on its existing HP hardware, leveraging its existing servers and storage infrastructure. "Moving to grid, even on our existing hardware, has proven invaluable!" exclaims Grant. "Previously we had disparate systems for OLTP [online transaction processing], DW [data warehouse], batch, reporting, and so on. Now we've combined everything into one global database, providing less duplication, less replication, and real-time reporting, while balancing resources, all on demand!"

Of course, grid's not just about simplifying life for the IT group—it's also about saving huge amounts of money. "Our grid deployment on our existing hardware has opened our eyes to how well our systems perform in a clustered environment and how we can leverage clustering for scalability in the future," Grant explains. "That will allow us to look at replacing our large SMP [Symmetric Multiprocessing] servers and storage arrays that cost us US$6 million two years ago with much less expensive solutions that will probably cost closer to US$1 million and provide the same type of scalability and high availability that we have today."

Robert Leaman
IT MANAGER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Robert Leaman Job Title/Description: Director of Systems Architecture Company: Deutsche Post ITSolutions GmbH Location: Darmstadt, Germany Award: IT Manager of the Year 2005

Deutsche Post's director of architecture systems learns to bridge the gap between business and IT.

For IT professionals, it's often hard to ignore the latest new technology. But to Robert Leaman, Oracle Magazine's IT Manager of the Year and director of systems architecture for Deutsche Post ITSolutions, just because it's new doesn't mean it's useful to the business.

"Implementing a technology simply because it's new and shiny and we want it isn't good enough," says Leaman. "We have to stop and ask ourselves the question: How will it help the business?"

That's a critically important question when you're managing an organization that provides custom solutions for different companies with more than 380,000 employees around the world that are part of Deutsche Post World Net. Originally the German postal service, Deutsche Post World Net has grown through acquisition (including DHL) to become a global provider of logistics services—everything from the German mail system to worldwide supply chain management.

"Most of the work we do is based on custom solutions because of the complexity of running mail or logistics worldwide—you simply can't buy appropriate packages for that, so we develop them as needed," says Leaman, an early advocate and user of Oracle Database 10g. "It's an environment that's constantly changing, so time to market is a serious issue. We also have to deal with regulatory changes—for example, the liberalization of postal services throughout Europe."

Since Leaman's group bridges the gap between business and IT, it must create sophisticated technical solutions that address constantly changing real-world business problems.

"Delivering flexible solutions is an important business driver for us, since our customers are creating end-to-end supply logistics or supply chain management solutions for their customers. We need to get in fast and get a solution up and running," Leaman points out. "But it can't be quick and dirty—it has to be quick and very clean."

For Leaman, those requirements translate into one solution that spans the range of business problems thrown at his group. "We're heavily database-oriented here and do approximately 95 percent of the work in Oracle. For example, 100 percent of the databases in the mail division are Oracle," says Leaman. "We consider Oracle Database technology to be the most advanced—in ease of use, stability, availability, and performance. We look at Oracle not just as a database but as a platform that can handle our business requirements."

Sue Diehl
DBA OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Sue Diehl Job Title/Description: DBA Company: Boeing Location: Seattle, Washington Award: DBA of the Year 2005

Multitalented Boeing DBA leads charge to migrate to Oracle Database 10g.

For Sue Diehl, Oracle Magazine's DBA of the Year, finding ways to facilitate ongoing learning and share knowledge across a distributed company is just part of the job.

"I started and organized the Boeing Oracle9i Application Server users group. The goal of the users group was to share information among DBAs and provide informal training," says Diehl. The group had members from across the Boeing organization—everywhere from Wichita, Kansas, to southern California—and was a good way for a highly distributed organization with approximately 150 Oracle DBAs to share information, insights, and lessons learned. "It was very helpful to be able to share information with other DBAs and learn who to call when you needed help," she says.

Diehl now supports Boeing's Data Collection System (DCS), a manufacturing system that collects data from devices in the factory and distributes the information to the appropriate systems, such as parts inventory or scheduling and tracking. The DCS uses Oracle Application Server to collect the data through front-end systems or wireless collection devices and gives customers a Web interface for viewing data. "I'm also on a team supporting a shared J2EE [Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition] environment using Oracle Application Server for 25 J2EE applications across the Boeing enterprise," she adds.

Diehl, who started out as a COBOL programmer, progressed through batch programming and the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), finally landing a role as an Oracle DBA about 10 years ago. Although the role of a DBA is still demanding, a lot has changed since those early days.

Diehl has 11 years of experience with Oracle products and is currently developing a companywide plan to migrate to Oracle 10g. "Oracle Grid Control is making it easier to manage and monitor databases. We're working toward having Oracle Enterprise Manager implemented by the end of 2005 so that we have a standard way to monitor and manage the databases," she says.

Keeping up with ever-changing technologies takes time, of course. "I attend Oracle classes, go to conferences, get involved in user groups, and use MetaLink and the OTN Web site," comments Diehl. "It's hard to keep up with everything."

Diehl observes that experienced DBAs like herself are being called upon to expand their role to include expertise in J2EE and Oracle Application Server. "It frequently depends on how companies structure their DBA and Web DBA roles. Here at Boeing, DBAs are responsible for both the application server and the database."

Beth Perlman
ORACLE APPLICATIONS IMPLEMENTER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Beth Perlman Job Title/Description: Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President Company: Constellation Energy Location: Baltimore, Maryland Award: Oracle Applications Implementer of the Year 2005

Constellation Energy CIO tackles the big implementation issues, one step at a time.

Constellation Energy is a big company (2004 revenues, US$12.5 billion) with big objectives—to grow at 10 percent a year.

"That kind of growth means higher earnings per share, but you have to translate that into how it impacts each line of business and how they can meet that objective. That's what IT is helping to do," says Beth Perlman, Oracle Magazine's Oracle Applications Implementer of the Year. "There's no easy way that Constellation could have grown like this before we implemented Oracle Applications and PeopleSoft HR on a consistent infrastructure, because previously there was such a hodgepodge of systems."

Constellation is headquartered in Maryland but growing rapidly into other states around the U.S., as well as in Canada and outside North America. Its lines of business include a regulated utility, an energy generation group, a marketing group that sells commodities, and a group that sells to commercial and industrial customers.

Perlman, who joined the company in 2002, was the company's first CIO. Prior to the creation of her position, each business unit had its own independent head of IT. What she found wasn't surprising—antiquated HR systems that couldn't integrate acquisitions easily, 13 general ledgers, and no integrated IT platform for growth. Perlman and her team spent the next two and a half years turning that around and putting an Oracle-based platform in place that could proactively contribute to the company's growth.

"We now have a common computing platform," says Perlman. "We know what servers we use, we've centralized them in two data centers, and we've consolidated on PeopleSoft for our HR system and Oracle for Financials. Now we're focused on a big productivity push and on how we can leverage all these platforms for our future growth."

Key to Constellation's success were Oracle partners such as Accenture, whom it used for the implementation of Oracle Financials. "As a manager, I think two of the most important things to understand are knowing what you don't know and bringing in the right people for the job. Accenture had big project management experience and industry experience, so we brought them in. That's how you make a project like this successful."

So how does a leader such as Perlman set the direction for such a large company with previously independent IT managers? "As with any company, a lot of decisions are politically charged," says Perlman. "But we stay focused on productivity and the numbers instead of the emotional issues. By doing that, we can create compelling business cases. If you don't show the business how a project adds value to its business, then it's a very hard fight to win."

An important objective for Perlman's organization going forward is to create a set of shared services that can be used across applications and business units.

As with her overhaul of Constellation's IT infrastructure, Perlman believes in the practical and productive approach to creating shared services. "We like to take things in very small, incremental steps rather than trying to sign up for these big projects with grandiose visions that never get done and nothing ever gets delivered."

Håkan Arpfors
PL/SQL DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Håkan Arpfors Job Title/Description: Senior Designer Company: IFS Location: Linköping, Sweden Award: PL/SQL Developer of the Year 2005

Developer understands when to use PL/SQL—and when not to.

For Oracle Magazine's PL/SQL Developer of the Year, there's a clear reason to continue using PL/SQL: It does what he needs it to do, and it does it fast. "PL/SQL is very relevant, from my perspective. Oracle has added lots of new features to PL/SQL, and since it works so close to the data you get the best performance," says Håkan Arpfors, senior designer for IFS in Sweden.

IFS is one of the world's leading providers of component-based business software and has approximately 2,300 employees in offices throughout 42 countries. IFS's industry-focused solutions are optimized for enterprise resource planning, enterprise asset management, and maintenance, repair, and overhaul. Arpfors works in the R&D division of IFS on its technology platform, IFS Foundation1, on which IFS Applications runs. Arpfors is responsible for keeping informed about new Oracle technologies and deciding which concepts or features should be used, as well as creating guidelines for developers on how to use these features.

"Our design criteria for the IFS Foundation1 platform is to keep it secure and enable good performance, as well as keeping it open, flexible, and scalable," says Arpfors. "That's what Oracle enables us to do."

IFS uses Oracle Database to store all its data and uses a combination of PL/SQL and Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), including Oracle Application Server for business logic, Web, and portals. "One of the challenges is to decide where to put the business logic—should it be put in the Java layer or in the PL/SQL layer?" says Arpfors. "We basically tend to use PL/SQL when we have lots of data that needs to be written to the database and J2EE in the layer that talks to the clients, integrations, Web screens, and portals."

It does take diligent effort for Arpfors to stay on top of all Oracle and PL/SQL developments. "I've tried to form a close relationship with some of Oracle's development teams, including the PL/SQL team," he remarks. For example, Arpfors works closely with the product manager for PL/SQL after having met him at Oracle OpenWorld a few years ago, corresponding on new feature ideas or sharing perspectives on business cases from IFS Applications as well as participating closely in the Oracle 10g beta programs.

"I try to install every new release of Oracle as quickly as possible and test out as many new features as possible, so you can provide feedback on them and decide their value in your environment," says Arpfors. "I don't think you should rely on anyone else's opinion about new features until you've tried them yourself."

For Arpfors, the benefits of continuing to leverage PL/SQL are clear. "PL/SQL is easy to learn and to use, but it's still a complete language that's very powerful as well as high-performance—even when working with lots of data," Arpfors observes. "I'm impressed with how much work Oracle continues to do on PL/SQL—for example, writing a new compiler that gives us better-optimized code with greater performance. I also like the Conditional Compilation feature in Oracle Database 10g Release 2."

Dan Chisarick
WEB SERVICES DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Dan Chisarick Job Title/Description: Architect Company: Fidelity Information Systems Location: Malvern, Pennsylvania Award: Web Services Developer of the Year 2005

Fidelity developer finds beauty in re-use.

Reuse is a wonderful thing, as Dan Chisarick, Oracle Magazine's Web Services Developer of the Year, has learned by exploring different types of sports. "I try to find the commonalities among the things I do," says Chisarick. "For example, the breathing techniques I learned by taking yoga have helped me considerably in my long-distance cycling and weight lifting."

It may also be the reason that Chisarick is drawn to Web services and helping to guide the development of more than 800 core Web services that Fidelity Information Systems is creating for its financial services customers. "In the past, developers would think about problems as individual pieces of functionality," says Chisarick. "Now we're using Web services, XML, IFX [Interactive Financial eXchange], and BPEL to build reusable services that clients can use to build their own solutions they need for their business and have complete control over them."

Key to the solutions are Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle Business Application Monitor, and Oracle JDeveloper, and their ability to work with a variety of non-Oracle databases and technologies that exist at Fidelity's customers' sites. "Oracle's solutions give us the flexibility of competing in those environments, since our application is not wholly dependent on a single database. Like Oracle, we know that our customers want to have choices."

Dennis Avondet Jr.
JAVA DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Dennis Avondet Jr. Job Title/Description: Technology Architect Company: Cerner Location: Kansas City, Missouri Award: Java Developer of the Year 2005

Cerner developer works with Oracle to add high-availability functionality to JVM.

Dennis Avondet Jr., Oracle Magazine's Java Developer of the Year, isn't focused solely on development. His role as a technology architect encompasses design and development, as well as making sure the deployed applications are able to meet some incredibly demanding usage profiles—tens of thousands of users and dozens or hundreds of clustered application servers.

Cerner is a healthcare information technology provider serving a wide range of healthcare providers and government agencies. Originally oriented toward traditional client/server solutions, Avondet is helping guide Cerner developers through the process of developing Java-based solutions. "For Cerner, moving to Java gives our clients options and opportunities," Avondet explains.

One example of Cerner's success with Java is an application for the state of Tennessee that went into production in May 2005 and is projected to have nearly 20,000 different users on the system. "We wrote the application in Java and used Oracle Application Server 10g, Oracle Grid Control 10g, and Oracle Database 10g," Avondet notes. "Oracle Application Server provides a highly secure, highly available, fault-tolerant system that meets today's healthcare demands. It's been very successful."

One of the challenges Cerner faces with large Java deployments is ensuring high availability and enabling a rolling upgrade strategy. "With the number of servers we're deploying to, you can't simply bounce between two server farms," Avondet says. "It's a very challenging problem, but one that we've solved by working with Oracle to have new functionality added to the JVM [Java virtual machine]."

Ivy Lim
PORTAL DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Ivy Lim Job Title/Description: Web Services Coordinator Company: Metropolitan Ambulance Service Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Award: Portal Developer of the Year 2005

Developer helps streamline jobs for emergency services personnel.

Ensuring timely and accurate information and transfer of information is critical in an emergency services environment.

"In the past, if a paramedic went on leave for six weeks and came back and wanted to find out what's happened during that time, he'd have to manually dig through folders or ask his friends," says Ivy Lim, Oracle Magazine's Portal Developer of the Year and Web services coordinator for the Metropolitan Ambulance Service (MAS) in Melbourne.

MAS provides emergency and nonemergency services to 3.4 million people in the metropolitan area of Melbourne. Over the past two years, Lim has led a team that has transformed information exchange and management at MAS through the use of Oracle Portal. It's the kind of task that requires not only a significant level of technical expertise and an understanding of how to integrate with other systems but also the ability to work with a wide range of users, from those with zero IT literacy to those that are highly skilled.

"Now, with Oracle Portal, instead of manually digging through folders to find out what's changed, paramedics can easily go into the portal and find out what's been updated since they left. It's a big change and a significant benefit for our paramedics and customers," says Lim.

In addition, MAS has used the portal architecture to enable a broader set of users to publish reports and information through a single portal infrastructure, enabling much broader dissemination of material. "The portal has enforced a consistent look-and-feel so the experience is a lot better for the average user and they're able to locate the information they're looking for," says Lim. "It's like a single point of entry for our staff, and it's become the most widely used tool for internal communication besides e-mail."

The portal architecture is provided through Oracle Application Server 10g and includes the maximum set of functionality, including Oracle Discoverer, Reports, and Forms. In addition, MAS uses Oracle Financials and Oracle Database extensively.

The results are impressive and have streamlined a wide range of previously manual or complex business processes. For example, with more than 1,000 paramedics (and 300 other staff) working around the clock and handling more than 1,000 cases a day from 100 branch offices, simply scheduling workers and ensuring appropriate staffing levels becomes a critical and complex task. In the past, MAS had published a spreadsheet each month with the forecast rosters, or employee schedule. Now, with Oracle Portal and Reports, employees and managers are able to generate reports from the rosters system on a daily basis and see updates easily as the schedules change.

"One of the strongest points to Oracle Portal is its integration with the other products and applications we use," says Lim. "We still have a lot of disparate systems that require separate logons, and we hope to combine them into a single logon through Oracle Portal someday."

Wez Furlong
PHP DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Wez Furlong Job Title/Description: Senior Systems Engineer Company: OmniTI Computer Consulting Location: Columbia, Maryland Award: PHP Developer of the Year 2005

Patch work pulls developer into PHP.

"I got involved with PHP in 2001 because I needed to write a patch to enable SSL support and modify how PHP handled files and network resources," says Wez Furlong, Oracle Magazine's PHP Developer of the Year. "It was a big patch that's used by many people now because it really made things easier."

Furlong took his PHP expertise to OmniTI, which builds a highperformance message transfer agent (MTA), Ecelerity, used to power the e-mail operations of service providers and enterprises such as MoveOn.org. Furlong also helps OmniTI to solve difficult Web problems for clients such as Feedster.com, UltraDNS, and Sleepycat Software. More recently he's been working with software company and Oracle partner Zend to help redesign the Oracle driver for greater performance and higher reliability, as well as working on PHP Data Objects (PDO), a uniform data access layer.

"Historically PHP developers have not been as skilled as traditional enterprise developers, but we're now at the point where you can create some serious applications with PHP and Oracle," comments Furlong. "I think Oracle's a real workhorse—really strong and very reliable. Oracle's commitment to PHP is very reassuring and puts the language in a much stronger position."

Tony Jedlinski
ORACLE HTML DB DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Tony Jedlinski Job Title/Description: Vice President of Administration and Warehouse Operations Company: Roman Location: Addison, Illinois Award: Oracle HTML DB Developer of the Year 2005

Versatile developer leverages flexibility of Oracle HTML DB.

"Oracle HTML DB is our first choice for developing new applications," says Tony Jedlinski, Oracle Magazine's Oracle HTML DB Developer of the Year, a vice president of giftware distributor Roman, and executive vice president and vice president of Web operations for the Independent Oracle Users Group. "We find that users and developers alike enjoy the intuitive Web browser interface and the speed with which we are able to make changes and add functionality."

Faced with the same challenges as other IT groups—keeping costs down while continuing to meet new business requirements—Roman's IT department turned to Oracle HTML DB, dramatically increasing productivity, Jedlinski says. "With HTML DB, you can develop applications from anywhere—using only a Web browser," notes Jedlinski. "I developed an entire application for our company while attending a conference 2,000 miles away."

Roman's IT department has used Oracle since version 5, building all its applications in-house. "Having homegrown applications allows Roman to respond quickly to changing business conditions and differentiates us from our competitors. Now, with HTML DB, we have an excellent tool to extend and maintain these important business tools," says Jedlinski.

Yves Coene
XML DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Yves Coene (and team) Job Title/Description: Project Manager Company: SPACEBEL s.a. Location: Brussels, Belgium Award: XML Developer of the Year 2005

SPACEBEL developers conquer the final frontier with the help of XML

XML is looking skyward, with the help of SPACEBEL, a Brussels-based company that develops software for a wide range of space applications, including onboard data handling software for satellites, mission control applications, and software for the International Space Station.

"We used Oracle BPEL Process Manager to create the Service Support Environment (SSE) at the European Space Agency," says Oracle Magazine's XML Developer of the Year, Yves Coene. "SSE is an XML- and BPEL-based solution that allows service providers to create, deliver, and monitor value-added services related to earth observation satellite images and data, through the use of an open portal."

For example, government agencies might use these services to monitor water pollution, fire risk in forests, avalanche risks in Switzerland, or oil spills in the North Sea.

Coene gives credit to his team and their ability to research new technologies such as XML for the success of SSE. "We needed a way to create a dynamic system, where new services and workflows could be deployed in real time," says Coene. "Through the use of XML we were able to offer an internet-based system that enables companies to publish their services and make them available to their end customers."

A key element of the solution was to use XML and BPEL to allow users to easily create and publish new services, says Coene. "We have an open system, so that the moment you have permission to access the system you can use tools to develop new workflows and publish and monitor them. I believe it's quite original."

Joseph R. Seppi
SPATIAL DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Joseph R. Seppi Job Title/Description: Special Projects Director Company: Michael Baker Jr. Location: Charleston, West Virginia Award: Spatial Developer of the Year 2005

Developer brings thoughtful approach and open standards to spatial mapping.

Just because geographic and spatial data have specialized data storage requirements doesn't mean that you can't build an open, flexible system and reasonably priced solution with them. "We selected Oracle Spatial because it's scalable, because it's compatible, because it's open, and because it was cost-effective in the long run," says Joe Seppi, special projects director responsible for overseeing complex geospatial projects for Michael Baker Jr., a professional services company servicing large enterprise customers in the government, utilities, and telecom sectors.

Seppi, Oracle Magazine's Spatial Developer of the Year, and his team are in the middle of a five-year project for West Virginia, using Oracle Spatial to build a statewide mapping and addressing database for enhanced 911 services. "We have terabytes of spatial data and use Oracle Map Viewer-based technologies running on Oracle Application Server to give counties and state agencies the ability to edit the database graphically—adding new street centerlines, new building points, or whatever is being developed in the state," says Seppi.

While Seppi believes that Oracle Spatial provides a solid foundation for building enterprise geospatial applications, he also believes that it complements existing geographic information systems (GISs). "Oracle Spatial is something that will allow other GIS software vendors to benefit from broader use of spatial information," says Seppi. "We're using Oracle Spatial to store the base maps and frameworks that everyone will use and then exposing it to GIS clients in an open-standards-based format."

Stany Blanvalet and Thomas Ligny
BPEL DEVELOPERS OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Stany Blanvalet and Thomas Ligny Job Title/Description: Technical Project Leader at Belgacom, now Consultant with JAISY sprl (www.jaisy.be); and Consultant for Belgacom, with MicroResearch (wwwmicroresearch.be), respectively Company: Belgacom SA Location: Brussels, Belgium Award: BPEL Developers of the Year 2005

Developers master communicating in a new language.

"BPEL is very important for integration," says Stany Blanvalet, a cowinner of Oracle Magazine's BPEL Developer of the Year award with Thomas Ligny. "BPEL allows companies to integrate lots of different back-end systems and equipment with a flexible and standard workflow."

Ligny and Blanvalet worked together at Belgacom SA, Belgium's communications company, to identify how Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) could help them streamline their business and which BPEL solutions to use. With Blanvalet and Ligny's input, Belgacom chose Oracle BPEL Process Manager and is currently using it in several projects.

The largest one is the automation of DSL line activations and configurations—a complex process that frequently needs to be modified. "Using BPEL makes it easier for us to maintain the system; before, it was written in Java and other languages and was not integrated," says Ligny. "With BPEL you can define all the business processes in the same language, so it's easier to maintain and monitor."

Another attribute that makes BPEL a compelling solution for automating business processes such as DSL activations is the fact that Belgacom developers can be very productive with it. "BPEL is a very easy language to learn and use, so developers can learn it quite fast and start developing BPEL applications quickly," Ligny observes.

Jim Lombardi
.NET DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Jim Lombardi Job Title/Description: Director of Technology for Textual Systems Company: Thomson Financial Location: Boston, Massachusetts Award: .NET Developer of the Year 2005

Director leverages legacy systems.

For leading financial services organizations such as Thomson Financial, delivering relevant and timely information to customers is a critical component of staying competitive.

It's also a critical part of the job for Jim Lombardi, Oracle Magazine's .NET Developer of the Year. One of Lombardi's tasks over the past two years has been to consolidate several legacy product databases containing text-based financial information, such as research reports and public filings, into a single state-of-the-art product database that can be accessed by a wide variety of client-facing systems that Thomson Financial develops and sells.

Although Thomson Financial has standardized on Windows-based systems for its presentation and middle-tier layers, it decided to use Oracle9i Database Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) with DataGuard as a component of this high-volume application. Lombardi also used Oracle's ODP.NET to enable the front- and middle-tier Windows-based services to access the financial information consolidated in the Oracle database.

"The Oracle pieces were never really a challenge. They all work where they're supposed to work," says Lombardi. "Having a component like ODP .NET that's actually written by Oracle in conjunction with Microsoft and that provides high performance and stable, reliable connectivity between our .NET infrastructure and our Oracle database is really invaluable to us."

Euro Beinat
RFID ADOPTER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Euro Beinat Job Title/Description: Managing Director Company: Geodan Mobile Solutions Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands Award: RFID Adopter of the Year 2005

Beniat uses RFID to redesign operational systems.

For Euro Beinat, Oracle Magazine's RFID Adopter of the Year, radio frequency identification (RFID) isn't just about automating business processes. "RFID makes it possible to redesign management systems," says Beinat, managing director of Geodan Mobile Solutions. "Although many companies consider it to be mainly a technical issue, over time it will change into a management issue because it has a huge potential to impact the way we do operational management.

"RFID allows us to track items in a simple way without interfering with the normal work process," says Beinat. "RFID allows us to improve the quality of service, reduce costs, and increase predictability."

Software maker Geodan develops solutions for real-time location awareness, relying on technologies such as RFID to create visibility into business processes for managing everything from parcels to cars to medical equipment. For its solutions, Geodan uses Oracle Database and Oracle Application Server.

"The spatial component of Oracle Database is essential for us," says Beinat. "With Oracle it's easy to link all the information that comes in from processes via RFID and other sensors to the spatial information. Oracle's strong point is that it's good at working with RFID and spatial, which is unique."

Stephan Fischli
SOA ADOPTER OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Stephan Fischli Job Title/Description: Chief Executive Officer Company: itp commerce Location: Berne, Switzerland Award: SOA Adopter of the Year 2005

CEO links SOA and business requirements.

For Stephan Fischli, Oracle Magazine's SOA Adopter of the Year and CEO of itp commerce in Berne, the biggest benefit of service-oriented architecture (SOA) doesn't come from the technical advantage that services provide but from the opportunity to use higher-level, business-oriented models to drive and manage the services to meet business requirements.

"BPEL is the standard that will be used in an SOA to describe and execute processes; thus we are implicitly involved in SOA projects," says Fischli. "You can lay BPEL over the top of your process and SOA, and it's very easy to integrate and create a business process composed of individual services within the SOA."

itp commerce is the creator and sales channel for Process Modeler for Microsoft Visio, a modeling suite that helps IT and business users document and instrument business processes. It has about 2,000 downloads a month, with many large customers such as Lufthansa and Fuji Xerox.

Process Modeler exports BPEL into Oracle BPEL Process Manager, enabling companies to go from model to production in one step. "So it's a direct integration from a very abstract business model down to a technical model that can be deployed by Oracle BPEL Process Manager," says Fischli. "From my process-centric view, Oracle has one of the first and best implementations of BPEL."

Philip Smart
INTEGRATION ARCHITECT OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Philip Smart Job Title/Description: Senior Manager, Application Development Company: Tupperware Location: Orlando, Florida Award: Integration Architect of the Year 2005

Architect manages integration in the face of disaster.

Philip Smart, Oracle Magazine's Integration Architect of the Year, and his development team have dealt with near-catastrophe during a massive migration. In the fall of 2004, Hurricane Charlie ripped off the roof and flooded Tupperware's application development building, destroying all of its project paperwork and white boards. After a quick relocation to another building, Tupperware migrated its sales force (approximately 90,000 consultants)—including millions of MBOX-formatted e-mails and documents—to a new, integrated platform based on Oracle Collaboration Suite, Oracle Financials, Oracle Database, and Oracle Application Server running on Linux RAC.

The new application provides a unified workspace for tens of thousands of Tupperware salespeople, integrating everything from sales order entry applications to discussion boards, e-mail, calendar, files, team pages, and even salesperson-created custom e-commerce sites.

"Although I was nominated as Oracle Integration Architect, I would like to think that these awards represent the achievements of the IT department rather than one individual," says Smart.

Key to Tupperware's success has been its close relationship with Oracle. "Oracle provided us access to key people, necessary to extend the functionality of Oracle Collaboration Suite," says Smart. "Successful implementations of any software package are always a collaborative effort."

Bert Dondertman
SECURITY ARCHITECT OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Bert Dondertman Job Title/Description: Senior Consultant Company: Transfer Solutions BV Location: Leerdam, The Netherlands Award: Security Architect of the Year 2005

Consultant brings new level of security to customers.

For Transfer Solutions, offering more-secure solutions is both a trend and an important part of winning new projects. "Our customers are definitely more concerned about the security of their data and applications," says Bert Dondertman, Oracle Magazine's Security Architect of the Year. "As a result, identity management and securing applications is more important to our business." The company recently participated in such a project for the Employers' Insurance Organisation (UWV) in the Netherlands that will encompass approximately 3,000 users by 2006, developing an infrastructure using Oracle Application Server components that enables secure access to individual Web applications on different platforms.

"We use several components of Oracle Application Server and Oracle Identity Management, including Oracle Internet Directory, Single Sign-On, synchronization with the Microsoft Active Directory platform, and integration with Windows Native Authentication (Kerberos) on the browser platform," says Dondertman. "The users benefit because they have one identity and don't have to separately log into multiple applications. The benefit for us in using Oracle to manage the security is that it's already a standard component and we only have to configure the component, instead of developing specialized code. It's much quicker."

Tony Miller
HIGH AVAILABILITY ARCHITECT OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Tony Miller Job Title/Description: Enterprise Information Manager Company: Ohio Savings Bank Location: Cleveland, Ohio Award: High Availability Architect of the Year 2005

Architect develops zero-data-loss system, gains peace of mind.

Oracle's high-availability solution was the answer for Ohio Savings Bank, one of the nation's 20 largest mortgage lenders. "Information is our business," says Tony Miller, enterprise information manager and Oracle Magazine's High Availability Architect of the Year. "We needed to satisfy the requirements of zero data loss, having information always available, and having an environment our DBAs could manage and maintain proactively."

The production cluster is a five-node Oracle 10g Linux cluster, which Miller mirrors with Oracle Data Guard to a five-node standby site. "We use Oracle Data Guard to its fullest," says Miller. "We're in maximum availability protection mode, and Oracle handles everything."

For Ohio Savings Bank, its investment in high availability and grid computing has paid off, with 165 percent ROI and a project payback time of 17 months. While the financial results are impressive, the effect on Ohio's DBAs has been important. "Quality of life for the DBAs really changes as you move further along in high-availability technologies," concludes Miller.

Aris Prassinos
CONTENT MANAGEMENT ARCHITECT OF THE YEAR

Winner Specs Name: Aris Prassinos Job Title/Description: Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff Company: Motorola Location: Anaheim, California Award: Content Management Architect of the Year 2005

Technician's content management system needs no management.

For Oracle Magazine's Content Management Architect of the Year, Aris Prassinos, finding a database that could handle and integrate diverse content for Motorola's automated fingerprint identification system wasn't the only challenge.

"We needed a database that could natively handle XML and index and search XML data, in addition to handling binary input," says Prassinos. "But since we sell to law enforcement agencies that don't have a DBA on-site, we really needed to make sure that it could run without anyone having to monitor it. That's why we chose Oracle. It can handle both image and XML data and, at the same time, operate without the constant need of a DBA."

No small accomplishment for a system that holds anywhere from 1 to 10 terabytes of data and is deployed to police departments and government agencies around the world. In addition to storing fingerprint and facial images, Motorola's system stores a range of related information about a person, from demographic and incident XML data to scanned forms and word-processing documents.

Of course, being able to search through all these different types of content is critical. "We use a combination of Oracle XML and Oracle Text to index the data," Prassinos notes. "We like it because it's transparen