Oracle Universal Content Management
Manages documents, images, Web pages, and almost any type of electronic free form content. Provides services to store, version, convert, repurpose, and find content in an online digital library. Includes add-ons focused on creating Web sites, setting retention rules on documents, and integrating with document editors. Its main strength is the enterprise management of metadata models and choice lists for metadata fields.
Vice President, Server Product Development
Location: Eden Prairie, Minnesota
Product: Oracle Universal Content Management
Q: Why is Oracle Universal Content Management innovative?
A: It's delivered as a core foundation plus a series of add-ons that provide additional services and behavior. The innovation is in how this is done. Add-ons or components, including ones written by customers, can have a very invasive and targeted integration with any part of the content server or with any other add-on. For example, if there is a small section of a particular Web page whose behavior you wish to change, it is almost always possible to change the behavior of that one small part without impacting the behavior of the rest of the page. If another component wishes to change another small part on the same page, the two components won't collide.
Q: What makes the product unique?
A: Oracle's product is truly universal. Many competing vendors have records management functionality as a separately installed product and then have an integration package between the records management solution and their document repository. Likewise, competing vendors have Web site products that take document feeds from their document repository. Our competitive advantage is that both records management and Web site management run inside our document repository, allowing for a tight integration. The product also simplifies maintenance and application deployment and usage. It makes it easier to design custom applications. If you create an application using our repository to show documents, you can use the same API and connection to do Web site management as well.
Another differentiating feature is our ability to convert Microsoft Word documents into Web pages in a way that makes the pages deployable into a standard Web site. This allows for rich output with fine-tune control over many aspects of the conversion. For example, it's possible, using the right styles in Microsoft Word, to create a survey form, and then have the form deployed as an online form where the data can be captured as the form is filled out. This allows anybody to easily create simple form-entry applications using only Microsoft Word.
Q: How do you think Oracle's innovative culture benefits our customers?
A: Innovation creates risk as well as opportunity. In a highly competitive environment it is critical to not fall behind competitors and lose your productivity edge. Using software from an innovative company can reduce the risk and increase the opportunity.
Q: Can you think of an example where Oracle has helped one of its customers become more innovative?
A: I have heard from one customer that creating an efficient mechanism for managing their electronic content has made their workforce more productive. A lot of time is wasted trying to find the right piece of information for the particular problem at hand. Too much useful information is distributed in random, disorganized silos in a way that makes it hard to find, hard to verify its accuracy or relevance, and hard to enhance or clarify.
Q: What innovative technology are you excited about right now?
A: I have always been attracted to the complex problem of organizing, classifying, editing, and managing an information store created by the direct input of a large group of creative individuals. As an example, I'm excited by how Wikis have been adopted so quickly and pervasively in some companies. But I view Wikis as only a start because there is an urgent need to formally manage at least a subset of the content and bring some sanity to all the Wikis that are popping up like weeds.
Q: Who do you respect as an innovative person, outside of Oracle?
A: Steve Jobs. Not because I think that he himself is one of the most innovative people. Instead, he did something incredibly hard and even more useful. He made a large group of people be more innovative.
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