[Oracle on the Brain]: January 2010

Friday, January 22, 2010

Oracle Wins EU Approval to Purchase Sun Microsystems

Bloomberg: Oracle Corp. received approval from European Union regulators to buy Sun Microsystems Inc., overcoming one of the last regulatory hurdles to the planned $7.4 billion transaction.

The European Commission cleared the acquisition after Oracle addressed competition concerns about its acquisition of the open-source database MySQL, which Sun bought in 2008. Oracle said on Dec. 14 that it will boost investment in MySQL and is committed to keeping MySQL’s open-source licensing platform.

I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned,” European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement today in Brussels. “Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products.”

Oracle, the second-biggest software maker, aims to squeeze $1.5 billion in operating profit from Sun in the first year after the deal closes in the next few weeks. Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said in September that the delay was breeding customer uncertainty, causing Sun to lose $100 million a month as companies held off purchases.

Gaye Hudson, a spokeswoman for Oracle in Reading, U.K., did not respond to a message left on her mobile phone.

‘Competitive Constraint’

The commission had threatened to block the deal because of concerns that Oracle might be able to eliminate MySQL as a competitor. The regulator, which said that MySQL is the “leading” open-source database, investigated whether Oracle’s purchase of MySQL would remove a “competitive constraint.”

MySQL had an estimated market share of 0.2 percent and $40 million in revenue in 2008, according to IDC, a research firm in Framingham, Massachusetts. Click here to read the full article >>

McKinsey Quarterly: The promise of multichannel retailing

McKinsey: If one certainty about economic downturns is that they end, another is that traditional retailers recover slowly. In the United States, for example, only 25 percent of drugstores, 40 percent of mass retailers, and 60 percent of specialty-apparel retailers returned to pre-recession growth rates within five years of the 2001 downturn.1 That’s time retailers can’t afford. The period when an economy emerges from a recession is pivotal to determining retail’s winners and losers, and our research suggests one of the keys to securing this success is to maintain investments throughout the business cycle. We believe that for companies coming out of the current recession, investing to build robust multichannel capabilities provides an attractive opportunity for retailers to set themselves apart from their peers.

For all the difficulty retailers have experienced in the past year, online sales have continued to be a bright spot: while overall sales have generally fallen in the United States, online sales have actually been increasing since the start of 2009.2 In fact, the percentage of total sales made online continues to increase, and our research also shows that more and more consumers are using the Internet to investigate products they later buy in stores. By 2011, we believe the Internet will play a role in more than 45 percent of US retail sales, as either a research tool or a sales channel. What’s more, consumers who shop across a number of channels—physical stores, the Internet, and catalogs—spend about four times more annually than those who shop in just one (exhibit). Companies that get multichannel retailing right can enjoy larger profit margins and yearly revenue growth more than 100 basis points higher than companies that don’t. Click here to read the full article >>

11 Things to Know about 11gR2

Candidly, the following slide show could just as well be written in Swahili and it would not make any less sense to me. But for "those in the know", I imagine this information is quite helpful, and maybe even a little cool...

View more presentations from afa reg.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

CIO Survey: 2010 IT Priorities | Upcoming Events

Gotta be honest here, I'm not sorry to see 2009 in the rear view mirror. Not so much for what kind of year 2009 was, but rather for the kind of year 2010 hopes to be, namely from an Oracle standpoint. I mean, how exciting is it to see the gigantic leaps and bounds in technology right now? Especially where it comes to helping businesses cut costs, "Do more with less", while at the same time actually improving performance and productivity. How cool is that?

Maybe you're already enjoying some of these very benefits, already unleashed in 2009. Maybe you haven't drank the proverbial Kool Aid yet. Maybe you're so bogged down with workload right now - trying to keep your systems running; trying to keep people off your back; hoping your kids still remember what you look like - that you haven't even had two seconds to kick the tires on new technology.

Whatever the case, you're not alone. Not by a long shot.

According to a 2009 survey conducted by Deloitte, cutting IT costs remains the number one priority for the CIO's that were polled. This diagram further compliments the results of that survey (click on the image to enlarge). Business cost reduction and IT cost reduction rank 1 and 2, respectively, followed closely by Information Management (um, Advanced Compression, hello?).

The list goes on to then rank Security and revising current IT strategies as next priorities, with Compliance and replacing legacy systems among the remaining initiatives.

So why is this important to you? Because this is EXACTLY what our Oracle solutions revolve around: Helping businesses run more effectively, efficiently, while at the same time improving the bottom line.

Folks, if you haven't had an Oracle strategy session recently, then you're really missing out on the opportunity to learn about all of new technologies than can help you accomplish your IT goals for 2010. From all the advancements via 11gR2, to industry leading BI, SAM, and storage (Information Lifecycle Management) solutions, to the mind-blowing GoldenGate technology - Oracle is the #1 business software company on the planet, and it might be time for a reminder why.

Upcoming Oracle Events

Save the Date: Oracle Financial Services Industry Forum Thursday, February 11, 2010 | New York Marriott Downtown New York, NY

Click here to register or call 1.800.820.5592 ext. 7119.

Please join Oracle and our partners for the Financial Services Industry Summit.

Financial Services Organizations are transforming to meet the increased regulatory pressures, greater market uncertainty and rising demand for innovative customer service. Organizations need to continue to transform to be more competitive and efficient in today’s marketplace.

Oracle and our partners invite you to attend the Oracle Financial Services Forum where we will discuss critical challenges being faced by the industry. As the world’s largest provider of enterprise software solutions, Oracle is in a unique position to help Financial Services organizations address today’s mission critical challenges.

This event will provide networking and industry thought leadership. The agenda includes keynotes, breakout's, and hands-on workshops including:

>> Keynote by Charles Phillips, President of Oracle Corporation
>> Perspectives from industry strategists and thought leaders on critical challenges being faced within the industry
>> Real-world best practices and lessons from leading financial service organizations
>> Networking opportunities with other financial service organization attendees, the Oracle partner community and Oracle experts

Join Oracle at NRF 2010!
January 10-13 | Jacob Javits Center

This event is fast approaching and we'd love to see you there. Click here to see the full invite.

Oracle Business Intelligence Deep Dives
January 12-14 | Video Conference

As previously advised, we had outstanding attendance for the Oracle Business Intelligence Virtual Classroom on December 8th, so again, thanks for attending if you had the opportunity to do so.

That said, whether you attended the initial high level presentation or not, as a continuation of the BI Virtual Classroom, we are offering three follow-up product deep dive sessions:

Deep Dive #1: Oracle BI Analytic Applications
Deep Dive #2: Oracle BI Publisher
Deep Dive #3: Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus

These are 90 minute sessions consisting of 30 minutes of product presentation and 45 minutes for demonstration, following a live Q&A.

Learn how companies like Facebook, EMC, Shopzilla, MassMutual and Virgin Media are using Oracle Business Intelligence to improve their query, reporting, analytics, and modeling capabilities, which are so critical to business performance and profitability.

If you are interested in learning more about Oracle's BI solutions and would like to see demonstrations of the products, please let me know which classroom(s) would be of interest to you and we’ll book accordingly.

Session Schedule:

>> BI Analytic Applications Jan. 12 at 2:00 pm EST
>> BI Publisher Jan. 13th at 2:00 pm EST
>> OBI EE Plus Jan 14th at 2:00 pm EST

Thanks again for your continued partnership with Oracle, and please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns.