Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said: “I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned. Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalise important assets and create new and innovative products.”

Oracle is a supplier of business software, including middleware (i.e. software that connects software components applications), database software, enterprise application software and related services.

Sun provides network computing infrastructure solutions that include computer systems, software, storage and services. In 2008, Sun acquired the open source database, MySQL.

The Commission’s in-depth investigation, opened on 3 September 2009 assessed whether the acquisition of the world’s leading open source database MySQL by Oracle, the leading proprietary database vendor, would lead to a significant impediment of effective competition within the EEA. The database market is highly concentrated with the three main proprietary database vendors – Oracle, IBM and Microsoft – accounting for approximately 85% of the market in terms of revenue.

Although Sun’s share of the database market in terms of revenue is low, as users of MySQL can download and use the database for free, given its open source nature, the Commission’s investigation confirmed MySQL’s position as the leading open source database. The Commission’s investigation therefore focussed on the nature and extent of the competitive constraint that MySQL currently exerts on Oracle and whether this would be affected by the proposed transaction.

The Commission’s in-depth investigation showed that although MySQL and Oracle compete in certain parts of the database market, they are not close competitors in others, such as the high-end segment.

Given the open source nature of MySQL, the Commission also assessed Oracle’s ability and incentive to remove the constraint exerted by MySQL after the merger and the extent to which this constraint could, if necessary, be replaced by other actors on the database market.

The Commission’s investigation showed that another open source database, PostgreSQL, is considered by many database users to beor approximately 85% of the market in terms of revenue.

Although Sun’s share of the database market in terms of revenue is low, as users of MySQL can download and use the database for free, given its open source nature, the Commission’s investigation confirmed MySQL’s position as the leading open source database. The Commission’s investigation therefore focussed on the nature and extent of the competitive constraint that MySQL currently exerts on Oracle and whether this would be affected by the proposed transaction.

The Commission’s in-depth investigation showed that although MySQL and Oracle compete in certain parts of the database market, they are not close competitors in others, such as the high-end segment.

Given the open source nature of MySQL, the Commission also assessed Oracle’s ability and incentive to remove the constraint exerted by MySQL after the merger and the extent to which this constraint could, if necessary, be replaced by other actors on the database market.

The Commission’s investigation showed that another open source database, PostgreSQL, is considered by many database users to be a credible alternative to MySQL and could be expected to replace to some extent the competitive force currently exerted by MySQL on the database market. In addition, the Commission found that ‘forks’ (branches of the MySQL code base), which are legally possible given MySQL’s open source nature, might also develop in future to exercise a competitive constraint on Oracle in a sufficient and timely manner. Given the specificities of the open source software industry, the Commission also took into account Oracle’s public announcement of 14 December 2009 of a series of pledges to customers, users and developers of MySQL concerning issues such as the continued release of future versions of MySQL under the GPL (General Public Licence) open source licence. Oracle has already taken action to implement some of its pledges by making binding offers to third parties who currently have a licensing contract for MySQL with Sun to amend contracts. This is likely to allow third parties to continue to develop storage engines to be integrated with MySQL and to extend the functionality of MySQL.

The Commission also examined the potential impact of Oracle’s acquisition of the intellectual property (IP) rights connected to the Java development platform in the context of the proposed transaction.

It found that Oracle’s ability to deny its competitors access to important IP rights would be limited by the functioning of the Java Community Process (JCP) which is a participative process for developing and revising Java technology specifications involving numerous other important players in the IT industry, including Oracle’s competitors.

The Commission also found that Oracle would not have the incentives to restrict its competitors’ access to the Java IP rights as this would jeopardise the gains derived from broad adoption of the Java platform and therefore the proposed transaction would raise no competition concerns in respect of the licensing of IP rights connected with Java.

The Commission also examined the potential effects arising from the proposed transaction on the market for middleware and in the ‘IT stack’, where the merger would strengthen Oracle’s presence. It concluded that no competition concerns would arise in these areas in the light of the merged entity’s market shares and prevailing competition in the markets.

More information on the case is available at:

http://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/index/m110.html#m_5529

Smart companies know that corporate excellence is the new hallmark of competitiveness. That means managing your operations more efficiently, embracing transparency and sustainability in all your business practices, and delivering breakthrough innovation where and when it matters most.

New Times Demand a New Strategy

In the wake of the financial crisis, businesses around the globe are being called upon to redefine their role in society, rebuilding trust and restructuring operations from the ground up to meet our planet’s most pressing problems.
Join Oracle and Partners for our Virtual Trade show to understand why corporate excellence is redefining competitiveness.

The Presentations
There will be four presentations over two hour-long sessions – so delegates can attend one presentation per session before making use of the networking facilities and chat rooms for the remainder of the event. Presentations will be available On Demand for 3 months after the live event.

Presentations will last 30 minutes followed by Q&A for a further 30 minutes.

Delivering Value through Human Capital Management
Are you looking for ways to increase employee retention and increase productivity? Have you made a strategic decision to improve morale and grow the skills of your workforce? Do you need insight into the workforce in order to align with organisational objectives?

This session will discuss how Oracle Human Capital Management solutions deliver value to our customers. You will discover how you can reduce operational costs and increase effectiveness by:

• empowering the workforce with Self Service;
• streamlining workforce service delivery with HelpDesk for HR;
• gaining better insight into your workforce using HR Analytics;
• identifying key talent & segmenting accordingly using Integrated Talent Management;
• keeping productivity high with employees that are more engaged, resulting from improved communication and the ability to provide feedback.

Smart Strategies for the Recovery: Customer Relationship Management
The pressures of the recent economic situation and new disruptive technologies have changed customer behaviour and expectations. On one hand this has created opportunities for the organisations that can best manage customer relationships during the recovery, but it also represents a fundamental challenge for those organisations that have not adapted to the needs of this ‘new customer’.

This presentation will highlight a number of strategies that an organisation can implement in order to meet these challenges, and how Oracle’s CRM solutions are the enabling technology for making this possible.

The session is a ‘must-see’ for any business executive, (private or public sector), needing to understand how their organisation can rapidly implement customer treatment strategies to achieve goals with respect to customer loyalty and satisfaction, service effectiveness and efficiency, and improved sales productivity, revenues and margins.

Enterprise Performance Management: The Next Competitive Edge
Top performing organisations are able to free up $2.9 billion more in working capital than the typical Global 1000 organization. But, as Accenture pointed out, the winning companies during the last downturn did not just cut costs; they cut the right costs. To do this requires companies to be smart, agile and aligned.

You need financial and business insight - and to share it with all parts of the company and beyond to ensure stakeholder investment.
You need to monitor continuously - and if you do so effectively, you can see opportunities and problems and take action on them.
You need to plan flexibly - focusing on rolling forecasts that are updated frequently to keep your plan in line with current business conditions.
You need to re-think your strategy - using financial modelling to identify where to invest and divest, and using profitability management to focus on your most profitable customers, products, markets and activities.

And if you can do all this, you can achieve what we call management excellence – the next way to deliver your competitive advantage. To hear how in more detail, join this session on the seven imperatives to achieving smart performance management, and take away some clear actions for your company to achieve that competitive edge.

Smart Cities: Public Sector Presentation
With tax revenues and budgets down as a result of recession and citizen expectations continuing to rise, leaders in urban public service provision need to think now about how to make the move to more joined up, citizen-centric service.

Many local authorities are already beginning to consolidate services and take the first steps towards services that are built around the citizen needs – and are more cost effective, efficient and transparent as a result.

At Oracle, we want to facilitate the debate about the future of service delivery in cities: to start to help public service leaders understand exactly what this future of integrated service provision looks like, what the benefits will be and how to take the right steps forward. This session will set out a vision of urban public service delivery based on a single platform that brings together all channels and departments to show how IT can be utilised to tackle the challenges of today and tomorrow.

Details on http://events.unisfair.com/index.jsp?eid=482&seid=25.

Executive Summary

• Oracle is a Leader along with IBM, Microsoft, EMC Documentum and Open Text.
• For the first time ever, Oracle has surpassed Open Text and EMC Documentum in this annual evaluation by Gartner.
• As compared to 2008, Oracle and Microsoft made significant moves up the axis.

Gartner notes that “Oracle has been expanding its ECM market footprint while building content management functionality into its enterprise business applications. Oracle ECM Suite includes document management, WCM, records management, imaging and process management. Though it does have transactional content management functionality — including synergies with its own ERP and CRM applications — Oracle is widely considered to be more of a collaborative and contextual content vendor.”

Oracle Strengths include:

• “Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM) is a mature, well-integrated product suite that provides “productized” integrations with Oracle applications. With Oracle Fusion Middleware, it has integration with a broad set of complementary technologies, such as BPM, BI, portals and enterprise search.”
• “The size and capabilities of Oracle’s sales force, product development and support organizations give it significant opportunities to grow its content management business and increase its market share. Sales incentives for perfornt moves up the axis.

To detail the Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM) integration with Oracle applications, please notice Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter for Enterprise Content Management provides integrations between Oracle E-Business Suite and:

• Oracle Imaging and Process Management, allowing document processing workflow tasks and related images associated with Oracle E-Business Suite business processes to be easily invoked, viewed and acted on, and;
• Oracle Universal Content Management, allowing documents related to the current E-Business Suite context to be easily accessed and attached via the Managed Attachments user interface.

We provide here some details about the Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter for Enterprise Content Management (Managed Attachments Solution):

The Oracle E-Business Suite Adapter for Universal Content Management (UCM) allows E-Business Suite users to attach, scan, and retrieve attachments stored in a UCM Content Server repository. A UCM repository enables users throughout an enterprise to view, collaborate on, and retire content, ensuring that content is secure, accurate, and up-to-date.

With this adapter, UCM documents are listed as managed attachments to E-Business Suite forms in a customizable screen launched from the E-Business Suite Zoom menu. For example, an E-Business Suite user displays an Employee record, invokes the Managed Attachment functionality, and attaches a passport image and supporting identity documents.

Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES) is integrated with Oracle E-Business Suite applications Releases R11.5.10, 12.0.4, 12.0.6 and Release 12.1

Solution components

Oracle E-business Suite is certified with Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (SES) 10.1.8.4. You will need to install the following components to implement the Enterprise Search solution.

• SES 10.1.8.4
• Oracle E-Business Suite Connector: Installed along with SES.
• Oracle E-Business Suite interoperability patch – only for R11i10 CU2 or R12.0.4 customers.
• Search Modeler V1.1

What’s Search Modeler?

A new web based tool named Search Modeler V1.1 is available for E-Business Suite customers.  Search Modeler V1.1 is certified with 11i as well as r12 releases.

Search Modeler is an easy to use web based tool that allows users to create search solutions tailored to their business needs. Users can create search solutions for any E-Business Suite product or products. In most cases users can also include custom application objects as part of search solution, if users have registered custom applications as part of application object library.

For more details on Search Modeler 1.1 please refer to My Oracle Support Knowledge Document 781366.1.

Resources

See the following My Oracle Support Knowledge Documents for additional information.

• Installing Oracle E-Business Suite Secure Enterprise Search, Release 12 462377.1
• Oracle E-Business Suite Secure Enterprise Search Best Practices, Release 12 744820.1
• Oracle E-Business Suite Secure Enterprise Search Troubleshooting Guidelines, Release 12 726239.1
• Oracle E-Business Suite Secure Enterprise Search Documentation Update, Release 12 551247.1
• Oracle E-Business Suite Secure Enterprise Search Release Notes, Release 12.1.1 566097.1
• Oracle E-Business Suite Secure Enterprise Search Release Notes, Release 12.0.6 740499.1

An Oracle E-Business Suite Secure Enterprise Search Forum to facilitate help, questions regarding the product or implementation is available on http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=262.

Link for information on external Oracle page and Oracle Technology Network has been updated with the release information. You can access the external link from http://otn.oracle.com/products/oses/partner.

Dirk wrote an excellent developer’s guide to Oracle UPK version 3.5 (and its predecessor, OnDemand version 9.1, with which it shares 95% of its functionality). It covers all aspects of UPK’s functionality, and explains how to get the most out of these features in order to build high-quality training exercises that will ensure the most effective knowledge transfer possible for your trainees. Documentation on UPK has been (until the publication of this book) almost nonexistent (consisting solely of the Content Development Guide shipped with the software), and training can be expensive.

This book fills the documentation gap by providing developer-friendly, visuallyappealing, and easy-to-read documentation on the core functionality of UPK. It fills the training gap by taking a guided approach to this functionality, introducing new concepts and functionality with each chapter, and building on the knowledge gained in the previous chapters. In this way, readers can start with the basics, and then progress to more advanced topics as they need them, rather than being presented with “everything you need to know” at once, in a dry and difficult-to-digest manner (as is the case with the Oracle-provided documentation).

Although it is primarily aimed at new or intermediate users, this book contains enough advanced information to keep all but the most hardcore of UPK developers happy. It includes tips on how to get the most out of UPK, suggestions on best practices for training material development with UPK, and advice on how to avoid some common mistakes.

We’re happy  to share with you the sample chapter Adding value to your topics of the book.

Where to buy this book

You can buy Oracle User Productivity Kit 3.5 from the Packt Publishing website: http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-user-productivity-kit-upk-3-5?utm_source=Appsinsight.net&utm_medium=bookrev&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=mdb_001047. Free shipping to the US, UK, Europe and selected Asian countries.

Alternatively, you can buy the book from Amazon, BN.com, Computer Manuals and most internet book retailers.

As part of this survey, respondents were asked to provide their own experiences as customers to online e-commerce sites.More than a third, 34 percent, report that they experience problems in their online transactions on a fairly frequent basis with e-business sites, at least several times a week. (See Figure 1. in the report)

In an era when things run on Internet time, even those individuals who run Web applications themselves quickly lose patience with quirky online experiences. Thus, there is a very quick and detrimental business impact. In fact, 26 percent of respondents who experience problems with a transaction would switch to a competitor, while another 57 percent would simply abandon a transaction entirely, the survey finds. (See Figure 2.)

And among a segment of respondents there is even a finality to a negative online experience. A total of 15 percent of respondents would simply no longer do online business with the site’s vendor. (See Figure 3.)

There are plenty of issues to report as well. The most common issue, reported by eight out of 10 respondents, was slow response times with the sites they were attempting to access. Another two out of three say they received error messages when attempting to log onto a page at the site. More than half, 57 percent, say they have encountered sites that were down altogether. (See Figure 4.)

Respondents to this survey—perhaps because they are in the business themselves—are not shy about letting e-business site managers know they have a problem that needs to be addressed. About a third of the survey respondents (34 percent) say they reported the issues they encountered to the site owner. However, among those that did, only 42 percent were satisfied with the response they received.

Issues with the performance and availability of Web applications can mean losses of big money, the survey finds. Close to a third of the respondents to this survey say that they have spent more than $1,000 over the past year in online transactions. (See Figure 5.)

One respondent reported how an elite hotel chain offered a special rate for their anniversary. “There was a specific time the rates would become available. Unfortunately, the site was swamped and no one could connect.”

Another reports that the Website she visited charged her twice, but lost the order. “I submitted a final purchase and got an error”, she reports, “I used the back button to get back to the purchase page and submitted again and got another error. My order was lost in processing and my credit card was charged twice.”

PERFORMANCE UNDER PRESSURE:

Performance Under Pressure: 2009 OAUG ResearchLine Survey was produced by Unisphere Research and sponsored by Oracle. Unisphere Research is the market research unit of Unisphere Media, a Division of Information Today, Inc., publishers of Database Trends and Applications magazine and the 5 Minute Briefing newsletters. To review abstracts of our past reports, visit www.dbta.com/research. Unisphere Media, 229 Main Street, Chatham, NJ 07928. Tel: 973-665-1120, Fax: 973-665-1124, Email: Tom@dbta.com, Web: www.dbta.com.

The third wave and the one that is getting the most attention these days is the compliance. The big 3 forcing this are SOX, Basil II, and HIPAA. In public sector HSPD-12 and REAL ID are driving this change. Governments are mandating consistency and enforcement. The wild wooly west days in IT are being forced out. Behavior is changing when significant fines or jail time are possibilities.

These three forces are feeding off of each other as well. Now that the problems are stated, talk about Oracle’s overall strategy to solve the problem…

Under Applications Unlimited, Oracle is improving the core application platforms in order to make them more robust, more performant, and more manageable. As for management tools, the Oracle strategy is to standardize on Oracle Enterprise Manager to provide centralized management of all Oracle products. The reason why Oracle chose Oracle Enterprise Manager is because it is the flagship set of products that provide the best capabilities. It is the only set of tools that are capability of managing multiple Oracle technologies, including applications, middleware, database and operating systems. It is also the only tool that is designed to support the implementation of IT best practices such as those prescribed by ITIL. Within the Enterprise Manager product line, the focal point of the Oracle effort to provide better management of the applications start with the application management packs. Oracle has released a set of management packs for Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, BI-EE, Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management, and more packs are on their way.

Here are a bunch of white papers that Oracle published a few months ago :

1. Achieving a Superior Ownership Experience in Manageability and Quality for Siebel CRM
2. Achieving a Superior Ownership Experience in Manageability and Quality for Oracle E-Business Suite
3. Achieving a Superior Ownership Experience in Manageability and Quality for PeopleSoft Enterprise

In the old days, a service level agreement is just a document that express the business requirements for application service level.  It is something that IT may pull up once in a while and refer to.  If organizations really want to enforce it, there is a lot of manual and tedious work involved in collecting the data and reporting it.  In fact, it is so tedious that it often ends up not getting done, or getting done improperly.

Now with Oracle Enterprise Manager, the service level agreement comes alive.  The business requirements that are expressed in the service level agreement are entered into the tool, and the tool takes care of collecting the information, alerting administrators when problems occur, and providing all sorts of reports using the collected data automatically.

Configuration inconsistencies and unauthorized changes are leading causes of the most extreme challenges in IT. That’s why you need to respond with extreme control.

Join us for the upcoming Webcast, Taking Configuration Management to the Extreme, to learn how Oracle Enterprise Manager goes beyond today’s other solutions with better coverage, greater depth, and more automation to give you extreme control for your IT.

In this Webcast you’ll learn how to:

• Simplify management through extensive automation, including automated discovery and change detection
• Improve service by effectively managing application deployment lifecycles
• Enforce compliance with out-of-the-box policies and rich compliance reporting

Register now for the Webcast, and learn more about Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Unlike most database encryption solutions, TDE is completely transparent to existing applications with no triggers, views or other application changes required. Data is transparently encrypted when written to disk and transparently decrypted after an application user has successfully authenticated, and passed all authorization checks. Authorization checks include verifying the user has the necessary select and update privileges on the application table and checking Database Vault, Label Security and Virtual Private Database enforcement policies. Existing database backup routines will continue to work, with the data remaining encrypted in the backup. For encryption of entire database backups, TDE can be used in combination with Oracle RMAN.

What is Tablespace Encryption?

Oracle Advanced Security in Oracle Database 11g Release 1 includes support for tablespace encryption. When a tablespace is created through Enterprise Manager or on the command line, an option now exists to specify that the file be encrypted on the file system. When new data is added to the new tablespace using the insert command or datapump, entire tables will be transparently encrypted. When the database reads data blocks from the encrypted tablespace it will transparently decrypt the data blocks. Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 environments can be migrated to encrypted tablespaces. For more information, please refer to Using TDE Tablespace Encryption with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Oracle Metalink Note 828229.1).

Prerequisites & Interoperability

• For prerequisites and interoperability, refer to the relevant Oracle Metalink Notes listed in the documentation section below.

Platforms certified

• Linux x86 (32-bit)
• Linux x86-64 (64 bit)
• Sun Solaris SPARC (64-bit)
• IBM AIX Based Systems (64-bit)
• HP-UX PA-RISC (64-bit)

Documentation: Oracle Metalink Note 828229.1 – Using TDE Tablespace Encryption with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12