B2B and B2C commerce professionals find integrated, omni-channel customer experiences increasingly valuable
KUALA LUMPUR, 20 May 2014 – According to new Oracle studies, B2B (Business-to-Business) and B2C (Business-to-Consumer) commerce professionals find integrated, omni-channel customer experiences increasingly valuable to their organizations, and are continuing to invest in technologies and digital content strategies to facilitate them.
The studies—one for B2B and one for B2C—surveyed e-commerce professionals in business and technology departments from around the world revealed that growing market share and enhancing customer experience are cited as top investment areas.
It also reflected that B2C organizations are more advanced at delivering customer-centric commerce. They are moving beyond acquisition and working hard to build loyalty and retention among their key customer segments.
B2C advancements have spurred similar goals on the B2B side—B2B companies are looking to graduate from online order taking to extending the existing relationships they have offline to the online channel. According to the survey, 77 percent of B2B respondents said that customer expectations have been raised due to B2C practices.
B2C Companies Personalize Experiences, Build Loyalty
In 2014, B2C Commerce is all about knowing the customer and building loyalty. Key performance indicators are changing to become increasingly customer-centric.
Nearly half of respondents (49 percent) said customer retention is their most important metric for success, after revenue.
The majority of respondents (59 percent) said they are investing in rich digital content to enhance the overall customer experience, in addition to increasing purchase confidence, overcoming competitive sites, and helping with SEO efforts.
The omni-channel experience is critical to success, but difficult to manage and measure. Moreover, organizations appear to embrace omni-channel and its positive impact on their bottom line but struggle to connect the various customer touchpoints to provide improved experiences.
B2B Organizations Replicate B2C Customer Experience Strategies
Customer expectations are changing to match B2C retail experiences. B2C practices such as search engine marketing, personalization, social and mobile are increasingly being used to encourage repeat business and drive revenue.
Only 8 percent of respondents said customer loyalty and retention was their top area of focus in 2013, but 45 percent said it was going to be one of their top priorities in 2014. Also, 28 percent of respondents said they now consider customer loyalty as a key measure of success.
40 percent of respondents said that mobile is a key capability B2B buyers need, but only 2 percent said mobile is driving significant revenue.
Online channel revenue is expected to increase in 2014. The study found that 70 percent of businesses saw more than 10 percent growth in online revenue over the past 24 months, and 39 percent saw 20 percent or more of their revenue coming from online.
“Consumer expectations continue to change the way both B2B and B2C businesses sell online,” said John Andrews, Vice President of Product Management, Oracle. “In B2C there is a renewed focus on increasing loyalty as competition grows at a fever pitch. Meanwhile, B2B organizations are still under increasing pressure to adopt B2C commerce best practices. Developing customer-centric approaches and investing in omni-channel initiatives will be key to online revenue growth for both B2B and B2C organizations in 2014.”
SCCyberworld
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Oracle Commerce Studies Reflect Profound Focus on Customer Experience Among B2B and B2C Organizations
Friday, May 16, 2014
Latest Oracle BI Applications Deliver Greater Insight into Talent and Procurement
Expanded Business Intelligence Capabilities for Improved Procure-to-Pay Processes and Talent Management
Kuala Lumpur, 16 May 2014 – Oracle Corporation, the world’s leading ICT solutions provider, today release Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications 11.1.1.8.1 to help organizations improve Procure-to-Pay processes and talent management.
In use at more than 4,000 companies worldwide, Oracle BI Applications offers high-performing analytics at a lower cost. The new release includes prebuilt connectors between Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics and Oracle’s JD Edwards. Additionally, a new Oracle Human Resources Analytics module for developing and maintaining a skilled workforce has been introduced.
With the out-of-box integration between Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics and Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, the latest release will enable purchasing and sourcing organizations to quickly identify savings opportunities and improve operational performance through decision-ready, best practice analytics.
Oracle Talent Profile Analytics, a new module of Oracle Human Resources Analytics, helps HR and business managers assess talent strengths and build potential leaders by delivering greater insight into job profiles, employee skills and competency levels.
He adds, “Oracle Talent Profile Analytics helps managers identify critical skills and assess talent strengths needed to get the right people with the right skills into the right jobs, shaping the organization's competencies and helping develop potential leaders needed to meet the organizations business goals.”
Oracle BI Applications will enable organizations to easily extend their BI footprint or build custom BI applications to meet specific analytics needs for line-of-business managers and executives.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Addressing the impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) on Malaysia
MIMOS launches first Internet of Things Technical Working Group Workshop towards developing National IoT Blueprint
Kuala Lumpur, May 14: MIMOS today launched the first national Internet of Things Technical Working Group (IoT TWG) Workshop to kick start the development of the National IoT Blueprint, which will play a key role in shaping Malaysia’s ICT landscape and take advantage of the numerous opportunities offered by IoT technologies.
The two-day Workshop, which brings together the cream of the cream from the technology community, academia and government agencies nationwide, will share knowledge and discuss ideas on means to best address the importance and impact the IoT will have on the country’s economic and social progress and explore collaboration in IoT research, development and commercialisation.
Launched under the patronage of the Science Advisor to the Prime Minister, Professor Emeritus Dato’ Sri Dr Zakri Abdul Hamid, the opening of the workshop was also attended by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation’s Deputy Secretary General (Science), Dr Zulkifli Mohamed Hashim.
“The IoT will inspire new working practices and business processes, spark a new wave of innovation, allow us to penetrate new markets and industries and encourage greater investments in technology,” said Dr Zulkifli. “With the right direction and policies, the National IoT Blueprint will bring about tremendous economic benefits to the country.”
The Internet of Things encompasses the integration of enabling technologies – devices, embedded software, connectivity/communications and information services, among others. It is expected to transform daily life via the application of smart appliances, homes, offices, vehicles, streets and cities.
Dr Zakri said the Blueprint would realise the Science to Action (S2A) initiative launched last year by Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak. The initiative aims to intensify the application of science and technology for industrial development and the wellbeing of Malaysians through three key components: Science to Industry, Science to Wellbeing and Science to Governance.
“The Internet of Things will also act as Science to Action enablers,” he said. “In Science to Industry, for example, it will realise opportunities in the digital age which in turn can lead to a Gross National Income of RM1.7 billion and the creation of 14,720 new jobs by 2020.”
Dr Zakri said the Blueprint would also complement national transformative initiatives as Digital Malaysia, the Government Transformation Programme and the Economic Transformation Programme.
“The Internet of Things will change the digital market and create greater economic value for all organisations and for Malaysia’s economy” he said, adding that the Blueprint would be presented to the government in October.
MIMOS President and Chief Executive Officer, Datuk Abdul Wahab Abdullah said the Internet of Things was a logical progression for the national R&D centre in ICT after having ‘introduced’ the Internet to Malaysia in 1992.
“MIMOS has been undertaking applied research in ICT towards raising national competitiveness and to position Malaysia as an innovation-led economy since our inception in 1985,” he said. “It is therefore fitting that we spearhead the IoT initiative with the support from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.”
Agencies and companies taking part in the Workshop include the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), National Heart Institute, Cisco Systems, Celcom Axiata Berhad, Intel, Oracle Corporation and Microsoft.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Latest Oracle BI Applications Deliver Greater Insight into Talent and Procurement
Expanded Business Intelligence Capabilities for Improved Procure-to-Pay Processes and Talent Management
Kuala Lumpur, 12 May 2014 – Oracle Corporation, the world’s leading ICT solutions provider, today release Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications 11.1.1.8.1 to help organizations improve Procure-to-Pay processes and talent management.
In use at more than 4,000 companies worldwide, Oracle BI Applications offers high-performing analytics at a lower cost. The new release includes prebuilt connectors between Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics and Oracle’s JD Edwards. Additionally, a new Oracle Human Resources Analytics module for developing and maintaining a skilled workforce has been introduced.
Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management, Oracle says, “Oracle BI Applications provide a critical platform for unlocking and analyzing enterprise-level and business-level insights, with the latest updates reducing the time and complexity to achieve a competitive advantage through data.”
With the out-of-box integration between Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics and Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, the latest release will enable purchasing and sourcing organizations to quickly identify savings opportunities and improve operational performance through decision-ready, best practice analytics.
Oracle Talent Profile Analytics, a new module of Oracle Human Resources Analytics, helps HR and business managers assess talent strengths and build potential leaders by delivering greater insight into job profiles, employee skills and competency levels.
He adds, “Oracle Talent Profile Analytics helps managers identify critical skills and assess talent strengths needed to get the right people with the right skills into the right jobs, shaping the organization's competencies and helping develop potential leaders needed to meet the organizations business goals.”
Oracle BI Applications will enable organizations to easily extend their BI footprint or build custom BI applications to meet specific analytics needs for line-of-business managers and executives.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Oracle SOA Suite Achieves Significant Customer Adoption
Industry’s Most Complete Integration Solution has nearly 5000 customers across industries; Helps Organizations Speed Time to Market and Respond Faster to Business Requirements
Kuala Lumpur, 5 May 2014 – Oracle Corporation, the world’s leading IT solutions and services provider today shares that there are nearly 5,000 customers across industries are using Oracle Service-oriented architecture (SOA) Suite to simplify application integration and gain tangible business results.
As the industry’s most complete and unified application integration and solution, Oracle SOA Suite transforms complex application integration into agile and re-usable services by simplifying connectivity of applications across cloud, mobile, and on-premises environments.
Recent customers to implement Oracle SOA Suite include Advanstar, Arcor, Fluid-e and Norway Post. Additionally, more than 1,300 partners around the globe have achieved Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialized status for Oracle SOA Suite. These partners are enabling their customers to leverage Oracle SOA Suite to reduce operational costs and support business growth.
Further extending its commitment to addressing complex integration challenges, Oracle continues to add innovative solutions to Oracle SOA Suite, such as Oracle Cloud Adapters, which help organizations to easily integrate cloud applications. Oracle SOA Suite is part of Oracle Fusion Middleware, the leading business innovation platform for the enterprise and the cloud.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Oracle Introduces New Solaris Platform for Cloud
Oracle Expands Investment in Infrastructure to Deliver Modern Cloud Platform
Kuala Lumpur, 01 May 2014 – Oracle Corporation, the world’s leading IT solutions and services provider, today introduces Oracle Solaris 11.2 as a complete, integrated and open platform engineered for large-scale enterprise cloud environments.
The new Solaris platform combines OpenStack, software-defined networking (SDN) technology, clustering, and virtualization with a proven enterprise-class Operating System, all in a single product.
With Oracle Solaris 11.2, customers can simplify their IT infrastructure and deliver reliable, high-performance, efficient, compliant and secure cloud services to their end customers at low cost.
He adds, “It’s a complete platform for simple, efficient, secure, compliant and open enterprise cloud deployments that can help customers accelerate their businesses and capitalize on the potential of cloud computing while reducing cost.”
Al Gillen, Program VP, Servers and System Software, IDC also says, “Cloud computing is creating an entirely new set of expectations for enterprise-class infrastructure software. With Oracle Solaris 11.2, Oracle offers an enterprise-ready solution that includes OpenStack based management, and makes enterprise cloud deployments easier and more affordable.”
Oracle Solaris 11.2 allows IT organizations to now deliver services from “zero to cloud” in minutes rather than weeks, with enterprise-grade reliability, security, and performance. In addition, it introduces application-driven Software Defined Networking that integrates with Oracle Java, Oracle Database and Oracle Applications in order to deliver application-level quality of service.
Thousands of customers worldwide are running Oracle Solaris 11 on Oracle servers and Engineered Systems today.
Customers can now seamlessly upgrade to Oracle Solaris 11.2 within minutes and take full advantage of the new cloud capabilities. Oracle Solaris 11.2 Beta is now available for download via Oracle Technology Network (OTN).
Monday, April 28, 2014
Oracle Launches New Virtual Compute Appliance
Expands Cloud Services Capabilities to Deliver Enhanced Compute and Storage Solutions
Kuala Lumpur, 28 April 2014 – Oracle Corporation, the world’s leading IT solutions and services provider, today launches Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance X4-2 for application virtualization. The new release accelerates time-to-application use by enabling rapid, repeatable, full-stack virtual infrastructure deployment.
Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance X4-2 is a “wire-once” engineered system that comes fully assembled and ready to run production workloads with minimal, software-defined configuration, which can save hundreds of hours in labor and lower the risk of physical and software configuration errors.
Furthermore, it reduces the cost and complexity of deploying and consolidating enterprise applications. For added investment protection, organizations can add compute one server at a time and mix server generations in the same base rack.
He adds, “This engineered system can significantly cut provisioning time and offers investment protection by allowing customers to mix server generations in the same rack. It’s value that’s resonating with customers across industries including cloud service providers, financial services and public sector.”
Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance is a readied solution for flexible private cloud platforms that can be used with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12C to deploy cloud services ranging from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to Database as a Service (DBaas) with features such as automated provisioning, elasticity and cloud governance (showback, quota, access controls).
Rapid Infrastructure Provisioning, Easy Application Deployment
Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance Controller software automates the installation, configuration and management of infrastructure components at the push of a button providing rapid infrastructure provisioning.
Additionally, running on Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, other Linux distributions and Microsoft Windows side by side, organizations can consolidate multiple applications onto one platform. The solution combined with the Application Engineered Storage benefits of Oracle’s ZS3 Series enables the deployment of fully virtualized Oracle Database and application environment with greater storage efficiency, performance and automated database storage management than is available with non-Oracle storage.
In summary, Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance enables rapid, repeatable software-defined infrastructure deployment for virtually any x86 application and workload. An easy-to-deploy, integrated system with the elasticity needed for cloud computing, customers can go from power on to production in about an hour and deploy ready-to-run virtual machines in just a few minutes. The latest release of the solution, delivers increase computing power, faster data processing and cloud lifecycle management capabilities.
Monday, April 21, 2014
UL Adopted Oracle technologies for Business Transformation
Safety science organization simplified its IT infrastructure to support future transformation and Growth
Kuala Lumpur, 21 April, 2014 – Oracle Corporation, the world’s leading IT solutions and services provider, today announced that UL, the global safety science organization with presence in Malaysia, has implemented Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and Oracle E-Business Suite as the foundation for its new IT infrastructure.
As part of its business transformation, UL embarked on a project to restructure its existing IT environment in order to create a highly scalable infrastructure that unify its IT and business systems. Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud runs up to 10 times faster than UL’s previous IT environment enabling the company to efficiently deliver information to its customers and drive better decision-making.
“The past few years have been an exciting time at UL as we embarked on both a business and IT transformation that is allowing us to deliver more value to our customers and take revenue growth to the next level,” said Christian Anschuetz, senior vice president and CIO of UL.
He added, “Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and Oracle E-Business Suite have served as the backbone of this technological change, and the performance, scalability and availability of the Oracle platform has positioned us to grow and build our business well into the future.”
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud delivers an unmatched performance, scalability and manageability UL needed to meet its current and future business needs by consolidating its business applications on the single physical platform provided by Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and Oracle E-Business Suite, UL has boosted operational efficiency, flexibility and speed. As a result, tasks that previously required numerous steps now can be completed by IT managers in a single click.
With the Oracle platform, UL has also been able to realize faster provisioning and deployment of applications, which has streamlined operations to allow the company to be more agile in responding to market shifts.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Oracle Offers New Mobile Capabilities for Enterprise Performance Management
Available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store for Download to Extend Business Value and Enhances User Experience
Kuala Lumpur, 16 April 2014 – Oracle Corporation, the world’s leading ICT solutions provider, today unveils the Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System 11.1.2.3.5 to enable organisations access enterprise performance insights and make informed decisions from any location.
The latest release features two new mobile capabilities designed to help organizations capitalize on Oracle’s enterprise planning, reporting, and financial close applications on-the-go.
The first is a new mobile app, ‘Oracle EPM Mobile’, which allows managers and executives to participate in EPM workflows and approvals from smart phones and tablets. The second capability provides business users with easy access to the rich functionality of Hyperion Planning from tablet devices.
Both functionalities are available at no additional cost to existing customers and it is available for download via the Apple App Sore and the Google Play Store.
Hari Sankar, vice president of product management at Oracle says, “Organizations of all sizes are seeing rapid adoption of mobile devices by their employees. With new mobile capabilities, Oracle’s EPM System now enables broader participation of business users in performance management processes to deliver significant improvements in decision quality and productivity.”
Oracle EPM Mobile is a new mobile app designed to broaden executive participation and accelerate review and approval processes by providing users with easy access to EPM related workflows on smart phones and tablets.
Oracle Hyperion Planning now allows business users to perform common planning, budgeting and forecasting tasks from iPad and Android tablets
The most comprehensive and integrated suite of financial applications for financial close, reporting and enterprise planning, Oracle EPM System can be delivered on-premise via the cloud, or on Oracle Engineered Systems.
In summary, today’s fast paced business environment demands that enterprises identify business performance insights and optimize decisions anywhere, anytime or risk falling behind. To enable broader participation and unlock business value across the enterprise, new mobile capabilities for Enterprise Performance Management are now available on iOS and Android mobile devices.
Monday, April 7, 2014
Fusion-io Collaborates with Oracle to Double Usable Capacity for MySQL
New Flash-Aware NVM Compression Interface to Reduce Latency and Boost Usable Flash Memory Capacity by Up to 50% in the MySQL Database
SINGAPORE – April 7, 2014 – Fusion-io (NYSE: FIO) today announced collaboration with Oracle on the development of flash-aware interfaces for MySQL. These interfaces include NVM Compression, a flash-aware interface that can double the usable capacity of Fusion ioMemory flash while eliminating the performance impact associated with disk-era compression and Atomic Writes, an interface that enables more efficient database commits when running on flash memory. Together, these flash-aware interfaces allow MySQL to deliver up to 4x more flash endurance by streamlining commands to help optimize databases for persistent flash memory architectures.
Unlike disk-era compression techniques, flash-optimized NVM Compression shares the vast majority of the application code with the traditional uncompressed database logic. By leveraging the underlying architecture of flash as a memory tier, NVM Compression significantly reduces the complexity of storage engines, which allows for improved scalability and higher efficiency.
In addition, the well-defined interface of NVM Compression allows developers to quickly introduce flash-aware compression to their applications using versatile workload-optimized compression algorithms. Once integrated into an application, NVM Compression enables developers to help enterprises scale their IT infrastructure to meet increasing data demands by effectively balancing storage efficiency with customer workload performance requirements.
“Flash-aware interfaces like NVM Compression and Atomic Writes underline the significant divide between flash as a memory and flash SSDs,” said Fusion-io Chief Technology Officer Pankaj Mehra. “The value of enterprise flash memory is maximized as a memory tier that enables unique optimizations for cloud computing, big data, in-memory databases and high volume transactions. Fusion-io is pleased to collaborate with Oracle to make these interfaces available to the businesses that use MySQL database every day.”
“Oracle continues to lead MySQL innovation and is working with Fusion-io to deliver flash-aware application performance,” said Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL Engineering, Oracle. “The flash aware interfaces introduced by Fusion-io update disk-era commands with code streamlined for flash memory operations, significantly reducing latency and accelerating performance for modern web, cloud and embedded applications. Solutions like the flash-aware NVM Compression and Atomic Writes interfaces continue to push the boundaries of performance and efficiency for MySQL deployments around the world.”
The NVM Compression and Atomic Writes interfaces are now available in the MySQL 5.7.4 Development Milestone Release (for Atomic Writes) and as early access feature at labs.mysql.com for NVM Compression. Fusion ioMemory platforms for MySQL database acceleration are available from server vendors including HP, Cisco, Dell, IBM, and Supermicro.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Oracle Introduces Innovation Management Solution
Helps Organizations Make Faster and Better Product Investment Decisions
Kuala Lumpur, 28 March 2014 - Oracle Corporation, the world’s leading ICT solutions provider, today unveils its Oracle Innovation Management solution to help organizations increase their return on innovation investments.
The new release is a systematic approach to capture, select and invest in the right product ideas and to manage the organization’s overall product portfolio.
Jon Chorley, Vice President, Supply Chain Management Product Strategy, Oracle says, “Product innovation is too critical to be left to spreadsheets and PowerPoints, and to remain disconnected from the rest of the product value chain”.
With Oracle Innovation Management, organizations can make more informed decisions by easily creating, refining and evaluating product concepts for cost, risk and against customer requirements and design goals.
In summary, Oracle Innovation Management enables organizations to build an innovation pipeline that is fueled by a steady stream of high-value ideas that can be translated into profitable offerings; analyze the impact of alternate investment scenarios against business objectives; develop product requirements that translate ideas into concepts and products; increase productivity and reduce product development costs.
He ends, “By providing a highly usable, but systematic approach to managing product innovation, Oracle Innovation Management can accelerate the transformation of the best ideas into profitable products, and deliver against the corporate product innovation strategy.”
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Oracle Announces Java 8
Revolutionary Java SE 8 Release Features the Most Significant Upgrade to the Java Programming Model Ever; Java SE 8 and Java ME 8 Together Make Major Steps toward Long-Term Convergence
Kuala Lumpur, 26 March 2014 – Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL), the world's leading IT solution provider, today announces the availability of Java Platform, Standard Edition 8 (Java SE 8), Java Platform, Micro Edition 8 (Java ME 8) and the related releases of Oracle’s Java Embedded products.
The Java SE 8 and Java ME 8 are on a strong convergence path, with Java ME 8 scheduled for availability later this spring.
With a consistent Java 8 platform across embedded devices, desktops, data centers and the cloud, customers can deploy applications faster, process and analyze in-flight data and act on events as quickly as they occur.
Today, there are 9 million Java developers worldwide and more than 3 billion devices are powered by Java technology. Over 10 billion Java Cards have been shipped since its introduction
New Release of JDK 8 for Software Developers
For software developers, Oracle releases the Java Development Kit (JDK) 8, a production-ready implementation of the Java SE 8 Platform Specification which was recently approved through the Java Community Process (JCP), to support for developing, debugging, and monitoring Java applications.
The JDK 8 includes the largest upgrade to the Java programming model since the platform was introduced in 1996.
Together, Oracle is also announcing Oracle Java SE Embedded 8, which leverages the new Java SE 8 features and is optimized for mid to high end embedded systems. Oracle JDK 8 and Oracle Java SE Embedded 8 are now available to download.
• Java SE 8 enables enhanced developer productivity and significant application performance increases through reduced boilerplate code, improved collections and annotations, simpler parallel programming models and more efficient use of modern, multi-core processors.
• Oracle Java SE Embedded 8 provides a development platform for embedded devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) that includes the flexibility, portability and features of Java SE 8.
• Java ME 8 are designed to deliver faster application performance, which is especially important on less powerful devices. It is a major update to the existing Java ME platform incorporating a large set of updated and new features, including: Java language and API alignment with Java SE 8, support for modern web protocols, and more.
“The release of Java SE 8 demonstrates the innovation driven by the ongoing collaboration between IBM, Oracle and other members of the Java community in OpenJDK,” said John Duimovich, Distinguished Engineer, IBM. “Java SE 8 provides enterprise customers with significant gains in productivity, scalability and maintainability, and further demonstrates that they can continue to rely on Java to grow their business.”
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Oracle Offers Utilities Companies Improved Field Workforce Efficiency and Safety
Enhanced mobile workforce management solution helps electric, gas and water utilities achieve greater operational efficiency
Kuala Lumpur, 20 March, 2014 – Oracle Corporation, the world’s leading ICT solutions provider, today unveils its latest enhanced Oracle Utilities Mobile Workforce Management 2.2 to help electric, gas and water utilities achieve greater efficiency by streamlining field crew management and supporting worker mobile safety.
Rodger Smith, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Utilities says, “Today’s electric, gas and water utilities are recognizing the need to approach mobile workforce management with end-to-end visibility and control.”
“Oracle Utilities Mobile Workforce Management 2.2 enables utilities to not only meet those goals but also exceed them by enabling them to simplify field crew assignment processes, monitor work status throughout service areas and improve restoration response times.”
The solution offers utilities companies with flexible scheduling options. For example, the company can divide jobs spanning many days into multiple visits, enabling the crew to complete services more efficiently. In addition, the contractor management feature allows assignment of contractors to work to the most cost effective bland of labor resources.
The solution also enables utilities to promote a safe work environment through enhanced safety procedures, vehicle inspections and alerts. It requires field workers to complete checklists when starting a new task or prompt the workers through an on-site safety brief. This functionality helps ensure that field workers follow safety procedures for risk mitigation, helps confirm vehicles are in working order, and supports Department of Transportation and local regulatory compliance.
To further improve crew safety, utilities companies can use geographic information systems of Oracle Utilities Mobile Workforce Management 2.2 to define the boundaries of sensitive geographic areas and location-based services to trigger alerts and instruction when a crew enters or leaves that area.
“The latest Oracle Utilities Modern Workforce Management solution helps reduce costs and enhance field worker safety. Ultimately, it enables utilities to transform from reactive to truly proactive operations,” ends Smith.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Oracle Offers Student Cloud for Higher Education Institutions
Major Investments in Oracle Student Cloud and PeopleSoft Campus Solutions to Support Innovation, Operational Efficiency and Student Success
Kuala Lumpur, 13 March 2014 – Oracle Corporation, the world’s leading ICT solutions provider, today announced its several major investments in higher education solutions to support institutional excellence, enhance the student experience and drive student success.
The new investments include the Oracle Student Cloud and other higher education functionality delivered in Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud and Oracle ERP Cloud. In addition, Oracle will deliver a new release of its flagship PeopleSoft Campus Solutions suite.
Mark Armstrong, vice president, higher education product development, Oracle shared that today’s higher education institutions – from traditional research institutions to non-traditional continuing education programs – have unique challenges but a shared focus on operational excellence and student success.
As the higher education industry moves toward flexible deployment models for administrative systems, Oracle will offer its customers flexibility and choice backed by extensive experience in and commitment to the industry.
“Oracle is dedicated to provide this industry with flexible technology options through significant investments. Oracle is an industry leader in offering this level of long-term commitment to choice and stability for higher education customers’ core administrative systems,” said Mark Armstrong.
Oracle Student Cloud meets the needs of customers who are transforming their institutions to support configurable standard business processes and to free up IT resources for mission-critical activities in learning, teaching and research.
Part of the Oracle Education and Research Cloud, the Oracle Student Cloud will also include flexible core structures and extensible architecture to manage a variety of traditional and non-traditional educational offerings.
Finally, as part of this commitment, Oracle will offer a new PeopleSoft Campus Solutions release to provide a simpler, more productive user experience and a more efficient application lifecycle management process.
Oracle’s offerings will enable institutions to run their student and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems on premise or to migrate to a cloud-based deployment when it makes sense for their organization.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Oracle Expands Its Communications Solutions Portfolio to Help Network Operators
To Deliver Complex Services and Streamline Network Processes Efficiently
KUALA LUMPUR, 26 February 2014 – Oracle, the world’s leading ICT solutions provider, today announced a new release of its Oracle Communications Network Resource Management solution to help network operators to plan, deploy and optimize their networks.
The new solution will transform communications network by building out mobile backhaul and fiber broadband networks, repatriating stranded network assets, help reduce leased capacity costs and support network consolidation and migration.
It also supports the delivery of increasingly complex Ethernet and IP data services to business and wholesale customers.
Oracle Communications Network Resource Management solution is now available for network operators including communications service providers, government agencies, utilities and other enterprises.
“This latest release of the Oracle Communications Network Resource Management solution demonstrates Oracle’s continued investment to provide our customers with an integrated, product-based solution for network resource management. The solution helps reduce complexity and cost and provides the accurate foundation for the rapid launch and efficient delivery of revenue generating services,” said Bhaskar Gorti, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications.
In addition, the solution suite is built to support the TM Forum’s “Resource Management & Operations Support and Readiness” business process framework which helps provide integrated management across applications, computing and network resources.
Network operators may deploy the entire Oracle Communications Network Resource Management solution or selectively implement specific applications in a modular fashion and integrate third party components.
As part of the Oracle Communications operational support systems (OSS) suite, the Oracle Communications Network Resource Management solution has been certified on a consistent and contemporary technical platform that supports Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux operating systems, Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Database.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Oracle Global Trade Intelligence Optimizes Global Customs and Compliance Operations
New Trade Analytics Module Leverages Global Trade Data to Improve Strategic Decision Making
KUALA LUMPUR, 25 February 2014 - Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL), the world's leading IT solution provider, today introduced Oracle Global Trade Intelligence to further extend its commitment to helping organizations empower modern value chain operations.
Part of Oracle Global Trade Management 6.3.3, Oracle Global Trade Intelligence helps organizations optimize global customs and compliance operations by leveraging global trade data to measure, predict and optimize performance.
“Organizations are moving beyond automation of their global trade processes and are seeking ways to leverage their global trade data to make better business decisions,” said Derek Gittoes, vice president, Value Chain Execution Product Strategy, Oracle. “Oracle Global Trade Intelligence provides this real-time insight to help reduce costs and risks, track and support compliance policies, and streamline global trade processes.”
The new trade analytics module offers easy access to global trade data, enabling organizations to enhance overall decision making by identifying areas for improvement, potential cost savings and process enhancements.
To monitor and analyze business targets, benchmarks and forecasts, Oracle Global Trade Intelligence also includes configurable dashboards that enable organizations to build user-defined key global trade performance metrics for import and export transactions worldwide.
In addition, Oracle Global Trade Intelligence features role-based alerting to help ensure appropriate personnel are notified of exceptions and deviations from targets, helping meet overall business goals.
Gartner Announces Malaysia’s Business Intelligence Market to Reach US$30.4 million in 2017
Data Discovery and Mobility Create a Revival in Spending in Asia Pacific
Kuala Lumpur, 25 February, 2014 — The market for business intelligence (BI) platforms in Asia Pacific is expected to grow 7.4 percent to reach almost US$1.4 billion in revenue in 2014 and more than $1.6 billion by 2017, as data discovery and mobility create a revival in spending by business users, according to Gartner, Inc.
The author of a new report on the competitive landscape for BI platforms in Asia Pacific, Gartner research director Bhavish Sood, said growing interest in big data solutions will continue to positively impact BI spending across Asia Pacific in 2014 and beyond.
“Information intensive initiatives are popular in organizations in Asia Pacific's accelerating economies, because information is a competitive differentiator,” Mr Sood said. “We expect this to continue as organizations pursue regulatory compliance, performance management and overarching enterprise information management initiatives.”
In Asia Pacific, the top four "megavendors" — SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM — controlled 72.2 percent of the BI platform market in 2012, up from 65 percent in 2011. However, Gartner analysts said that business units increasingly prefer data discovery solutions, such as Tibco Spotfire, QlikTech and Tableau Software, while their counterparts in IT are still more comfortable procuring from megavendors.
“Given the current economic climate of slow growth, CIOs are looking for solutions that need minimum servicing and can deliver fast time to value. These demands are being met by packaged analytical applications, preconfigured BI appliances and intuitive data discovery tools,” Mr Sood said.
Malaysia will continue as the second-largest BI market in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), after Singapore. The need to increase Malaysia's competitiveness against China's and that of other neighboring ASEAN countries and renewed focus on depending less on tourism and the oil industry will help drive BI growth. Malaysia's investment in infrastructure is proving to be a good advantage for attracting foreign investments. Gartner expects the market to reach $30.4 million by 2017. Telcos and financial services are among the most sophisticated adopters of BI.
Singapore is one of the most-developed BI markets within Asia/Pacific, and it will remain the third-largest BI market through 2017. Singapore's BI forecast outlook remains positive, with expected revenue of $95.9 million. With increasing competition from China and lower-wage neighboring countries, such as Malaysia and Vietnam, Singapore has countered by diversifying into new vertical industries, such as biotechnology and high-tech manufacturing. It is also continuously enhancing its well-established industries, such as banking and other service-related industries. In addition, as a well-developed country, Singapore will have a more-stable maintenance revenue stream, which will become more pronounced in the event of another slowing global economy.
China will remain the second-largest BI software market in Asia Pacific through 2017, reaching US$217.3 million. Most often, BI solutions in China are used tactically in departmental deployments — as a reporting tool, rather than as a strategic platform to build up analytic capabilities to support decision making. Chinese organizations' relatively low-level maturity of the demand and supply sides of IT and analytic professionals creates extra challenges for BI technology adoption in China.
According to Gartner research director Daniel Yuen, China will be the next battleground for vendor market share.
“In the past, due to cultural and market issues, many vendors hesitated before planning an entry into China. However, this is changing, and vendors are slowly waking up to the reality that China represents one of the largest custom development markets, and they are executing to grab market share there.
“Interest in big data has also spiked; however, confusion around the terms "analytics," "big data" and "BI" have started to disrupt the Chinese market, and we expect this trend will result in slowing BI spending cycles in 2014,” Mr. Yuen said.
Gartner predicts that the industry landscape will evolve considerably in the next three to five years. Some important trends include:
Big Data Use Cases Are Maturing, but Today It's All About Hadoop
Customers across the region are keen to harness the innovative capabilities of Hadoop. Most big data discussions tend to be mired in the technical capabilities of Hadoop, rather than focusing on the business problem or use case at hand. Because not many vendors in the region can offer both the technology and the business analytics capabilities, implementation issues are bound to arise. Most open governments, such as in Australia, promote the publication of great quantities of data in raw format in an effort to use data in meaningful ways for its citizens. This, along with smart city initiatives being promoted by several governments Hadoop; will be an important part of governments' information management strategy.
Mobility and Data Discovery Approaches Enhance Experience of Business Users
In Asia Pacific, mobile BI is being used as an information distribution channel for "road warriors." The use case is simply the mobilization of existing content — from basic reports to elaborate dashboards — targeted at current BI users. By following a different strategy, CIOs can use mobile BI to reach new constituencies, not necessarily those on the go. By making it fun and easy to use, BI will appeal to nontraditional users — those mainstream users who don't enjoy staring at a grid all day.
The Asia Pacific Market Is Opening Up for Specialist BI and Analytics Vendors
When it comes to advanced analytics, Asia Pacific organizations are willing to examine products from smaller niche companies that offer packaged analytical applications that solve a particular business pain point. This is possibly due to the scarcity of skill sets in the market and the pressure on IT from business folks to deploy BI. As a result, clients are open to buying packaged analytical applications to address specific pain points and niche problems. One clear distinction is that, unlike platform sellers, these vendors predominantly sell to business buyers.
Low-Cost Alternatives
Apart from megavendors and emerging vendors, several low-cost alternatives are available in the market. These vendors saw an uptick in demand mostly from 2007 through 2012 as the megavendors worked on integrating their products. As a result, lower-cost local vendors, such as Yellowfin, TechnologyOne, Open Soft Technology and MAIA Intelligence, built a loyal user base, and they continue to gain market traction.
Additionally, open-source vendors, such as Jaspersoft, Actuate and Pentaho, are improving their products and continue to have mind share among government buyers and high-tech clients, especially product independent software vendors (ISVs).
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Oracle’s First Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Solution in the Cloud
Help organizations harness the power of integrated financial planning and budgeting with the simplicity of the Cloud
Kuala Lumpur, 20 February 2014 – Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL), the world's leading IT solution provider, today announced the general availability of its first enterprise performance management (EPM) solution offered in the cloud, Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service.
Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service opens up opportunities for organizations of all sizes to quickly adopt a world-class planning and budgeting solution with no CAPEX infrastructure investments, flexible deployment options and virtually no learning curve.
“Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service will provide tremendous value to our customers, by removing obstacles such as IT hardware and software requirements associated with implementing a world-class planning and budgeting application,” said Chris Boulanger, vice president, EPM Practice, Cervello.
Hari Sankar, vice president of product management at Oracle also shared, “Since we previewed Oracle Planning and Budget Cloud Service to customers and partners last year, we’ve seen a tremendous interest in adopting cloud-based solutions to streamline budgeting and improve forecasting.”
Part of Oracle Cloud, Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service builds upon the robust and proven functionality of Oracle Hyperion Planning, which includes agile forecasting, predictive planning, rich scenario analysis and interactive dashboards.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Oracle Health Sciences Works with Nuance to Voice Enable Clinical Trials
Kuala Lumpur, 13 February 2014 — Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL), the industry’s leading enterprise technology solutions and service provider, today announced Oracle Health Sciences will work with Nuance Communications, a leading provider of voice and language understanding solutions and Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), to help simplify and accelerate data collection and management for clinical trials through voice-to-text capabilities for web-based apps and mobile devices.
Oracle and Nuance expect to work together to integrate Nuance technology with Oracle e-clinical software. Together, the technologies will help simplify, streamline and speed electronic data capture, mobile data capture and data review by clinical data entry staff, investigators and clinical research associates.
Peter Durlach, senior vice president marketing, Nuance Communications, “Nuance’s medical speech and language understanding solutions allow people to stay productive by leveraging mobile devices, and cloud connectivity to communicate anywhere, anytime across devices and platforms,”
“Embedding Nuance cloud-based medical speech solutions into Oracle’s clinical apps provides a more natural and efficient approach for clinical researchers and staff to deliver accurate information within their workflow.”
By accelerating capture and review of trial-related data, health sciences organizations can speed time-to-data lock, improve risk based monitoring solutions and help to reduce costs.
Nuance’s cloud-based healthcare solutions enable the clinical trial team to document information and communicate findings virtually wherever they are using the most efficient accurate and simple tool they have – their voice.
Oracle Health Sciences delivers a comprehensive suite of e-clinical solutions that significantly increase productivity throughout clinical development process by helping to simplify processes across applications, reduce cycle times, and make in-stream decisions, while offering high levels of traceability and compliance.
“Clinical trial sponsors and contract research organizations around the world count on Oracle Health Sciences’ leading e-clinical solutions to help them automate and streamline their entire clinical development process,” said Nick Giannasi, vice president, Oracle Health Sciences.
About Oracle Health Sciences
At Oracle, we believe that a more predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory system will help improve human health. We can help accelerate this journey to personalized medicine through technology, data and insights. Oracle's solutions support industry initiatives to improve care quality and outcomes, reduce costs, and speed time to market for new treatments, therapies and devices. Oracle Health Sciences delivers comprehensive business applications, plus database, middleware, and hardware solutions for life sciences and healthcare companies and institutions worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/health-sciences/index.html.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Oracle Offers In-Memory Applications for Oracle’s PeopleSoft
New Capabilities Help Business and Finance Executives Improve Decision Making with Real-Time Bottom Line Simulations
Kuala Lumpur 04 February 2014 - Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL), the industry’s leading enterprise ICT service provider, today announces the general availability of two new Oracle In-Memory Applications for Oracle’s PeopleSoft: Oracle’s PeopleSoft In-Memory Financial Position Analyzer and Oracle’s PeopleSoft Financial Allocations Analyzer.
Paco Aubrejuan, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle’s PeopleSoft said, “This solution leverages real time production data to simulate, analyze and deploy business strategies, helping companies to eliminate the historical latency and accuracy issues that constantly challenge the office of finance.”
“With the capabilities offered by the new Oracle’s PeopleSoft In-Memory Applications, CFOs and finance executives can vastly improve their ability to make strategic decisions early in the financial period. This insight can help organizations increase their profits, avoid obstacles and improve their return on assets.”
Using simulation analysis and comparisons, organizations can discover business growth opportunities and capitalize on them, can reduce potential cost risk and take corrective action during the financial period.
In addition, with an intuitive interface and powerful processing throughput, the applications enable users to process data, conduct analysis and compare financial results faster, enabling them to make quicker and smarter decisions that can positively impact their organization’s bottom line.
