NaviSite Uses Oracle's Sun Servers for Managed Services Offering
Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:00:00 EDT
NaviSite, Inc., a provider of complex hosting, application management and managed cloud services for the enterprise market, is using a combination of Oracle's Sun servers and Oracle software to run its mission-critical systems.
With more than 1,500 customers in 10 datacenters across the US and UK, NaviSite needed to expand its virtualization platform to meet the growing infrastructure demands of its customers, while delivering industry-leading performance and availability.
After months of promising we have finally moved Exadel Flamingo to exadel.org and released version 2.2.0. exadel.org is our community site for hosting open source projects. Flamingo is a light weight framework for connecting rich web and mobile user interfaces to enterprise back end.
Flamingo connects Seam, Spring, and Java EE 6 (soon via CDI/JSR299) with the following user interfaces.
Exadel JavaFX Plug-in for Eclipse v. 1.3.4 with Organize Imports
Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:10:00 EDT
Exadel has released Exadel JavaFX Plug-in for Eclipse version 1.3.4. The biggest feature in this release is Organize Imports (just like in Java editor).
The class for Text node is missing, pressing Ctrl+Shift+O, will display the dialog where the correct class can be selected.
You can also invoke Organize Imports from the editor context menu (right-click anywhere in the editor and select Organize Imports).
You can also invoke Organize Imports from the editor context menu (right-click [...]
What's the Difference Between dataSetRow["FIELD"] and row["FIELD"]
Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:38:00 EDT
One of the most common questions for people that are new to BIRT is about how to ask data from the DataSet in the report. The question is when building expressions should I use dataSetRow["FIELD"] or row["FIELD"]?
So let me see if I can set the record straight. When data is acquired, it is acquired by a DataSet, so the following query in a JDBC DataSet will create a three field resultset.
Enterprise Applications are Good Candidates for Using JavaFX
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:27:00 EDT
I don’t know any other technology that has ever gotten as much of a beating as JavaFX did last week (here, here, and here). JavaFX has become a technology that developers love to hate. It’s like a pinata for developers. JavaFX was first announced at JavaOne 2007 (that’s 3 years ago). Many predicted its death even before version 1.0 was released in December 2008, and many continue to call for its demise. Last week also turned out to be the week where I presented Enterprise JavaFX at the Silicon Valley JavaFX JUG, and also the week that Steven Chin created a petition to open source JavaFX. Don’t get me wrong, JavaFX is very far from perfect. It has it’s problems and challenges (listed below) and its future is hanging on life support right now, but let’s start with the good.
Jinfonet Software, a provider of Java reporting solutions, on Thursday unveiled JReport 10. This new version adds rich visualization and interactive reporting to a robust, agile BI platform, providing embedded operational reporting to developers and self-service reporting to end users.
JReport 10 brings Agile Business Intelligence to the next level with rich visualization features. Web 2.0 self-service reporting allows highly interactive reports to be accessible across the enterprise with superior performance and scalability.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Analytics for Enterprises Using Private Cloud
Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:05:00 EDT
It is widely accepted that large enterprises will start cloud deployment via "private cloud" – that is to say, inside their firewall. But what kind of early applications will these be?
Imagine you are the head of manufacturing at a Fortune 500 company running an Oracle Manufacturing application and multiple other source systems. You need to know critical production information instantly, several times a day. And you are moving around constantly. You have an iPad and just a touch gives you those critical nuggets of information. This is advanced analytics using the private cloud.
Another example is Project Management, where many moving parts are involved. Again, using touchscreen devices like the iPad you can visualize all aspects of the projects at any instant and anywhere.
In Part 4 I discussed the Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse and how it allows you to view, create, and manage JPA entity relationships. The Entity Editor provides a centralized view of all entity relationships, allows you to modify entity properties, and allows you to navigate between the object model, mapping associations, and database schema layers.
In Part 5, I will explore persistence settings. The persistence.xml file defines the context for JPA persistence. In this step, you will use the JPA Persistence Configuration Editor to explore the persistence.xml file for your JPA web project.
IBM’s Dustin Amrhein to Present at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:42:00 EDT
Face it, setting up Java EE application environments can be a time-consuming, error-prone, and highly variable process. A cloud computing approach to Java EE application environments can address these problems and more.
In his session at the 7th International Cloud Expo, Dustin Amrhein, Technical Evangelist for Cloud Technologies at IBM, will describe how the IBM WebSphere test organization utilizes a cloud computing solution to enable the construction, deployment, and maintenance of Java EE application environments for testing purposes throughout the organization. This new cloud computing implementation means decreased environment setup times, elevated asset utilization, and increased test iterations.
All of this adds up to make the IBM WebSphere test organization more responsive and agile than it has ever been.
Recently I had the opportunity to figure out how to manipulate sizing, positioning and text wrapping of chart legends so I thought I'd share what I learned.
If you have a chart with legend items that don't fit in the available space, BIRT will do one of two things, depending on the wrapping width option. (Wrapping width is found on the legend layout dialog). If the wrapping width is set to zero, BIRT will simply truncate the legend item text and optionally append an ellipsis. (The ellipsis option is located on the legend entries dialog).
If the wrapping width is set to a positive value, BIRT will word-wrap the text. Unfortunately when it does this, it doesn't check the vertical boundaries and long items can end up overlapping.
BIRT Introduced OLAP style data cubes and crosstabs in version 2.2 and while they have been around for some time we still get a lot of questions on how to use and manipulate them. Below are just some of the resources that have been posted to BIRT Exchange that should help you with cubes and crosstabs.
To get an idea of what a BIRT cube is and how to tie it to a crosstab report item, take a look at this article which provides a detailed write-up of the technology and supplies some examples.
To see a recorded demonstration of a crosstab style report being build see this tutorial video.
From 500 to 1500 Managed JVMs Without Increasing Staff
Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:13:32 EDT
Recently I listened to a large enterprise customer talk enthusiastically about ITCAM’s new agent installation and deployment features. I bet you did a double-take as you read that. Why the enthusiasm? The answer had a lot to do with how the customer delegates IT roles and responsibilities and their desire to go from 500 to 1500 managed JVMs (Java Virtual Machines) without increasing staff.
WebLogic Server Scripting Tool (WLST) provides powerful command-line capability for system administrators and developers to configure WebLogic server environments. However, its usage and adoption does not reach its full potential, seen at many working places, due to various reasons. This article gives a detailed example of using WLST to configure some of the latest security provisions (SAML 2.0) of WebLogic server, and provides insights on how to overcome the possible hurdles which prevent one from using the tool.
Why WLST and What's Stopping You?
MySQL veterans either disaffected or dismissed by Oracle are starting a new company called SkySQL that will offer “enterprise-class support and services for the MySQL ecosystem.”
The outfit is being pulled together by former MySQL SVP of global services Ulf Sandberg and its one-paragraph web site, dominated by a picture of a dolphin, says that whoever else is there – without saying who exactly – are former MySQL employees. However, SkySQL is hiring in “all areas, including support, consulting, training, marketing and sales.”
Being detail-free left room for MySQL founder Monty Widenius, who’s formally objecting to the Oracle–Sun acquisition now, to position SkySQL as an alternative to Oracle–Sun, which he evidently blames for running off the old MySQL home team.
He said he was going to do it and he has.
MySQL founder Monty Widenius has made good his quixotic threat to appeal the European Commission’s decision to approve Oracle’s acquisition of Sun – and with it MySQL, which Sun paid a downright silly billion dollars for two years ago. Oracle closed on Sun in January and Widenius had a few months grace to take his case to the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg.
It is unclear what he hopes to accomplish since he has basically gone underground and turned off his phone while the futility of the move has already cost him his chief spokesman Florian Mueller.
Oracle Killed Sun’s Plan to Clone Intel’s Xeon Chip: NYT
Sun, 04 Jul 2010 15:00:00 EDT
The New York Times says that Oracle killed a Sun project to clone Intel’s x86 Xeon server chip and turn out a “no-frills, low-power variant” that it could put into thousands of servers for folks like Facebook, Yahoo and Google.
The paper said it had heard tell of such a thing for a long time but could never quite nail it until recently when it happened to interview a couple of people “with knowledge of Sun’s plans,” “who are not authorized to speak publicly.”
As part of the fey plan Sun bought the assets of one Montalvo Systems that had done work on low-power Intel clones and hired some “top talent” out of AMD.
The ZK framework provides a variety of paradigms to develop Web applications. One the one hand it is always nice to have options, but on the other this can cause un-intentional paradigm disparities when several developers are using the framework to develop an application without a consistent design.
By and far, the Model View Controller pattern has been adapted by various Web applications and frameworks (like Apache Struts, Apache Beehive PageFlows) to develop quality Web applications.
The following is an illustration of how an MVC based Web application can be developed using ZK and Spring. ZK has introduced a lot of features that enable easy integration with Spring. The source code of example application is available for download here.
Seven Rules to Improve Your Application Performance Practices
Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:48:02 EDT
In this article I discuss the seven most important steps to improve your application performance practices. These simple-to-follow practices will help you to improve the way you deal with application performance. Besides eventually improving the performance of your applications it will help you to avoid playing the classical blame game which normally happens when something goes wrong
Red Hat’s Server & Desktop Virtualization Move in Together
Sun, 27 Jun 2010 12:15:00 EDT
Red Hat’s desktop virtualization has joined its server virtualization in the 2.2 rev of its standalone KVM hypervisor Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV).
Like 2.1 seven months ago, 2.2 can host and manage both Red Hat Linux and Windows VMs and now offers a single infrastructure for managing server and desktop virtualization deployments.
RHEV for Desktops will deploy Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD) configurations, a k a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). It offers a web-based connection broker for users to access their hosted virtual desktops, coupled with the open source SPICE remote rendering technology for multimedia, including multiple monitors, HD-quality video and bi-directional audio/video for video conferences. Templating, thin provisioning and desktop pooling are also included.
Rich Cannings, Android security lead, blogged about remotely removing an app from people’s Android phones. Recently, we became aware of two free applications built by a security researcher for research purposes. These applications intentionally misrepresented their purpose in order to encourage user downloads, but they were not designed to be used maliciously, and did not have permission to access private data — or system resources beyond permission. As the applications were practically useless, most users uninstalled the applications shortly after downloading them.
IBM filed a breach-of-contract / misappropriation of trade secrets suit in New York Supreme Court last week seeking to hold Joanne Olsen to her non-compete and stop her from going to Oracle for a year.
It’s gotten a temporary restraining order according to InformationWeek.
Olsen, with IBM for 31 years, was a general manager in IBM’s services unit and was hired by Oracle as senior VP of on-demand services, the SaaS versions of its software, reporting to none other than Larry Ellison.
IBM alleges that she knows too much about IBM, its operations, its growth strategies and its potential acquisitions to fall into Oracle’s hands.
IBM has gone to court a couple of times in the last couple years waving its non-competes around.
Azul Zings Its Java Hardware – Poof, It’s Software
Thu, 24 Jun 2010 08:00:00 EDT
Born to peddle pricey proprietary iron built around exotic multi-core chips that ratchet up the scalability of Java apps – a dangerous exercise that has demanded a $200 million investment from its backers – Azul Systems is now going to start selling software that does pretty much the same thing as its fancy appliances but it’s optimized for the latest class of cheap, ubiquitous, increasingly powerful x86 commodity servers.
If the stuff clicks in the next year, eight-year-old Azul may be in a position to organize an orderly retreat from its hardware business, which, as it happens, reportedly just saw record Q1 earnings. It may have hundreds of widgets out there, but software’s an easier sell.
The latest Moyea Web Player V2.4.0.8 is released recently supporting JS application in navigation URL and auto-hide control bar in full-screen mode. Shenzhen P.R.C – Jun, 24th, 2010 - Moyea Software Co., Ltd. (http://www.moyeamedia.com): a rising developer of flash applications for the internet and multimedia software, today officially releases Moyea Web Player V2.4.0.8, which is the Moyea Web Player is one of the best flash video player creating and customizing programs for all-level users to make their own web player which can be embedded in multiple platforms like blogs, websites, forums and so on.
SAP’s Roland Wartenberg to Present at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
Tue, 22 Jun 2010 11:15:00 EDT
Like other desktop-centric technologies such as anti-malware, PC tune-up utilities (disk de-fragmentation, registry cleaners, junk removers, etc) have primarily been a localized technology that relied on the user installing software on the computer to analyze and resolve problems that affect performance.
In his session at the 7th International Cloud Expo, Roland Wartenberg, Chief Virtualization Evangelist at SAP, will introduce a new approach that takes PC tune-up and security strategies to a new level utilizing the power of the cloud as a means of delivery. He will also discuss new methodologies for using the intelligence of the community and the power of the cloud to accomplish computer maintenance at a lower total cost of ownership than traditional desktop technologies.
FinancialForce.com Announces VMforce Connector Service for Java Developers
Mon, 21 Jun 2010 08:00:00 EDT
On Tuesday FinancialForce.com announced a new VMforce connector service that will enable Java developers to quickly and easily build FinancialForce Accounting functionality into their own VMforce applications. The announcement was made at The Grape Escape analyst event in Boston. The FinancialForce VMforce connector provides pre-configured web services, opening the doors for VMforce Java developers that want fast, easy access to enterprise accounting functionality on the Force.com platform. It will significantly reduce configuration and set-up time of the FinancialForce Accounting web services layer. Out of the box, VMforce developers will have access to the accounting functionality they need to make their apps enterprise-ready quickly and easily.
DS Data Systems UK Ltd. is pleased to announce the release of KonaKart v5.0.0.0, a Java-based eCommerce shopping cart application that provides an extensive set of features to enable retailers to successfully sell their products over the internet.
KonaKart is a Java / JSP / XML based solution with easy to use Java APIs and a SOAP Web Service interface that allow you to quickly integrate eCommerce functionality into your existing systems. The customizable parts of KonaKart are Open Source and available under the GNU LGPL.
The new version includes many new features as well as some bug fixes. Reward Point Functionality has been introduced which allows customers to receive and redeem points online. Support for recurring billing has been added for native billing or to use the recurring billing functionality of the payment gateway. A customer and administrator can now download invoices in PDF format and many new custom and other attributes have been added to the important objects of the system. Full details of the new features can be found at http://www.konakart.com/downloads/ver-5000-whats-new
Managing Persistent Entities with the JPA Persistence Entity Editor
Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:00:00 EDT
Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse allows you to view, create, and manage JPA entity relationships. The Entity Editor provides a centralized view of all entity relationships, allows you to modify entity properties, and allows you to navigate between the object model, mapping associations, and database schema layers.
As described previously, the Entity Editor displays relationship diagrams for entities defined in the project.
We've just released the fifth milestone of our 2.0 Java SCA runtime, check out the release announcement for details of what's in it. It's been a little while since milestone four as we've been hard at work updating the runtime to make sure that we pass the proposed OASIS compliance tests for the Assembly, JCA and JCI specifications. Next we're working on some of the new compliance tests that are coming out of OASIS such as the Web service binding tests. In the mean time give milestone five a spin, you can get it from here , and we look forward to hearing your feedback.
This is a 5-minute guide to creating a wizard inside a modal panel. We are going to use a4j:include together with rich:modalPanel.
Start page (start.xhtml):
<h:form>
<a4j:commandLink oncomplete="#{rich:component('panel')}.show();"
value="Open"
reRender="panel"/>
</h:form>
<h:panelGrid id="result">
<h:outputText value="#{bean.color}" />
<h:outputText value="#{bean.number}" style="COLOR: #{bean.color}"/>
</h:panelGrid>
<rich:modalPanel id="panel">
<f:facet name="header">Wizard</f:facet>
<f:facet name="controls">
<a href="#" onclick="#{rich:component('panel')}.hide();">Close</a>
</f:facet>
[...]
Just ran across this and it is a nice technique for those situations where you are limited to table based filtering of data. Typically, I focus on data filtering as far up stream as possible. It is better to filter data at the source (in the where clause for JDBC). Next, I use DataSet based filtering.
But sometimes you can't filter at the Source or the DataSet, which is where table based filtering comes in. The issue with table based filters is that there is no good way in the UI to implement conditional filtering. For instance, imagine you have a data driven parameter multi-select parameter and you want to limit the choices to the values from that parameter.
Silicon Valley’s two divas, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, won their respective Republican primaries in California Tuesday night.
Whitman will run against Democratic nominee Jerry Brown, now the state’s attorney general, for governor, succeeding Arnold Schwarzenegger. And Fiorina will try to knock three-term incumbent Barbara Boxer out of the U.S. Senate come November.
Both women ultimately won in a walk, largely on the back of their ad campaigns. Carly had the tougher go.
Think Twice Before Declaring a Java Method as Final
Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:25:00 EDT
To minimize the invocation time, final methods are optimized (inlined) first by Java compiler and then, during runtime by Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler. Because of this, making methods final is considered a best practice for optimizing performance.
If you create classes that may be used by other developers, declaring methods as final will make them not overridable in the subclasses. While today, it may seem obvious to you that a particular method will never ever need to be overridden, you might not properly predict all use-patterns of this class. If this happens, some other developer will have to jump through the hoops to create another version of such a method in a subclass. If you don't want to be cursed in the future, think twice if you really really want to declare this method as final. Do you see any benefits in using final methods?
Azul Systems Achieves Record First Quarter Bookings and Revenue
Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:15:00 EDT
Azul Systems announced record first quarter bookings and revenue for its fiscal year 2011 ending April 30, 2010, with revenue up 64% over the prior quarter. Customers purchasing Azul appliances and services in the quarter included Farmers Insurance, Success Factors, Saks.com, TD Securities, Juniper Networks, Global Collect and many other Global 2000 companies. Azul Compute Appliances enable business-critical Java-based applications to achieve unprecedented levels of scalability, throughput and response times without the complex setup, management, or high operational costs associated with traditional computing models.
Terracotta, the open source company focused on enterprise Java application scalability and availability, has tweaked Ehcache, the high-performance distributed caching widgetry.
The new 2.1 release is said to be a significant upgrade.
CEO Amit Pandey says that since Terracotta took Ehcache over last August adoption has accelerated; it currently claims 50,000 users and 100 companies paying for the enterprise version of the stuff including Adobe, News Digital Media, a division of News Corporation, and Raytheon. The hundred signed up in the last four months.
Many rich components (from rich: tag library) provide client-side JavaScript API. Being client-side means it’s happening only in the browser. We would have to click submit or fire an Ajax request to submit the changes. How do you find what JavaScript functions are available on a particularity component? The place to find this information is [...]
Linux developers, stop building RPM packages that don't install properly. Watch this Webinar to learn how to build professional Linux installers fast that install your applications reliably on Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu, and more. If you develop Linux applications for commercial use, it's critical that your software installs correctly the first time. Learn how the world's biggest software companies are building error-free installers for their Linux applications.
Best Practices for Building Multi-Platform Installers
Thu, 27 May 2010 08:00:00 EDT
A well-planned installation and deployment strategy should be part of any serious software development project. This white paper helps developers of multi-platform applications create professional, reliable installers that make a favorable first impression for your products. It covers the fundamentals of installation planning and shows you how to use InstallAnywhere to manage the different aspects of your installation projects according to proven best practices. This white paper is a must-read for any developer of Unix, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows applications.
Terracotta’s Innovation Spurs Massive Adoption of Ehcache
Tue, 25 May 2010 22:00:00 EDT
Terracotta, a provider of infrastructure software for enterprise Java scalability, on Tuesday announced the availability of Ehcache 2.1, an upgrade to its distributed caching solution. Since Terracotta acquired Ehcache in August, 2009, its adoption rate has accelerated, driven by the company’s investment in research and development. As a result, a growing number of customers are using Ehcache for all their caching needs – scaling applications seamlessly from a single computer to large virtualized data center environments and private clouds. The importance of distributed caching is outlined in a report that ranks Terracotta as a leader: “The Forrester Wave: Elastic Caching Platforms, Q2 2010,” Forrester Research, Inc., May, 2010.
In the last ten months, Terracotta has released four upgrades to Ehcache all in response to customer demands. In that same period, 50,000 users have moved to the latest version of Ehcache, and more than 100 organizations have upgraded to enterprise editions including Adobe, News Digital Media, a division of News Corporation, and Raytheon. Ehcache and Hibernate users find that the combined value of established open source technology and simple configuration changes enables them to scale their applications to hundreds of nodes. It represents a non-disruptive, easier to use and more broadly applicable alternative to proprietary distributed caching technologies such as Oracle Coherence.
In our Oracle JDeveloper 11g ADF applications at runtime, on occasion we encountered one of the following errors when running our applications under Oracle's WebLogic Server 10.3.2. I've included the beginning stack trace to assist Google searches into this page:
<Utils><buildFacesMessage> ADF: Adding the following JSF error message: JNDI failure. Unable to lookup Data Source at context jdbc/SomeJndi oracle.jbo.DMLException: JBO-27200: JNDI failure. Unable to lookup Data Source at context jdbc/SomeJndi at oracle.jbo.server.DBTransactionImpl.lookupDataSource(DBTransactionImpl.java:1414) at oracle.jbo.server.DBTransactionImpl2.connectToDataSource(DBTransactionImpl2.java:309) at oracle.jbo.common.ampool.DefaultConnectionStrategy.connect(DefaultConnectionStrategy.java:203) at oracle.jbo.server.ApplicationPoolMessageHandler.doPoolConnect(ApplicationPoolMessageHandler.java:553) at oracle.jbo.server.ApplicationPoolMessageHandler.doPoolMessage(ApplicationPoolMessageHandler.java:409) at oracle.jbo.server.ApplicationModuleImpl.doPoolMessage(ApplicationModuleImpl.java:8534) at oracle.jbo.common.ampool.ApplicationPoolImpl.sendPoolMessage(ApplicationPoolImpl.java:4392) at oracle.jbo.common.ampool.ApplicationPoolImpl.prepareApplicationModule(ApplicationPoolImpl.java:2388) at oracle.jbo.common.ampool.ApplicationPoolImpl.doCheckout(ApplicationPoolImpl.java:2204) at oracle.jbo.common.ampool.ApplicationPoolImpl.useApplicationModule(ApplicationPoolImpl.java:3088) at oracle.jbo.common.ampool.SessionCookieImpl.useApplicationModule(SessionCookieImpl.java:460) at oracle.jbo.http.HttpSessionCookieImpl.useApplicationModule(HttpSessionCookieImpl.java:234) at oracle.jbo.common.ampool.SessionCookieImpl.useApplicationModule(SessionCookieImpl.java:431) at oracle.jbo.common.ampool.SessionCookieImpl.useApplicationModule(SessionCookieImpl.java:426) at oracle.adf.model.bc4j.DCJboDataControl.initializeApplicationModule(DCJboDataControl.java:513) at oracle.adf.model.bc4j.DCJboDataControl.getApplicationModule(DCJboDataControl.java:856)
..or..
Caused by: javax.naming.NameNotFoundException: Unable to resolve 'jdbc.SomeJndi'. Resolved 'jdbc'; remaining name 'SomeJndi' at weblogic.jndi.internal.BasicNamingNode.newNameNotFoundException(BasicNamingNode.java:1139) at weblogic.jndi.internal.BasicNamingNode.lookupHere(BasicNamingNode.java:252) at weblogic.jndi.internal.ServerNamingNode.lookupHere(ServerNamingNode.java:182) at weblogic.jndi.internal.BasicNamingNode.lookup(BasicNamingNode.java:206) at weblogic.jndi.internal.BasicNamingNode.lookup(BasicNamingNode.java:214) at weblogic.jndi.internal.WLEventContextImpl.lookup(WLEventContextImpl.java:254) at weblogic.jndi.internal.WLContextImpl.lookup(WLContextImpl.java:393) at javax.naming.InitialContext.lookup(InitialContext.java:392)
..or..
<Utils><buildFacesMessage> ADF: Adding the following JSF error message: Unable to resolve 'jdbc.SomeJndi'. Resolved 'jdbc' javax.naming.NameNotFoundException: Unable to resolve 'jdbc.SomeJndi'. Resolved 'jdbc'; remaining name 'SomeJndi' at weblogic.jndi.internal.BasicNamingNode.newNameNotFoundException(BasicNamingNode.java:1139) at weblogic.jndi.internal.BasicNamingNode.lookupHere(BasicNamingNode.java:252) at weblogic.jndi.internal.ServerNamingNode.lookupHere(ServerNamingNode.java:182) at weblogic.jndi.internal.BasicNamingNode.lookup(BasicNamingNode.java:206) at weblogic.jndi.internal.BasicNamingNode.lookup(BasicNamingNode.java:214) at weblogic.jndi.internal.WLEventContextImpl.lookup(WLEventContextImpl.java:254) at weblogic.jndi.internal.WLContextImpl.lookup(WLContextImpl.java:393) at javax.naming.InitialContext.lookup(InitialContext.java:392)
All of these errors occur because of a misconfiguration of a JNDI in one or more of the following locations:
1) the datasource within your WebLogic Server 2) an Application Module's JDBC Data Source within your main ADF application 3) an Application Module's JDBC Data Source within a Bounded Task Flow added to your application via an ADF Library 4) an Application Module's property jbo.server.internal_connection within your main application 5) an Application Module's property jbo.server.internal_connection within a Bounded Task Flow added to your application via an ADF Library
As readers know the JNDI typically takes the form "jdbc/SomeJndi".
Essentially the JNDI for the data source in #1 must be consistent with #2 and #3 otherwise the JNDI lookup fails. In addition if you make use of the jbo.server.internal_connection Application Module property, you'll require a second datasource for #1 that is consistent with that specified in #4 and #5.
This may seem simple, but during a recent development we suffered repeated mistakes where the JNDI was misconfigured causing us large amounts of grief when we thought we had it "sorted". Take the following error message, see if you can spot the issue:
Caused by: javax.naming.NameNotFoundException: Unable to resolve 'jdbc.SomeJndi '. Resolved 'jdbc'; remaining name 'SomeJndi '
Somewhat oddly this error message converts the JNDI such that the forward slashes are replaced with a fullstop. However that's a red herring. Can you see the real error?
If you've looked closely you'll note the JNDI name has an additional space character at the end, something very difficult to visually detect. This resulted in the error above.
For us this particular misconfiguration happened in the worst of places too. Rather than a JNDI used by our main ADF application which would have fallen over straight away, it was used by a secondary ADF Library Bounded Task Flow Application Module's jbo.server.internal_connection setting. As such the application when running under no stress would work fine, but only when the specific Bounded Task Flow was called, and only when the specific Bounded Task Flow was under stress and needed to passivate to the ps_txn table did we see ADF throw the above errors. Before we realized what was going on, a large flapping red herring was that the application would occasionally throw:
JBO-28030: Could not insert row into table PS_TXN, collection id 24,026, persistent id 1" followed by "JBO-27200: JNDI failure. Unable to lookup Data Source at context jdbc/SomeJndi "
...followed by one of the JNDI connections above. But we could see that records were inserted into the ps_txn table regardless of the previous error, and via our own testing, logging into the associated database account specified for the jbo.server.internal_connection, the db user had all the correct database privileges for working with the ps_txn table. Eventually we tracked it back to the misconfigured JNDI, such that the main application with the correct JNDI was happily inserting into PS_TXN, but the secondary Bounded Task Flow JNDI was intermittently causing this issue.
Google and VMware have never been particularly chummy but now they’re suddenly each other’s new best friend and a little cloud brought them together.
As a result Google is going to support some of the Java tools VMware got with its acquisition of SpringSource, enough so users can move relatively painlessly between Google’s cloud, any VMware-based clouds like, say, its VMForce cloud combined with Salesforce, and Amazon’s EC2. It will also make certain adjustments in the Google Web Toolkit to oblige the effort.
See, Google is cultivating its yen for the enterprise and claims that its App Engine, its platform for web applications, is now ready to support customers’ internal apps so it announced a version called App Engine for Business that big companies are supposed to use as infrastructure.
“I think that with conferences like this [Cloud Expo] vendors are coming out with real service offerings with pricing and contracts (vs. pie-in-the-sky concepts that were being thrown around a year ago),” so noted Douglas Barbin , Director at SAS 70 Solutions, in this post-show Q&A with Cloud Expo Chair Jeremy Geelan.
Barbin also noted that cloud computing is experiencing an evolution, not a revolution, as companies are now saying their “‘enterprise uses an IaaS provider or Software-as-a-Service, etc.’”
The Essential Guide to Better Release Management & Deployment
Mon, 17 May 2010 19:45:00 EDT
Managing an application release and its distribution is a complex piece of the development process. A release may pass every test in QA, then quickly go haywire when in production. Components can get left behind, destination targets are missed or files get installed in the wrong locations with no easy way to roll back. Download this eBook from Aldon and learn how to how to make your efforts feel like a walk in the park and not a day on the battlefield.
The Secret Behind The Incredible Growth of Cloud Expo
Sun, 16 May 2010 10:15:00 EDT
I can't comprehend that any event producer anywhere in the world today would answer this question by picking any one of the five available options presented. "A leading tool?" What do you mean by "a leading tool?" What other tools would you possibly have in this day and age? This question, the survey itself and its participants belong to the last decade.
I personally don't use email anymore; I communicate through "Twitter."
We don't do press releases unless we have to; we tweet stories to our roughly 12,000 followers in 8 channels. The news gets amplified to hundreds of thousands instantly.
Even during Cloud Expo, we reach more people by Twitter than the announcements we make through loudspeakers in the convention centers.
I would love to contact the people who are conducting this survey and ask them if any company answered their first question as "don't really consider it."
In an age where I personally hail a cab at an airport through Twitter, I can't possibly comprehend which century bubble those people might be living in.
"I think this shows the agility of the new SAP," boasted SAP Chief Financial Officer Werner Brandt, in a conference call yesterday as SAP confirmed that it is to buy Sybase for $5.8 Billion. According to SAP spokesman Saswato Das, the acquisition deal includes over $500 million in Sybase debt.
Cloud Expo 2010 New York, Prague, and Silicon Valley "Gold Sponsor" CSC has named Siki Giunta vice president of cloud computing and software services, with global responsibility for implementing CSC's cloud computing strategy and continuing to advance the company's leadership position in cloud services.
Giunta will report to Russ Owen, president of CSC's Managed Services Sector, and will also work closely with Brian Boruff who launched CSC's cloud computing services 16 months ago, successfully establishing CSC as a leader in the emerging market of cloud computing.
Boruff has been promoted to CSC's vice president of Emerging Technologies and Strategic Growth Markets.
Sometime back I blogged about Stress & load testing web applications (even ADF & Apex) using Apache JMeter. That post dealt with the generic setup of recording a web session and then replaying under load via JMeter.
When considering using JMeter for JDeveloper 11g ADF applications there are additional JMeter configuration steps required beyond that detailed in the original post. As per the original post ADF passes around cookies to store the JSESSIONID, and you can use JMeter's HTTP Cookie Manager to correctly handle the cookie. However ADF also makes use of a number of parameters passed as HTTP POST parameters and URL parameters. On running an ADF application you'll often see URL parameters like _adf.ctrl-state, _afrLoop, and embedded within the HTTP bodies variables such as javax.faces.ViewState, used by ADF to coordinate state with the browser session. In order for JMeter to simulate multiple user sessions it needs to be correctly configured to handle these too, capturing and carrying the unique values for each session in the load test.
A couple weeks ago I blogged how to configure Apache JMeter for testing Oracle's ADF. This week to complete the set, I'll post my findings on stress testing Oracle's Application Express (Apex) with JMeter . Both posts are related to an earlier post on how to record sessions in JMeter that are essential reading to understand what I've specified here.
A Small Caveat
Please note this particular post is the result of my rather limited testing of JMeter with Apex. I'm not an Apex expert, and I haven't used it for over 2 years in any development project. The implication for this post is I might not have discovered absolutely everything that needs to be done to set up JMeter for stress testing Apex in every considerably use case.
Fresh from its acquisition of Rabbit Technologies – and not all that very long after its own acquisition by VMware – SpringSource, the open source Java application framework commercializer, has gone and bought Gemstone Systems and its distributed caching technology.
The buy is supposed to flesh out its middleware and advance its strategy of delivering the application infrastructure needed by modern distributed cloud applications.
They’re not disclosing the terms of the acquisition but Gemstone, which is going on 30, is beholden to no VCs, is profitable, and has a reportedly thriving legacy Smalltalk business that VMware means to keep.
Somewhere on the Internet last week, mention was made that unemployment for high income people was (essentially) non-existent, while extremely high for low income earners. I was able to track down that data for the fourth quarter of 2009. The lower income levels are experiencing the greatest difficulty finding jobs. Interestingly enough, this data is not making its way into the mainstream. But even more interesting is the set of “circumstances” that has caused this, or at least occurred in the same approximate time frame.
Web 2.0 and Social Networking – what do those two technologies have in common? When looking at them independently, and from a purely technical point of view, you might think they don’t have a lot in common. However, merge the concepts of two of the hottest technical advances to come around in a while and you have the power to change the world. Not all at once, as change happens over time, but they do provide a framework and the opportunities for major change, which is a first step and much of what we discuss here.
My hope is that you can use this excerpt as a reference that provides some concrete guidelines for creating and then implementing a strategy for Web 2.0 and Social Networking integration within your group or organization.
Much of the focus in the Web 2.0 and Social Networking space has been toward customer interaction; that is, how to draw in or collaborate better with customers through blogs, forums, or Facebook and MySpace pages; how to increase brand or product awareness or drive sales with viral marketing campaigns; or how to increase customer satisfaction using AJAX so that pages are updated almost automatically. We’ll look at these ideas and more. However, we also turn our focus inward to the enterprise to see how we can use new strategies and technologies to increase productivity, collaboration, knowledge management, and creativity of our employees and partners.
We are extremely lucky to have the support of so many who are individual members of the Linux Foundation. Their $99/year membership helps ensure we can continue protecting, promoting and advancing Linux and support the work of Linus Torvalds himself. I did a poll of our members earlier this year and found, unsurprisingly, that even though members appreciate our many benefits, overwhelmingly people are members simply because they value Linux and want to support our programs so it remains free, strong and neutral.
Linux Poll: Six Questions to Reveal Biggest Success and Failures
Jennifer Cloer - Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:19:49 +0100
As the conference focused on all matters Linux, LinuxCon brings attention to the most cutting-edge Linux advancements taking place today and the work being done to take them into the future. LinuxCon is the pinnacle for understanding what is happening with Linux at the developer, IT management and business levels of every enterprise.
OpenStack: Open Standards Meet The Cloud
Jim Zemlin - Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:00:32 +0100
Collaborative development has leveled the playing field and given power to the individual. One young man from Finland started a project, invited others to help, and started a computing revolution. Today two people...
Linuxables: Meet Kate, the KDE Text Editor
Jack Wallen - Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0100
We conclude our whimsical jaunt down text editor lane with a look at the KDE take on that always-necessary tool - the text editor. The KDE version is called Kate. Kate takes a different approach to the simplicity most of these tools take....
CDargs Brings Bookmarks to the Linux Command Line
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0100
Reducing keystrokes isn't the only path to productivity, but it certainly helps. If you find yourself visiting the same directories on your system (or systems) every day, save yourself some time and bookmark your most frequently used directories with CDargs.
Weekend Project: Using PulseAudio to Share Sound Across All Your Computers
Nathan Willis - Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:39:22 +0100
Full PulseAudio nirvana entails digging into the project in depth, but you can at least get your feet wet over the weekend, directing and even multicasting audio between Linux machines on your local network.
OSCON Summarized: Community, Cash, and Clouds
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:52:21 +0100
OSCON is worth attending, or at least watching from a distance, if for no other reason than it gives a pretty clear picture of what the developer community and industry around open source is thinking about. To sum up OSCON 2010 in three words, it's community, cash, and clouds.
LinuxCon Preview: Is FOSS Becoming More About What Execs Need Than What Developers Want?
Jennifer Cloer - Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:54:57 +0100
Our latest in the LinuxCon Preview series takes a look at what Forrester Analyst Jeffrey Hammond will be sharing during his keynote at the event in three short weeks. One of the primary trends he will talk about is the level of awareness about Linux and open source at the executive level and how that is impacting who is making the software acquisition decisions going forward...
Linuxables: Get Your Edit On With Gedit
Jack Wallen - Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0100
We continue our Linuxables series on the Linux text editor. As you might have noticed, this is one of those topics that breed much contempt. If you talk about vi, you must give equal time to emacs. If you talk about Kate, you best talk about Gedit. And that is precisely where we are - Gedit (although we have yet to talk about Kate, that comes next week).
Linux Distro Review: Mandriva Spring 2010.1
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0100
Mandriva 2010.1 "Spring" edition has arrived just in time for the summer months. It's a bit tardy, but worth the wait. Despite the company's well-publicized financial woes, Mandriva has delivered a solid and user-friendly desktop release.
New Arrivals in the Linux.com Store
Jennifer Cloer - Sat, 17 Jul 2010 04:07:46 +0100
We are announcing some new arrivals today in the Linux.com Store– hats, hats and more hats! To be more specific, we’ve added four new baseball caps, each with a different choice of a Linux-related graphic. My favorite is the “Green Fresh Kernels.”
Weekend Project: Configuring QoS for Linux Routers, Gateways
Nathan Willis - Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0100
Bandwidth is a limited resource, even if you are on a high-end, state-of-the-art fiber optic network. Because of the way TCP works, some types of application can rapidly fill up even the biggest pipe, which has the unfortunate side effect of harming other, less bandwidth-intensive applications. Seeding a Bittorrent for the just-released OpenSUSE update is a noble use of your network, but if it makes VoIP calls impossible to hear or stalls out an SSH session, it's hardly worth it. Fortunately, if your router or gateway is running Linux, you can easily set up quality-of-service (QoS) traffic-shaping rules to ensure that all of your packets play nice together.
GNOME 3: The Future of the Desktop
Jack Wallen - Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0100
This September, a new desktop will be unveiled to the world in the form of GNOME 3. This desktop will change the way people view, work with, and think of the desktop. It's different, it's intuitive, and it follows the current evolution of what the desktop should be. But best of all, it's all about Linux.
LinuxCon Preview: Stormy Peters on Desktops, Data and Clouds
Jennifer Cloer - Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:53:02 +0100
As part of our LinuxCon Preview series, I recently had the opportunity to ask a few questions of our keynote speaker Stormy Peters. Stormy today is executive director for The GNOME Foundation. Her LinuxCon keynote, titled "Your Desktop is Free, But Where is Your Data," takes place on Thursday, August 12, at 9 a.m. ET.
Linuxables: Your First Steps with Linux vi
Jack Wallen - Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0100
I want to preface this article by saying, very simply, if you are a programmer, a hard-core vi fan, someone looking to figure out how to make more efficient your vi macros, Linus Torvalds, or Richard M. Stallman - turn away now. Avert your eyes! If you do not, the introductory-level information you will receive here might very well steal, burn, or otherwise permanently damage your soul.
KVM or Xen? Choosing a Virtualization Platform
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0100
When Xen was first released in 2002, the GPL'd hypervisor looked likely to take the crown as the virtualization platform for Linux. Fast forward to 2010, and the new kid in town has displaced Xen as the virtualization of choice for Red Hat and lives in the mainline Linux kernel. Which one to choose? Read on for our look at the state of Xen vs. KVM.
Weekend Project: Set Up Webfinger on Your Server(s)
Nathan Willis - Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:50:40 +0100
Webfinger is a new Internet "identity discovery" mechanism, with which you can make personal or professional information about you or your organization discoverable through email addresses. Several well-known web service providers have implemented Webfinger for their customers' profiles, but if you manage your own mail server, all it takes to join the game is a little time.
Installing the Enterprise-Ready Network Monitor Zenoss
Jack Wallen - Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0100
I recently wrote about Nagios, an enterprise-worthy network monitor. For many, Nagios is all they need: It's powerful, flexible, and very reliable. However, for system administrators working with larger networks and who need auto-detection of devices, Zenoss shines as a serious enterprise-ready solution for any size network.
LinuxCon Preview: Eben Moglen on Bilski and Online Privacy
Jennifer Cloer - Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:00:43 +0100
After its sold-out debut last year, LinuxCon in year two is expected to be even better.
Introduction to Puppet: Streamlined System Configuration
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0100
If you have one Linux system to administer, you need a good working knowledge of scripting, command line utilities, and a trusty text editor. If you have two or more, it may be time to add Puppet to that list.
A Peek at MeeGo for Tablets
Linux.com Editorial Staff - Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:41:29 +0100
It's not quite July yet, but it's not too soon to start adding things to your Christmas wish list. Case in point? A MeeGo-based tablet computer.
We found this video of a "pre-alpha" demo of MeeGo for tablets. Shows the MeeGo user interface on a touchscreen tablet, some of the default applications, and working with the MeeGo multi-touch interface. You'll get a look at MeeGo playing back HD video, and AppUp Store for installing MeeGo applications. Remember, this is "pre-alpha," so it's likely to change before official devices are launched — but we think it looks really good already.
Finding Evernote Replacements for Linux
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:34:32 +0100
One of the applications many users ask about when migrating to Linux is Evernote. While the folks at Evernote haven't created a Linux port, you'll find plenty of apps for note taking, organization, and wrangling important personal and business documents.
Nearly 8,000 Votes Cast to Determine New Geek Apparel in Linux.com Store
Our winning design, with 57 percent of the vote, is "The People's Product" and was submitted by Said Hassan of Gaza in Palestine.
Linux.com Store merchandise is designed to invoke feelings of geek pride, freedom, fun, eccentricity, and originality. Said's design touches on all of these qualities, but most of all - on geek pride. His design reads "We Made IT," demonstrating the collective contributions of a worldwide community working together to produce the most innovative operating system.
Said is receiving travel expenses and a pass to attend LinuxCon in Boston and will also enjoy the fame associated with having his design displayed on T-shirts worn around the globe.
The contest was introduced when we launched the Linux.com Store in March. We received more than 100 submissions, painfully narrowed those original designs down to six finalists, and then put the ultimate decision in the hands of the community and the power of each designer to rally community support behind their creations. Three months after the Store opening, we're excited to look towards LinuxCon in Boston where the T-shirts will be also be available to purchase.
The Linux.com Store offers an exclusive line of geek apparel that helps us fly our geek flags with pride while supporting the work of Linus Torvalds and the various activities and services provided by The Linux Foundation. Said's contribution is a unique and important one.
A big thanks to all the people who submitted designs, and a special thanks to the finalists who helped bring new people to the Store by encouraging them to vote. The best ideas always come from the community and this contest was no exception. We'll look forward to offering other chances to collaborate and win prizes based on promotions for this unique online shopping destination.
The Beat Goes On: Open Source Multimedia Tools Part 2
Jon "maddog" Hall - Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:10:42 +0100
Last week, I started to share information on FOSS multimedia tools, covering some integrated multimedia distributions and some audio tools. This week, in part two, I will cover video editing, scanning, converting from one format to another, and publishing your creative arts.
LinuxCon Preview: Virgin America Runs Massive Workloads on Linux, Shares Best Practices
Jennifer Cloer - Tue, 22 Jun 2010 04:22:01 +0100
Virgin America's Ravi Simhambhatla is delivering a keynote at this year's LinuxCon North America. He will be giving us the CIO view on how to sell the value of open source internally when cost isn't the only driving factor. Mr. Simhambhatla took a few minutes to answer some of our questions as we prepare to see him speak in Boston on August 12, 2010.
Linuxables: Intro to Linux Command Line
Jack Wallen - Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:47:01 +0100
Ah, the Linux command line - that of which myths and legends are made.
Weekend Project: Configure Your Keyboard Into Submission
Nathan Willis - Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:28:53 +0100
Most of us take our keyboards for granted when they're working smoothly; perhaps we struggle for a bit finding the correct keyboard layout when doing a fresh Linux install, but once the OS is up and running they tend to stay out of our way. Except for those one or two keys that never quite do what they are supposed to. From the application "hot keys" on full-sized or multimedia keyboards to the peculiar add-ons sported by some laptop and netbook models, there are bound to be one or two specialty keys that need tweaking. You'll need some time and a couple of spare terminal windows to configure them into submission.
Open Source Multimedia Tools Make Sweet Music
Jon "maddog" Hall - Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:10:31 +0100
Forty years ago I was enraptured by the ability to control a machine using software logic, which diverted me from electrical engineering to software development. Somewhere along the line I realized that developing software for software's sake is not very useful, as I recognized that not everyone had the same fascination for computers and computing that I did.
Other peoples' creative talents surface in other areas. Some people, for instance, like to create music. They are skilled at playing the guitar or the piano, composing new music and leading the singing of people with their own voice. My parents made me play the clarinet, because they realized that I could not play the instrument and sing at the same time....a blessing to their ears.
Other people use computers to generate, record, analyze, edit and produce music and videos, and computers assist them in their creative drive. Still other people want to use both computers and multimedia to “get a message out" by creating posters, blogs, and other means of communication. Sometimes the paths would cross, and in the early days of computing it would often be a mathematician with a love of art who would bridge the gap created by the three and spend time making computers more adaptive to the creation of art of different types. It is not by accident that some of our greatest computer scientists are also great musicians, and some really great movie companies (ones like Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic) hire some of the best computer scientists.
When I was in high school a “sound lab” would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (and that was when a dollar was worth a lot more). The sound lab would be filled with expensive, dedicated equipment. Today an inexpensive PC with a decent sound card and good microphones allow a budding musician or band to publish their art and put it on the Internet for people to see, hear and perhaps even purchase.
The software required to do a reasonable job of producing multimedia also became fairly inexpensive and until recently was all closed source. In the past several years the FOSS community has created a large number of applications and services around multimedia, including entire distributions devoted to the area. The ability of artists to use the programs with little programming knowledge (or some help from programming friends) drove the development of FOSS multimedia tools.
The reader will notice there are often multiple programs listed to do each function. This is (of course) also true in the closed source world. When you go to the shelves of the computer store there are multiple CAD programs, virus programs, and programs of almost every type duplicated by various vendors. In the FOSS world various groups of programmers also put forth their vision of how programs should work. In the FOSS world, however, the “great idea” is visible, bubbles to the top, and can be shared, so all the programs move forward rapidly. FOSS developers strive to create concepts like The Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API (LADSPA), a standard API for audio (reverb, etc.), so “plug-in libraries” can be built to more easily share code between programs.
Before we start going down a list of multimedia programs, I do want to point out that a lot of these programs run on multiple platforms: Linux, *BSD, OS/X and MS Windows. A lot of them have binary packages made for the system you use, and a lot of them may be included in your current distribution of choice or distribution's repository. Your current distribution is the first place to look. The reader is therefore welcome to try each program to see which program fits their needs the best, and if I, as the author, left out your favorite program in some category, please forgive me. Better yet, put your comments here and let the rest of the readers benefit from your thoughts.
Remember that you may have to match the sound system of your distribution (ALSA, Pulse-Audio, etc.) to your computer's hardware and then typically match the settings of each application you try to that sound system before you can hear anything. Another tip for good results is to make sure that you are using the real-time version of the Linux Kernel, which has better latency handling than the general-purpose kernel.
There are also several distributions aimed at multimedia, where the distribution makers have gathered a lot of the programs and added them to a base distribution using a real-time kernel that runs live off a CD-R, a DVD-R or a USB stick. Some of these distributions are:Ubuntu Studio, Artistx , 64Studio.com and Puredyne.org (bootable USB stick and LiveCD).
Running one of these distributions “live” may be the easiest way to try a series of the applications quickly, and if you like them, perhaps set up a netbook or a dual-boot system to create a “studio-on-the-go.” There are also companies, such as Indamixx, that sell pre-installed netbooks and even hand-held “studios.” Here the distribution and applications have already been matched with the hardware, so “installation” is as easy (or easier) as most Windows systems that come pre-installed. You can just take it out of the box and use it. They also sell support on the systems.
There are also several books out on using FOSS multimedia tools. One book, “Crafting Digital Media: Audacity, Blender, Drupal, GIMP, Scribus, and other Open Source Tools,” by Daniel James (Apress, 2009), has a CD-R in the back of it based on Ubuntu. The book describes a subset of the tools listed here, but each tool it describes is in much greater detail than can be put into this web-based text.
For my Portuguese-speaking friends (or those people very good with translation software), EstudioLivre.org lists a huge wealth of FOSS multimedia tools. Finally, a lot of sites have free multimedia of different types under various free licenses. The Artistx site mentioned above has a long list of sites that have free 3D models, audio clips, video clips and other multimedia that is freely licensed. This can help you get started using some of the music programs listed here.
I decided to write this web article in two parts. This week I will start the discussion with programs in graphics and animation, and audio. Next week, I'll cover video, web publishing, and advanced topics such as format converters and live editing. In reality, it is still impossible to do justice to all of the programs and efforts in the FOSS multimedia space, but these two articles will hopefully inspire you to do more investigation yourself.
Graphics and Animation
GIMP
One of the first “end user” programs to attract my attention was GIMP. An “image manipulation and paint program,” GIMP can handle a wide range of input formats such as GIF, JPEG, and PNG. I first saw GIMP about the time that Larry Ewing used GIMP to create “Tux,” the penguin mascot for the Linux kernel. While GIMP was impressive even then, a complete re-write of it (allowing the utilization of plug-ins) made GIMP take off, and today GIMP is considered the tool for bit-map digital graphics. GIMP works on many different platforms and is especially useful for doing in-depth photo retouching, image authoring and image composition. While GIMP is not know for animation, simple animated gifs and other animations can be made with GIMP using different layers to allow for the movement. I use GIMP to “recover” otherwise damaged photographs, including old photographs that I scan in and electronically clean up. The use of GIMP allowed my father to see clearly what his grandfather actually looked like, and my mother to have a good picture of her grandmother.
One use for GIMP is in teaching composition to students learning photography. Usually composition is taught using digital cameras instead of film because of the cost savings associated with electronic media. However, Adobe's Photoshop is an expensive proposition for students to purchase. GIMP, being free of cost, allows students to learn composition and electronic effect treatment without incurring either the license cost or the stain of “software piracy.”
Inkscape
Inkscape is a program for creating scalable 2D vector graphics. Inkscape accepts a wide variety of input file types and uses SVG, a W3C XML format standard for 2D vector graphics, as its native format. With Inkscape you can make all sorts of scalable drawings and posters. I use Inkscape to title the slides of my videos. Inkscape is also very useful in creating icons, splashscreens website art and other graphical items that may have to “grow and shrink” without losing perspective. While Inkscape can store its results in a wide variety of formats to be compatible with other programs, its native format of SVG will be very useful due to the upcoming HTML5 standard.
Hugin
Hugin is a program for creating panoramic images. I take lots of pictures I would like to “stitch together” to make a panorama, and Hugin does this nicely. Again, Hugin takes a little learning and pre-planning to use, but the results are worth it.
Synfig
Synfig is a powerful multiplatform 2D animation program. It features motion between layers, distortion effects, color correction, and tabular floating point calculation for image processing.
Blender
Blender is a very powerful tool for creating 3D environments, images, backgrounds, animations and games. Also interesting is the Blender Foundation's focus on creating “open” movies, such as “Elephant Dream” and “Big Buck Bunny,” and allowing people to change them by licensing the intermediate data files under Creative Commons licensing. In 2008, the Blender Foundation created a computer game called “Yo Frankie!” which runs on a variety of different operating systems. And, another use of Blender is in creating 3D “walkthroughs” for architectural studies.
Wings3D
Wings3D is a somewhat simpler tool than Blender for creating 3D objects, and does not create animations, but is still very powerful
Audio Players
xmms and Audacious
Want to listen to music? FOSS has a wide range of music players, from the simple to the highly sophisticated. Once upon a time, I found a little music player called “xmms.” It did everything I wanted a music player to do at the time, and while it was patterned after Winamp, it was written from scratch by Mikael and Peter Alm. A very belated “thank you” to these two gentlemen! Like a lot of other projects in FOSS, it has morphed and spun off other “simple” audio player projects such as Audacious. Not that Audacious is “simple.” But as a clean, easy-to-use interface goes, even my mom and pop could use Audacious.
Mixxx
Mixxx, on the other hand, is a “not so simple” audio player, but my mom and pop never expressed an interest in being a “DJ." If mom and pop did want to test those waters, they could mix streams of different formats such as MP3, OGG, WAVE and FLACC with Mixxx. They could even make their digital recordings sound like vinyl (shades of 1968!). Mixxx can handle multiple sound cards and various MIDI controllers. It would allow mom and pop to capture and play back multichannel sound, such as their son singing in the shower.
Media Players
We move on from audio players to media players where we encounter VLC. VLC claims to “play everything. It handles DVDS, (S)VCDs, Audio CDs, web streams, TV cards and much more, including E=every codec I have ever known. And, it runs across multiple operating systems.
Some of programs I've discussed have audio capture of some type. But if you are going to do real audio capture, editing and mixing, you probably want to use a more specialized program.
Audacity is my long-standing favorite for capturing and editing audio. For me, it is the right combination of “easy to use” and “power.” Audacity imports and exports all the formats that I need, and I can edit those sound files to remove parts I do not want or “glue together” pieces of audio. Sound too loud or a bit too soft? You can easily adjust that too. Audacity works across all major platforms.
Nyquist is a language based on LISP that was intended to be used for complete audio synthesis and analysis. A subset of this language allows the writing of plug-ins for Audacity that do not need to be compiled and can be written with a simple text editor.
If you do not need Microsoft Windows support for your music editing (and who does?) but want a kick-ass editor, try Ardour, a user interface that is a bit more complex than Audacity, in my opinion. But if you can't do what you want to do with Ardour in the way of audio editing, then you are rare indeed.
Summary, Part One
Hopefully you will download one of the distributions listed above, run it live and try out some of the applications I have listed here. Then we can continue investigating the FOSS multimedia world by looking closer at video and publishing multimedia works.
FOSS Compliance: What Are the Basics You Must Know?
Amanda McPherson - Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:00:00 +0100
Software compliance isn’t exactly the sexiest topic we tackle at the Linux Foundation, but it’s one of the most important. While we focus *our* efforts on open source software, the vast majority of software compliance efforts are focused on proprietary licenses. Just ask a CIO of an enterprise who has been audited by one of their software suppliers recently, or look at the well funded efforts of the Business Software Alliance, an organization dedicated to stamping out piracy and keeping companies in compliance with their members. At the Linux Foundation, we aren’t concerned with proprietary licenses and the well-funded and well-armed organizations that maintain compliance. We concern ourselves with helping companies use open source software, and in order to use open source software, you must keep in compliance with the license. After all to most open source projects...
Seven Reasons to Upgrade to openSUSE 11.3
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:38:59 +0100
Lizard lovers, get ready. The next openSUSE release is heading your way very soon. After eight months of development, the green team will launch 11.3 in mid-July. Let's take a look at the new and improved openSUSE.
osTicket: Help Desk Ticketing Done Right
Jack Wallen - Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:00:00 +0100
Are you an IT manager or a consulting firm in search of the ideal help desk ticketing system? Have you looked around for what seems like months only to find systems too pricey, too closed, too feature-deprived, or too complex to install and/or use? Or are you just beginning your search and have no idea where to look? If either description fits, you're in luck as I have the help desk ticketing system that is just the ticket to meet your needs. The system I am referring to is osTicket and, as you would expect, the "os" stands for "open source."
Weekend Project: One-Time Passwords for Extra Linux Security
Nathan Willis - Sat, 12 Jun 2010 03:05:18 +0100
Do you take your security extra seriously? Do you reject all unencrypted email and use a 15,360-bit RSA key when you log in over SSH? Well that's pretty good, but it still doesn't protect you from every kind of attack.
The People Who Support Linux: "Be a Part of Creating Your Own Free World"
Jennifer Cloer - Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:24:20 +0100
Our third profile in the series introduces us to Damian Bere. Damian is a Senior Enterprise Architect based in the UK who has been using Linux for 10 years. Another fact about Damian: he's smitten with his @linux.com email address.
Getting a Grip on GNU grep
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:00:00 +0100
If you've been using Linux for any amount of time, you've probably heard about grep, though maybe you're not familiar with using it. GNU grep is a tool that lets you search one or more files, or standard input. Simple, effective, and absolutely necessary for anyone managing Linux and UNIX-type systems. Want to get a grip on grep? We'll get you started in no time.
Eclipse Study Shows Major Gains for Linux Among Developers
Jennifer Cloer - Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:57:44 +0100
Developers and programmers are always the earliest adopters of technology, paving the way for the rest of us. And nowhere is that more evident than with Linux.
Setting Up Email Alerts for Network Monitoring with Nagios
Jack Wallen - Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:00:00 +0100
For any network administrator, a good monitoring tool is worth its weight in dilythium crystals (or gold, depending upon your needs).
Free Training Webinar Covers Linux Admin 101: Getting to Know Vim
Jennifer Cloer - Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:56:01 +0100
There is a really useful, free training webinar available now from one of our regular Linux.com writers (and former openSUSE Community Manager), the talented Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier...
10 Tips for Using GNU Find
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:16:13 +0100
The GNU find utility is one of the most useful commands you'll ever get to know. At first glance the options and syntax can seem arcane. But, with a little practice, you'll be able to locate any file on your system with almost no trouble at all. To help you get started, we've got 10 ways you can use find to get what you're looking for.
Weekend Project: Make a Portable Encrypted File Safe
Nathan Willis - Sat, 05 Jun 2010 00:50:29 +0100
Many Linux distributions offer industrial-strength disk encryption tools...
Is That You in Those Killer Linux Threads?
Jennifer Cloer - Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:24:58 +0100
Since launching the Linux.com Store in March, we've welcomed a lot of new visitors and members to the Linux.com community and have gotten some great feedback about the merchandise.
Using ClamAV to Kill Viruses on Postfix
Jack Wallen - Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:00:00 +0100
Our Postfix mail server series comes to a close this week with the addition of antivirus. I think it's fitting to close with this article because, to many people, the idea of having to add antivirus on a Linux machine is antithetical to what Linux is. When applied to a mail server, that is quit untrue.
Jon "maddog" Hall Viewpoint: Total Cost vs. Return on Investment
Jon "maddog" Hall - Wed, 02 Jun 2010 23:08:45 +0100
Over the years there has been much discussion about whether closed-source, proprietary software (CSPS) or Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) has the lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This typically goes hand-in-hand with discussions about whether software and computing in general are considered strategic investments or simple necessities of modern life, and that discussion typically follows from the discussion of whether software is a commodity or not.
Slackware 13.1: A Linux Distro That Gets Out of the Way
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Tue, 01 Jun 2010 22:55:18 +0100
Slackware Linux is still going strong. The Slackware Linux Project released Slackware 13.1 on May 24th.This is just a little by shy of the 17th anniversary of Slackware 1.0 and not quite a year after Slackware 13.0. Delve back into yesteryear with me; you're in for a treat.
Meanwhile, in Finland..
Linus Torvalds - Sat, 29 May 2010 18:20:00 +0100
Being known as a Finn living in the US, sometimes people send me pointers to things Finnish.Now, this weekend is obviously the Eurovision song contest...
Weekend Project: Spring Clean Your Music Library
Nathan Willis - Sat, 29 May 2010 03:52:35 +0100
It is a long weekend coming up. If you're like most of us, your collection of digital music has a few problems that build up over time, making it an iffy proposition to simply copy a folder from your hard drive to your phone or music player. There are duplicate files, files with bad or missing tags, maybe a few stray songs purchased from a different store in a separate folder from the material you rip from CDs; and although your slick new media player software supports displaying album art, most of your albums don't have artwork attached to them. Why not set aside a few hours to give your library a quick scrubbing?
The Spring 2010 Linux Distro Scorecard (Part 2)
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Fri, 28 May 2010 23:08:50 +0100
"Zonker" picks up right where he left off yesterday. In this Spring's Linux Distro Scorecard, he provides brief reviews of Debian, Fedora, Linux Mint, Mandriva, openSUSE, Slackware and Ubuntu. Today, we get his take on the final three, and he delivers the payoff - the Linux Distro Scorecard - which can be a handy reference during the months ahead.
openSUSE
The openSUSE distribution is sponsored by Novell, my former employer. (Just in case that wasn't clear from the bio.) As a result, it's one of the distros I'm most familiar with and try to be as objective as possible about.
The project started life about five years ago when Novell decided to open up SUSE Linux development. It's the foundation of SUSE Linux Enterprise, and it's a good distro for people who want to pay attention to SUSE Linux Enterprise development. openSUSE is now developed fully in the open, and the tools behind it (the openSUSE Build Service) are entirely open source. In fact, the build service is being used by several other projects (like MeeGo) and can be used to build packages for all major distros — not just openSUSE.
The default desktop is KDE, though GNOME is also supported and is the default desktop for the commercial release, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. Both desktops receive a lot of polish, though the openSUSE developers try not to stray far from upstream GNOME or KDE in terms of developing features. That is to say, if a feature is being developed for openSUSE/SUSE, they try to coordinate with the upstream projects.
As for ease of use, openSUSE is pretty newbie friendly, though it does have some rough edges. The installer is more complex than Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Users have to make a fair number of choices, and can select packages and such during the install if they use the openSUSE DVD. The KDE and GNOME live CDs come with a pre-defined selection of software.
YaST, the system-wide management tool, is very comprehensive. On the flip side, some folks really don't like YaST and find it too intrusive. The package management tools are very well-done, but the actual software center is not as well designed as the Mint or Ubuntu software installers. (This may be changing in an upcoming release, though.) Likewise, the package selection in the "official" repositories is not as good as Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora. However, the community repositories in the openSUSE Build Service are pretty well stocked, and you can find quite a bit of software through PackMan.
Like most other community distros, openSUSE now only supports x86 and x86-64 officially. The openSUSE Build Service is capable of supporting other architectures, but right now there's not enough momentum behind supporting other architectures and the focus of the project is to support the majority of users.
The default software shipped with openSUSE is entirely open source. The project doesn't ship restricted codecs or proprietary software with the default install, in order to make it easier to redistribute and build on openSUSE. It's not overly difficult to get restricted codecs or drivers for openSUSE, however, and instructions can be found pretty easily.
openSUSE now has a set release cycle of eight months, and the releases are supported for 18 months (two versions plus two months). This means that openSUSE tends to get out of sync with KDE and GNOME at different times, so the "freshness" of the desktops varies from release to release. There's a focus on stability with openSUSE, so bleeding edge software usually won't make it in. openSUSE makes a very good distro for professionals who are experienced with Linux, but also want mostly current software.
Slackware
Even though Slackware is no longer one of the "major" distributions in terms of users, it deserves a mention. Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distro, and has remained very true to its roots. If you used Slackware five or ten years ago, you'll find that its installer, management and package tools will still be familiar. That's Slackware's strength and weakness. It's a solid and very usable distro for folks who know Linux well, but might be scary for users who are put off by the command line and text utilities. Want an easy to use partitioner? Well, if fdisk or cfdisk meet your criteria, Slack's your buddy. If not, move right along.
Slackware's advantages? It tries to stay very close to the upstream material and produce the most UNIX-like of Linux distributions. It has a devoted, if smallish, community. Slackware is consistent and doesn't adopt the newest technology just to do so — which means Slackware may stick with older software longer than other distros in the name of stability. For instance, it was the last major distro to adopt the 2.6 Linux kernel series. Though it's a KDE-centric distro, it didn't adopt KDE 4 as default until late 2009. And Slackware doesn't ship GNOME at all, though some community projects have offered GNOME packages for Slackware.
Slackware development is sort of open, if you know where to look. Patrick Volkerding has been the driving force behind the distro since its inception in 1993, and does a lot of the work keeping up the distro. You can get involved building extra packages through Slackbuilds.org. Other than that, it's not a big "community" distro in the sense of having a big development community involved in developing it. If you want to support Slackware, I recommend buying the CD/DVD sets and Slackware attire. Even though I don't use Slack as my full-time distro these days, I still buy the occasional sets to help support the project.
The hardware support for Slackware is limited to x86 and x86-64, though a few community projects have sprung up to support it on SPARC and other architectures. They may not stay in step with current or stable Slackware releases, though.
You won't find much support for Slackware via third party tools and hosting providers. Want to run VMware or Dropbox? You probably will have a bit of pain trying to work with Slackware. (As a host — Slackware runs fine as a guest in VMware.)
Slackware is very, very basic. Don't expect a lot in the way of management tools or even fancy package management. Expert users who know what to expect from Slackware tend to be quite happy with it, but new users will probably struggle.
Ubuntu
If you were worried we forgot about Ubuntu, there's no danger of that. We just went in alphabetical order.
Ubuntu is, hands down, the most popular desktop Linux distro around. It's got a strong community, it's easy to install and use, and has a massive community behind it. The project is sponsored by Canonical, which offers the same Linux distro to its commercial customers as to the larger community. Mostly, anyway. Canonical is in the process of offering some "light" builds to OEMs that aren't published for the larger community.
The default distribution is GNOME-based, but the project now offers KDE (Kubuntu), Xfce (Xubuntu), and a number of other 'buntus for folks who enjoy other desktops. Most of the commercial focus is on GNOME, however. Canonical has been focusing hard of late on polishing the desktop and making it easy to use. That does mean that they've diverged a bit from upstream GNOME, but many users like the changes.
As mentioned in the Debian section, Ubuntu is based on Debian and benefits a great deal from the Debian project. Unlike Debian, Ubuntu has a predictable release cycle (every six months). The Long Term Support releases have a three-year lifecycle on the desktop, so users don't have to worry about upgrading to get support. Ubuntu tends to be at the cutting edge of releases without pushing bleeding-edge software.
Ubuntu's installer is dead simple, and the project makes a lot of choices for the user initially. This is great for new users, and tends to rankle more experienced Linux users. Ubuntu hides some system complexity from users, and was the first major distro to get away from using the root user to perform system management tasks. Unlike Mandriva and openSUSE, Ubuntu doesn't have a comprehensive system configuration tool, but does have quite a few tools to ease system management.
The project takes a moderate approach to shipping non-free software. It ships some non-free packages in the form of firmware and such to ensure that hardware works, but doesn't ship non-free codecs by default. However, these things are very easy to install right after the system is set up.
Canonical also integrates its Ubuntu One services into Ubuntu, so users can buy major label MP3s through Rhythmbox and sign up for storage and synchronization services for a fee. Again, some users really enjoy the convenience of these features and others rankle at the commercialism. Ubuntu tends to be an excellent choice for new users looking to Linux for a "just works" experience. But it's not the top choice for advanced users, die-hard software freedom advocates, or folks who want to be on the bleeding edge.
The community is very friendly and the project makes a strong effort to recruit new contributors. If you want to contribute, you can find a way. The support resources and documentation are fairly good, though it can sometimes be difficult to find solutions to problems. Google searches often turn up common questions that have no answers or responses on the forums. (That does happen with other distros as well.) You'll find plenty of third-party support for Ubuntu as well, and odds are if something is packaged for Linux, it's packaged for Ubuntu first and foremost.
In general, Ubuntu is a solid Linux distro that's earned its popularity. It has a few warts, like any other OS, but tends to be a good general distro. Great intro to Linux for new users.
Scorecard and Final Verdicts
Debian
Fedora
Linux Mint
Mandriva
openSUSE
Slackware
Ubuntu
Default Desktop
GNOME
GNOME
GNOME
KDE
KDE
KDE
GNOME
Maturity of Software
Stale
Leading Edge
Stable
Stable
Stable
Stable / Stale
Stable / Leading Edge
Resources / System Requirements
Minimal
Modest
Newer
Newer
Newer
Minimal
Newer
Ease of Use
Expert
Advanced
Beginner
Intermediate
Intermediate
Expert
Beginner
Ease of Installation
Expert
Intermediate
Beginner
Intermediate
Intermediate
Expert
Beginner
Configuration / System Management Tools
Expert
Intermediate
Beginner / Intermediate
Beginner / Intermediate
Beginner / Intermediate
Expert
Beginner / Intermediate
Package Selection
Excellent
Excellent
Excellent
Good
Good
Fair
Excellent
Length of Support
Good
Fair
Good / Excellent (for LTS)
Fair / Good (for paid desktop)
Good
Good
Good / Excellent (for LTS)
Community Support / Information & Documentation
Good
Excellent
Good
Good
Good
Fair
Excellent
Media / Codec Support
Fair
Fair
Excellent
Good
Good
Fair
Good
Architecture Support
Excellent
Fair
Fair
Fair
Fair
Fair
Fair
Third-party Tools / Packages
Fair
Good
Good
Fair
Fair
Poor
Excellent
Community Involvement / Difficulty to Contribute
Expert
Beginner / Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
Expert
Beginner
Licensing Strictness
Very strict
Very strict
Permissive / Risky
Strict / Permissive for Commercial Editions
Strict for Default Install
Strict
Permissive
Developer Tools and Support
Good
Excellent
Good
Good
Excellent
Fair
Excellent
Remember, there is no wrong choice. Whatever distro suits you best is the right one for you, so if you're happy with a distro that didn't get a high score (or isn't listed here) that's OK. It's impossible to objectively say "this distribution is the best one, period." The goal here is to set out a roadmap for new Linux users or experienced Linux users that may not be fully happy with their current distro.
Have suggestions? Please let us know what you think in the comments. There's a lot of Linux to choose from, and new users looking for guidance every day. Let them know what's great about your favorite distro and how friendly the Linux community is.
The Spring 2010 Linux Distro Scorecard
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Fri, 28 May 2010 00:05:19 +0100
Which Linux distro should I use? It's one of the most common questions for new and aspiring Linux users. This Distro Scorecard will help...
MeeGo v1.0: The Netbook User Experience and API
Jennifer Cloer - Thu, 27 May 2010 02:32:24 +0100
Today's MeeGo v1.0 release represents an important step...
LinuxCon Program Announced: This Year’s Themes
Amanda McPherson - Wed, 26 May 2010 17:53:13 +0100
It’s been a hectic few months narrowing down the content for this year’s LinuxCon. Craig Ross and I have been working on this schedule for what seems like years, but we are very proud to announce it today...
Stop SPAM on Your Postfix Server with Spamassassin
Jack Wallen - Wed, 26 May 2010 15:00:00 +0100
If you have a mail server, you can almost guarantee that SPAM will find its way in (and out if your not careful)...
The People Who Support Linux: Driving 4,000 Miles to LinuxCon
Jennifer Cloer - Tue, 25 May 2010 22:43:13 +0100
This is an ongoing Linux.com series that profiles The Linux Foundation's individual members and begins to collectively illustrate a very important part of the Linux community. Individual members help support the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and other important activities that advance Linux, while getting a variety of other fun and valuable benefits. It is this collective support from thousands of individual members that enables The Linux Foundation to provide important services for industry and community.
The series began with senior application developer Matthew Fernandez. Today, we talk to Kevyn-Alexandre Paré.
Some Linux Foundation members don't do anything just a little. That's certainly the case with Paré, a software engineer based in Montreal who traveled nearly 4,000 miles by car last summer to attend the first ever LinuxCon (part of a 9,000-mile summer road trip). Apparently, his trek did nothing to slow him down, because upon arriving at LinuxCon, the BUG community gave him an award for enthusiasm.
Last summer is also when Paré became a Linux Foundation member, taking advantage of both discounted event registration and training courses, including Linux Foundation training courses "Developing Linux Device Drivers" and "Linux Kernel Internals and Debugging."
"Those two courses taught me a lot, were practical, and the teacher used real life experiences. I'm even thinking of retaking 'Developing Linux Device Drivers' since it is now offered as a 5-day course," said Paré.
Paré was originally introduced to Linux in college and quickly became passionate about embedded devices. Today, he uses Linux both at work and at home and participates in the beagleboard, gumstix, Android and Ben NanoNote projects.
"My favorite Linux innovation is the Ben NanoNote because they're applying copyleft to hardware and software. Do it yourself? Do it together!" says Paré.
His recommendation to new Linux users and developers is to keep working with others and sharing as much as you can to help. Paré says his Linux Foundation membership is a way to contribute to and be a part of The Linux Foundation, home to Linux creator Linus Torvalds, while gaining advantages such as discounts and networking opportunities.
"I expect it will help me stay up to date with training and making new contacts during conferences. I expect to gain a lot of positive visibility."
If you're interested in being profiled for this Linux.com series, please email editors@linux.com. To learn more about becoming an individual member of The Linux Foundation, please visit the Linux Foundation member website.
Linux Mint 9: Solid, Simple, Shiny
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Mon, 24 May 2010 22:59:07 +0100
It's lean, it's very green, and it's one of the better Linux distros for users who just want a good desktop right out of the box. Linux Mint 9, dubbed Isadora, was released on May 18th with plenty of new features and software.
Patent Absurdity
Jennifer Cloer - Sat, 22 May 2010 03:55:16 +0100
Thanks to the Free Software Foundation and its donors for producing this video that helps to expose the absurdity of our patent system today...
Weekend Project: Monitor Your Server with StatusNet Updates
Nathan Willis - Fri, 21 May 2010 22:53:48 +0100
Summer is almost here; do you really want to spend it sitting indoors and monitoring the health of a running server or daemon? Rather than resign yourself to that fate, why not set up your system to post important messages, from regular status updates to emergency messages, through a microblogging service like Identi.ca? It's easier than you might think.
Seven Reasons to Upgrade to Fedora 13
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Thu, 20 May 2010 22:18:48 +0100
Fedora 13 is right around the corner. Code-named "Goddard," the Fedora 13 release sports tons of updates from Fedora 12 and some really exciting new features that will have Linux power users running for their CD burners. You'll find everything from better printer support to experimental 3D support for Nvidia cards and filesystem rollback. Ready to roll up your sleeves? Let's take a look at the best of Fedora 13.
Install and Configure a Postfix Mail Server
Jack Wallen - Wed, 19 May 2010 15:00:00 +0100
Knowing how to set up a mail server on a Linux machine is an important task any Linux admin should know. And of course, in the spirit of all things Linux, there are a number of ways you can go in order to get that mail server up and running...
Thoughts on 2.6.34
corbet - Tue, 18 May 2010 23:46:28 +0100
So, as most people will have heard, the 2.6.34 kernel was released on May 16. Back in February, I was predicting a mid-May release, so I hit it almost exactly. That says nothing about my prediction skills, though (which are horrible) and a lot about how the kernel development process is going.
QA: Fedora Project Lead Paul Frields on the "Grown Up" Distro
Henry Kingman - Tue, 18 May 2010 15:00:00 +0100
Henry Kingman today shares with the Linux.com community his exclusive interview with Fedora Project Leader Paul Frields. Frields goes into detail on the upcoming Fedora 13 release, his decision to transition out of the Project Leader position and how many contributors to Fedora are being paid by Red Hat, among many other topics. Grab a cup of coffee for this in-depth discussion.
Understanding Linux File Permissions
mfillpot - Tue, 18 May 2010 15:00:00 +0100
Although there are already a lot of good security features built into Linux-based systems, one very important potential vulnerability can exist when local access is granted - - that is file permission based issues resulting from a user not assigning the correct permissions to files and directories. So based upon the need for proper permissions, I will go over the ways to assign permissions and show you some examples where modification may be necessary.
Streamlining Software Installation with PackageKit
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Mon, 17 May 2010 22:14:45 +0100
Software packaging is one of Linux greatest strengths and weaknesses. If all or most of your software comes from your Linux distribution, managing software installs, updates and removal are a piece of cake. But, it can be a fragmented landscape that is confusing for users and annoying for developers and vendors. PackageKit is an attempt to solve some of that.
A Pig Lover's Oath
Linus Torvalds - Sun, 16 May 2010 19:10:00 +0100
I honor and loveEvery pig that I seeFor maybe one dayThat pig will love me.Our friendship with pigswill always lastIt doesn't matterWhether it's slow or fast.If we continue to hugEvery pig we canOur love will growAs large as this land.So I promise to helpEvery pig in defeatFor...
Community Feedback Helps Make Linux.com Even Better
Jennifer Cloer - Sat, 15 May 2010 04:20:55 +0100
The annual Linux.com Planning meeting took place at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit last month. It was a great opportunity to meet face-to-face with some of the most active Linux.com community members and to understand what kinds of things are working and not working on the site. We even had some hard-core contributors who dialed in for the four-hour session!
Weekend Project: Transition to IPv6
Nathan Willis - Fri, 14 May 2010 23:24:59 +0100
Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) has certainly served the world well over the past few decades, but that's no reason to cling to it until the bitter end. You can start using its replacement IPv6 on your Linux machines and home network today.
Five Best Linux Netbook OSes - for Now
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Fri, 14 May 2010 01:04:33 +0100
Tired of Windows 7 Starter Edition? Ready to boot XP off the netbook? Linux runs particularly well on Netbooks, but it might be hard to choose which flavor is best for you right now. Not sure what's out there? We've lined up the five best Linux netbook OSes for your mobile computing pleasure.
Linux 101: Introduction to sudo
Jack Wallen - Wed, 12 May 2010 15:00:00 +0100
There are two ways to run administrative applications in Linux. You can either switch to the super user (root) with the su command, or you can take advantage of sudo. How you do this will depend upon which distribution you use. Some distributions enable the root user (such as Fedora, Red Hat, openSuSE), while some do not (such as Ubuntu and Debian). There are pros and cons for each.
Maddog Editorial: Reusable Code and What It Means to Your Company
Jon "maddog" Hall - Wed, 12 May 2010 04:12:21 +0100
In the FOSS community we have a saying that “good programmers write good code and great programmers 'steal' great code.”
Fragmentation is Good and Bad for Linux
Jim Zemlin - Tue, 11 May 2010 15:54:37 +0100
Lately I have been hearing criticism about embedded Linux and how fragmentation, as represented by the many flourishing Linux projects such as Meego, Android and webOS, is bad and dangerous for Linux; these critics suggest that fragmentation will hinder Linux’ ability to compete with compa...
Easy Package Creation with CheckInstall
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Tue, 11 May 2010 01:59:27 +0100
Need a fast way to create a Debian Package, RPM or Slackware package? If you need to install software from source, but don't want to take the time to learn how to create packages, there's an easier way. CheckInstall is your fast ticket to installable packages.
Weekend Project: Migrate from Direct Partitions to LVM Volumes
Nathan Willis - Fri, 07 May 2010 15:00:00 +0100
Has learning about Linux's Logical Volume Manager (LVM) been on your to-do list for too long? Then set aside some time this weekend for a little project: migrating a Linux system from traditional disk partitions to LVM's logical volumes.
The People Who Support Linux
Jennifer Cloer - Thu, 06 May 2010 22:42:05 +0100
The Linux Foundation's individual members help to support the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and other important activities that advance Linux, while getting a variety of other fun and valuable benefits.
Best Practices for Contributors: Getting Started with Linux Distro Development
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Wed, 05 May 2010 22:39:06 +0100
Want to contribute to your favorite Linux distro, but not sure where to start? Don't worry. It's easier than it looks, and you'll find plenty of help.
Jon Corbet QA: Upstream Contributions Influence Direction of Linux Kernel
Jennifer Cloer - Tue, 04 May 2010 22:24:49 +0100
Jon Corbet is a highly-recognized contributor to the Linux kernel community. He is a developer and the executive editor of Linux Weekly News (LWN). He is also The Linux Foundation's chief meteorologist, a role in which he translates kernel-level milestones into an industry outlook for Linux. Corbet has also written extensively on how to work within the Linux kernel development community and has moderated a variety of panels on the topic. Today, he gives us an update on the Linux "weather forecast," why sharing your code upstream is critical, and the state of virtualization in the kernel.
Five Things to Know About Linux Security
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Mon, 03 May 2010 21:19:34 +0100
One of the many reasons people choose Linux on the desktop and the server is security. Linux has a reasonably good track record when it comes to security, but it's not enough to simply take that for granted. If you're new to using, administering or developing for Linux, you need to know a few things about security.
Weekend Project: Setting Up a VPN on Your Linux Router or Gateway
Nathan Willis - Fri, 30 Apr 2010 22:41:39 +0100
Linux offers an array of free VPN alternatives, which you can set up and test in just a few hours' time. If you are running a Linux-based router as the gateway between your LAN and the Internet, the task becomes even simpler...
Seven Reasons to Upgrade to Ubuntu Lucid Lynx
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:42:40 +0100
The final release of Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.4) has finally arrived. Wondering what's in store? We've got seven reasons for Ubuntu users to make the leap to Lucid.
Ubuntu One Music Store: iTunes for Linux
Jack Wallen - Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:00:00 +0100
The Ubuntu 10.4 release marks a number of large improvements and features. One such feature is the addition of the Ubuntu One Music Store - the iTunes for Linux. Of course this is Linux, so it does iTunes one better.
Planning Best Virtualization Strategies for Your Enterprise
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Tue, 27 Apr 2010 22:19:35 +0100
Linux.com T-shirt Design Contest Finalists Announced
Jennifer Cloer - Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:00:00 +0100
Two months ago we invited the community to create its own unique designs to appear on Linux.com Store merchandise - - designs that would invoke feelings of geek pride, freedom, fun, eccentricity and originality. Since then, we’ve received more than 100 submissions and today, after some grueling decision-making, we are announcing the T-shirt design contest finalists!
View, Control, Instruct with iTalc
Jack Wallen - Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:00:00 +0100
If you work in an educational or training environment where you instruct users on the ins and outs of using computers, or you need to be able to (for whatever reason) control the PC user's use of a machine, the tools available are often quite expensive or quite difficult to use. Neither is the case in the Linux environment, where tools like iTalc are available.
Improving Your WordPress Blog: Five Essential Plugins
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:06:59 +0100
In this guide, we'll look at five plugins that will help protect your blog from spam and malware, simplify keeping backups, and even help you make a little cash off your blog if you're so inclined.
Miss Collab Summit? Now You Can See What You Missed
Last week, we had our fourth annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. In the years since our first one at Google in 2007, quite a bit has changed: more mobile content, a bigger audience and a broader collection of developers, industry people and users solving real technical and legal chall...
Jon 'maddog' Hall's Picks for Today's Six Best OSS Projects
Jon "maddog" Hall - Thu, 22 Apr 2010 01:50:04 +0100
You would think that writing a blog entry on “Hot New OSS Projects” would not be that difficult...
A Guide to Cloud Computing on Linux
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:54:42 +0100
This may not be the year of the Linux desktop, but it's definitely the year of Linux powering cloud computing. Even though cloud computing is gaining popularity; it's still not well-understood. Want a bit more on the basics of cloud computing? Read on!
I am pleased to announce the winners of the 2010 We’re Linux Video Contest. We had quite a few amazing videos to choose from, many of which captured the spirit of Linux. Winners First place: Go Linux...
Samba Configuration with Webmin
Jack Wallen - Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:00:00 +0100
You may have read my recent article "Easy Samba Setup," which illustrated just how easy it can be to set up the Samba file and print server. Yes, that task can be easy, but the method I outlined does require you to take advantage of the command line. There are a lot of users who shy away from the command line as if it were the plague. For those users there are options. One of those options is the Samba tool from the Gadmin suite of tools.
Linux.com Gurus at Collaboration Summit
Jennifer Cloer - Sat, 17 Apr 2010 04:33:29 +0100
We had a great meeting this morning at the LF Collaboration Summit with the Linux.com Gurus and community members. Here's a fun picture...
QA with rPath Founder & CTO: "Just Use Linux"
Jennifer Cloer - Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:50:32 +0100
There was interesting discussion during Day 1 at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit about virtualization and cloud computing as it relates to Linux. Former Red Hat executive and rPath Founder and CTO Erik Troan took a few minutes to share his perspective on how Linux is supporting virtual computing environments and cloud computing initiatives.
QA with Nokia's Ari Jaaksi: MeeGo Revs Up
Jennifer Cloer - Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:35:29 +0100
Nokia's Vice President of MeeGo Devices, Ari Jaaksi, will kick off the afternoon at today's Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit with his keynote at 1:15 p.m. PT. He took a few minutes with us this morning to share what he'll be speaking about and how the MeeGo project is going.
Linux.com Planning Meeting Details
Jennifer Cloer - Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:43:03 +0100
We're preparing for this Friday's Linux.com Planning Meeting at the Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit. The session begins at 9 a.m. PT and will take place in room Osaka...
Containers vs. Hypervisors: Choosing the Best Virtualization Technology
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:56:37 +0100
Choosing a virtualization solution isn't always easy. The good news is you have many choices to pick from. The bad news is, well, pretty much the same thing. You'll find tons of options for Linux, most of which break down to hypervisor or container-based virtualization. Not sure which is which? We'll break it down.
Ncat: The Network Swiss Army Knife
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:15:01 +0100
You may already be familiar with the cat utility, which can send files to standard input and output. Ncat does something similar, except it's for sending data over the network or accepting data to a local machine. In the right hands, ncat can be an extremely useful tool for system administration and troubleshooting.
10 (or so) of the Best Mobile Linux Apps
Henry Kingman - Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:00:00 +0100
The coolest thing about mobile Linux is that hey, it's basically Linux. Developers used to Linux will find themselves at home with mobile Linux (especially if targeting x86). And, familiar Linux apps can probably run fine on a mobile Linux system, too.
Becoming a "Linux Security Artist"
Jon "maddog" Hall - Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:49:06 +0100
After forty years in the commercial computing business, the one idea that has been drilled into me by security professionals is the fact that there is no such thing as a secure computer system, only levels of insecurity...
IBM’s Open Source Patent Pledge
Jim Zemlin - Thu, 08 Apr 2010 01:44:28 +0100
For those of us that have worked for years in open source, rumors in the press of IBM “breaking its open source patent pledge” were met with a bit of dismay. IBM is one of the top contributors to the Linux kernel and dozens of critical open source projects. For more than a decade...
Installing Nagios: An Enterprise-Worthy Network Monitor
Jack Wallen - Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:00:00 +0100
In the enterprise environment, there are certain tools that are a necessity for administrators. One such tool is the network monitor. In the close-source, proprietary world you will find plenty of tools to handle this task: Packettrap, GFI Max, Spiceworks. In the open source world - not so much. But there is one particular tool that does monitor networks and does an outstanding job of it. That tool? Nagios.
QA with Parallels CEO: Prioritizing Kernel-Level Contributions
Jennifer Cloer - Tue, 06 Apr 2010 23:59:06 +0100
With more than a decade under its belt, Parallels ranks among the most active corporate contributors to the Linux kernel and says that is serves 10 million users in 125 countries. The company today is joining The Linux Foundation and is preparing to speak at the annual Collaboration Summit taking place next week. Chairman and CEO Serguei Beloussov talks with us on a variety of topics, including why the increasing investment in Linux, what's required to collaborate and the state of virtualization and cloud computing.
Today's Guide to Linux Virtualization
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:00:00 +0100
There's no question about whether to deploy virtualization; the real question is what virtualization solutions to look at and what workloads to virtualize. We'll help cut through the complexity and help set the options straight.
Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Being a System Admin, I Learned from Superman
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Mon, 05 Apr 2010 22:34:47 +0100
A few days ago, a copy of Action Comics No. 1 sold for about $1.5 million. What makes a 72-year old comic worth seven figures? More importantly, what can system administrators learn from a guy who's been wearing tights and a cape for more than seventy years?
Help! Finding Community Linux Support
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier - Fri, 02 Apr 2010 23:24:04 +0100
You've installed Linux, things are looking great, but you've run into a snag and need a little helping hand. You're in good hands. The community is here to help, if you know where to look. Once you do, you'll find that community resources are every bit as good as the commercial counterparts for Linux support.
QA with IBM's Dan Frye: "Everything Has Changed"
Jennifer Cloer - Thu, 01 Apr 2010 22:26:45 +0100
IBM is celebrating more than a decade working with Linux, and Dan Frye was the co-author of the original IBM corporate strategies for Linux and open source. Dan today is vice president of Open Systems Development and will be keynoting at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in just two weeks. He shares with us today some of the insights he has gained over the years and how they relate to the opportunity for Linux in the decade ahead.
All Oracle Press Releases
Dell and HP to Certify and Resell all Three Oracle Operating Systems – Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM – on their x86 Server Computers
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:05:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Dell and HP to Certify and Resell all Three Oracle Operating Systems – Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM – on their x86 Server Computers
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 29, 2010
News Facts
Oracle today announced Dell and HP will certify and resell Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM on their respective x86 platforms.
Customers will have full access to Oracle’s Premier Support for Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM running on Dell and HP servers. This will enable fast and accurate issue resolution and reduced risk in a company’s operating environment.
Customers who subscribe to Oracle Premier Support will benefit from Oracle’s continuing investment in Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM and the resulting innovation in future updates.
Supporting Quotes
“Oracle Solaris is the industry's #1 UNIX operating system, and is in demand across multiple x86 platforms,” said Oracle President Charles Phillips. “Additionally, more and more customers are building virtual environments using Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM on x86 platforms. Today's announcement demonstrates Oracle’s commitment to openness and will provide Dell and HP customers with new levels of support, and immediate access to deep product expertise, limiting risk in their IT environment.”
“Dell provides customers with choice and flexibility by offering Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM as well as other operating systems on its x86 servers,” said Joyce Mullen, Vice President of Global Alliances for Dell Inc. “Our joint customers will be able to leverage our award-winning servers and the software assets from Oracle to build out robust, dependable and optimized IT platforms, helping them be more competitive while maximizing ROI on technology investments.”
"Customers need to instantly adjust to dynamic business demands, but many have hardwired stacks of applications and infrastructure that can’t rapidly change,” said Paul Miller, vice president, Solutions and Strategic Alliances, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, HP. “The combination of Oracle infrastructure software and HP ProLiant servers delivers outstanding performance, scalability and virtualization capabilities on x86 servers. Our joint customers can have complete confidence to grow their businesses while also controlling their costs.”
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com.
Trademark
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Leupold & Stevens Benefits from a Clearer View of Business Operations with the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:00:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Leupold & Stevens Benefits from a Clearer View of Business Operations with the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12
Jibe Consulting Assists Sports Optics Manufacturer with Complete IT Infrastructure Overhaul Leveraging Oracle Business Accelerators
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 29, 2010
News Facts
To help position its growing sports optics manufacturing business for another 100 years of success, Leupold & Stevens, Inc. transformed its IT infrastructure by standardizing on the Oracle E-Business Suite.
By replacing its inflexible enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, Leupold & Stevens has achieved major improvements in efficiency, information visibility and demand planning, leading to happier customers and additional revenue.
A midsize, family-owned company in business for more than a century, Leupold & Stevens felt increasing pressure to strengthen its business processes to bolster competition against global conglomerates.
The company had been using a legacy ERP system from Epicor/Avante, but problems upgrading the system led Leupold & Stevens to do a competitive review of IT solutions for manufacturers. After a comprehensive search for enterprise-class applications, Leupold & Stevens chose the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 over SAP.
To facilitate a fast and on-budget implementation of the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, Jibe Consulting leveraged Oracle Business Accelerators, a series of rapid implementation tools, best-practice templates and wizards designed to speed the adoption of Oracle Applications for midsize customers.
The Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 enables Leupold & Stevens to execute demand-based manufacturing, planning and inventory management, driving efficiencies and business results, including:
More effective and accurate tracking of production and repair costs, revenues, discounts and product development costs;
Reduction in the turnaround time of technical requests from six days to one day;
Improved distribution center management for more agile response to sales order demand;
Improved customer service due to accentuated repair planning and cost tracking;
Real-time access to financial information and drill-down variance analysis that previously required manual compilation from Microsoft Excel downloads; and
Approximately 10 times improvement in efficiency of the repair depot’s e-mail correspondence.
These improvements helped Leupold & Stevens expand its lucrative custom products business with further growth anticipated.
Supporting Quote
“To keep our business thriving for more than 100 years, our company has focused on not only creating and delivering the best products, but also offering our customers absolute satisfaction,” said Howard Werth, chief financial officer, Leupold & Stevens. “The Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 provides a flexible, streamlined platform to manage demand, orders and customer needs – helping our growing business continue to execute on these goals as we expand.”
Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized is the latest version of Oracle's partner program that provides partners with tools to better develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN Specialized offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle's growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to differentiate through Specializations. Specializations are achieved through competency development, business results, expertise and proven success. To find out more visit http://www.oracle.com/partners.
About Oracle Applications
Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go to: www.oracle.com/applications.
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, Cox Communications wanted to support Cox Conserves, an enterprise-wide initiative designed to strengthen the company’s sustainability leadership in the communications industry by reducing its carbon footprint by 20 percent.
To support Cox Conserves, Cox Communications automated the entire procure-to-pay process by leveraging Oracle iProcurement to migrate corporate and cable-system level processes to “one-touch” electronic processes that minimize paper use and increase efficiency across its high volume business.
By capitalizing on Oracle’s Enterprise Application Documents strategy and the pre-integration between financial applications within the Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Imaging and Process Management, Cox Communications was able to migrate to electronic invoices whenever possible, including the establishment of a more robust electronic routing process, reducing company-wide paper-use by three and one-third tons, the equivalent of 19,740 pounds of CO2 emissions, within the first eight months.
Additionally, by migrating to electronic processes, Cox Communications has been able to significantly increase efficiencies, reducing the cost of processing vendor invoices by up to 80 percent when using new processes and the number of account payable transactions by 26 percent.
To further reduce its environmental impact, Cox Communications is leveraging the Oracle E-Business Suite to pilot a completely online business-to-business procurement process for high volume vendors, yielding access to a customized website to order pre-configured products, secure approvals and submit payment via an electronic invoice.
In the future, Cox Communications intends to extend its new online procurement process to its top 650 suppliers, which represent half of the company’s invoice volume.
“We are making a huge company-wide push to reduce our environmental impact and set the benchmark for sustainability within the communications industry,” said Bill Fitzsimmons, vice president corporate finance and chief accounting officer, Cox Communications. “In doing so, we have used the Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Imaging and Process Management as one of the solutions to replace many manual processes and eliminate the need for literally millions of sheets of paper. Within the first eight months alone, this has enabled us to increase efficiencies, reduces costs and save almost 20,000 pounds of CO2 emissions.”
Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go to: www.oracle.com/applications
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Oracle Launches Oracle + Sun Product Strategy Event Series
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:00:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Oracle Launches Oracle + Sun Product Strategy Event Series
Worldwide Tour Highlights Best Practices for Optimizing Data Center Efficiency
Redwood Shores, CA – July 29, 2010
News Facts
To outline its Oracle + Sun product strategy and to demonstrate how the Company can enable highly efficient data centers, Oracle announced the kick off of its Global Next-Generation Data Center Efficiency road show and Storage Summit event series.
The Next-Generation Data Center road show began in Singapore on July 27 and will consist of nearly 100 events in more than 35 countries from July through November.
The Storage Summit event series features nearly 100 global events and began on July 13 and also runs through November.
Oracle executives and technology experts will outline the Oracle + Sun product strategy and share Oracle’s vision for a fully integrated and optimized data center.
A keynote session will discuss the Oracle integrated Server and Storage Systems strategy, and follow-on sessions will focus on helping customers maximize data center resources and efficiency, and improve application performance and scale.
Experts will discuss how customers can reduce costs and simplify management, while boosting performance, by using consolidation and virtualization, next- generation cloud deployment and integrated systems management.
Experts will outline how customers can achieve cost savings using Oracle’s Sun Unified Storage high-speed products. They will also discuss how Oracle Database 11g can leverage tiered storage (tape and disk) functionality to achieve significant cost and performance benefits.
The events will include customized content for each region, multiple tracks and a Q&A session.
The Oracle + Sun product strategy delivers innovation through integration at every level of the data center—from application to disk.
With its full stack of business software and hardware, Oracle continues to set new standards for efficiency, simplicity, performance and scalability.
Register for the worldwide Next-Generation Data Center events here.
Register for the worldwide Storage Summit events here.
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Shoppers Stop Strengthens Sales Performance Capabilities with Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:59:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Shoppers Stop Strengthens Sales Performance Capabilities with Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition
- Reduces time taken to refresh data from data warehouse from half a day to an hour
- Speeds up collation and cleansing of data for better sales decisions
- Sales reports are generated in as little as minutes as compared to hours previously
Mumbai, India - July 26, 2010
News Facts
Shoppers Stop, a leader in the Indian retail sector and one of the pioneers of large format department stores chain, has deployed Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition as a part of its enterprise data warehouse to enhance its performance capabilities.
With Oracle Data Integrator, Shoppers Stop is able to reduce the time taken to refresh data to its data warehouse from half a day to one hour, which ensures managers receive timely sales, inventory and loyalty data.
It helps the team load data in increments from multiple disparate systems into the data warehouse overnight, cleanse the data, and make it available to associates the next morning.
In addition, they are able to better analyze which products are selling through its 30 stores in 13 cities, and also analyze customer-buying behaviour so they can maintain optimum inventory levels.
With Oracle Data Integrator, the company’s sales teams are able to complete standard reports in minutes as compared to an hour with the previous technology platform. It has also helped improve Shopper’s Stop’s customer loyalty program, ‘First Citizen’, that reaches out to nearly 1.7 million members.
Supporting Quotes
“In a competitive landscape and growing segment such as retail, it is prudent to drive business enablement with technology to improve customer satisfaction‘, said Arun Gupta, Customer Care Associate & Group Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Shoppers Stop Limited. “IT helps optimise business and reduce operational IT budgets and Oracle has been a key component in helping us in our quest towards delivering value to business”.
“Oracle Data Integrator provided our managers with access to timely and accurate data. This helped them to better analyze the sales performance of their stores and develop marketing programs that target different customer segments,” said Avanoor Krishnakumar, Customer Care Associate & Deputy General Manager, Solutions and Technology Team, Shoppers Stop. “The deployment has ensured superior capabilities in real time data movement, data transformations and higher data quality along with improved business intelligence by ensuring scalability, maximum performance and reduced total cost of ownership”.
“We are proud to partner with Shoppers Stop on their growth journey. The deployment of Oracle Data Integrator has enabled Shoppers Stop to quickly integrate vast amounts of data from disparate systems while reducing costs and improving efficiencies”, said Shailender Kumar, Vice President, Fusion Middleware, Oracle India. “We realize managing information is the key in a highly competitive sector such as retail and Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition offers an extensible architecture that meets present and future business integration and expansion needs.”
Oracle entered India in 1987 and set up an India Development Centre in 1994. Today, Oracle has two India Development Centers as well as Indian hubs for Oracle's global support, consulting and financial services operations. Through its extensive network of partners under the Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialised, Oracle India markets the complete range of Oracle products and services across India. Oracle India has more than 7000 customers across the government and private sector. Oracle India is a major partner for E-Governance initiatives of Central and State Government bodies in India. The Oracle-HP E-Governance Centre of Excellence, Oracle Asia R & D Centre and Partner Solution Center are located at Oracle India’s head office in Gurgaon, near New Delhi. Oracle’s Retail Centre of Excellence is located in Bangalore.
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Comprised of 11 universities, seven state agencies and a comprehensive health science center, the Texas A&M University System found it difficult and time consuming to track resources for its $700 million research activities annually, as well as coordinate work across organizations and manage projects involving more than one institution.
The Oracle-powered solution, with tight integration between Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g, Oracle Universal Content Management, Oracle Database 11g and several proprietary financial systems, makes it significantly easier to manage available resources and expertise, while facilitating teamwork through a complete, open and integrated Enterprise 2.0 user interface that delivers a personalized view of system-wide research and grant information.
Researchers are also using the solution’s Enterprise 2.0 capabilities, including wikis and blogs to share information with internal and external stakeholders, which increases engagement and collaboration, and makes the research process more transparent for all constituents.
Using Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g's Oracle Composer and Oracle Business Dictionary, researchers can customize their portals without any additional coding or help from IT. This enables them to have role-based access to content and keep the most relevant information for their research projects at their fingertips.
The university system deployed the Oracle solution on a shared services model with one of the university research agencies, Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), a long-time Oracle user, developing and hosting the solution for the other agencies and institutions to reduce development and maintenance costs.
As adoption continues, the Texas A&M University System plans to roll out additional social computing tools included in Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g, such as workspaces, presence awareness, tagging and a business networking tool.
Supporting Quote
“Managing information and research projects across a number of different institutions was becoming a very costly, complex and time consuming process,” said Leonarda Horvat, Chief Information Officer and Director of Information Systems, Texas A&M University System - TEES. “To streamline this process and empower our researchers with a more dynamic and flexible user interface, we decided to deploy Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g in conjunction with Oracle Universal Content Management and Oracle Database. As a result, we have not only simplified information access, but also improved collaboration with a range of Enterprise 2.0 capabilities.”
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Communications Service Providers Worldwide Continue to Select Oracle to Improve Customer Service, Minimize Costs and Optimize Operations
Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:00:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Communications Service Providers Worldwide Continue to Select Oracle to Improve Customer Service, Minimize Costs and Optimize Operations
More than 90 Communications Service Providers Selected or Implemented Oracle Communications Software in Oracle’s Most Recent Fiscal Year
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 28, 2010
News Facts
More than 90 communications service providers worldwide selected, implemented or extended their use of Oracle Communications applications during Oracle’s fiscal year – June 2009 through May 2010. These companies rely on Oracle to help accelerate offer design and rapidly deliver and charge for innovative services while reducing the cost and complexity of infrastructure software and hardware.
For example, WIND Mobile, a subsidiary of Globallive that provides voice, text and data services to Canadians on a next-generation wireless network, worked with Oracle to enhance its service delivery platform and increase its applications offerings. With Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper, WIND Mobile exposed its network to third-party providers and partners, giving them the opportunity to develop applications without expertise in specific network protocols. This provided WIND Mobile with the scalability to offer hundreds, if not thousands, of applications in a very fast and cost-effective manner while maintaining security and control over which third-party developers use its network. This implementation enabled WIND Mobile to maintain a competitive edge as next-generation mobile content emerges. WIND Mobile and Oracle worked with HP on the six-month implementation.
The following communications and media companies also selected or extended their use of Oracle Communications applications and platform software: Berca Global Access (Indonesia), Bharat Business Channel Limited (India), FairPoint (United States), Grameenphone Ltd. (Bangladesh), LG Telecom (South Korea), Nintendo of America Inc. (United States), PenTeleData (United States), PT Indonesia Comnets Plus (Indonesia), RTI – Reti Televisive Italiane S.p.A. (Italy) and Travelport LP (United States).
Supporting Quote
“Communications companies worldwide continue to select Oracle for its unprecedented hardware and software product portfolio with industry expertise in delivering quantifiable business results. Oracle will continue to remain on the forefront of innovation throughout the entire communications spectrum – improving the customer experience, minimizing operational costs and optimizing business models,” said Bhaskar Gorti, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications.
Only Oracle’s software and systems span the communications industry technology landscape — from carrier-grade servers, storage and IT infrastructure, to mission-critical business and operational support systems and service delivery platforms; from business intelligence applications and retail point-of-sale solutions to the Java platform running on more than two billion mobile and handheld devices. Oracle helps 100 of the world's top 100 service providers innovate and exploit new business models, build strong, profitable customer relationships, and streamline operations. For more information, visit http://www.oracle.com/communications
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) provides the most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems in the world. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Oracle Communications Order and Service Management Gaining Global Customer Acceptance
Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:00:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Oracle Communications Order and Service Management Gaining Global Customer Acceptance
Service Providers Achieve Competitive Edge by Accelerating Time to Market, Decreasing Order Fallout and Lowering Operational Costs
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 28, 2010
News Facts
In order to maintain a competitive edge, leading communications service providers are turning to Oracle solutions to help them introduce and deliver complex, convergent services and flexible offers with improved time to market, decreased order cycle time and greater operational efficiency.
Oracle’s rapid offer design and order delivery solution includes Oracle Communications Order and Service Management, Oracle’s Siebel CRM, Oracle Product Hub for Communications and Oracle Application Integration Architecture for Communications.
Oracle Rapid Offer Design and Order Delivery Customer Details
Romtelecom, one of Romania’s largest communications service providers, has deployed Oracle’s rapid offer design and order delivery solution as a key component in its comprehensive transformation project designed to support a growing portfolio of consumer and business services and bundles. The Oracle solution has also helped Romtelecom to decrease offer time to market and simplify its IT architecture. The company has automated fulfillment of 97 percent of its orders, significantly reducing operational costs. Further, by converging solutions from multiple network platforms, Romtelecom can more rapidly introduce new services and business models, making IT a driver of business effectiveness.
Telekom Malaysia, the leading integrated telecommunications company in Malaysia, has turned to Oracle’s rapid offer design and order delivery solution to help implement a nationwide high-speed broadband network and upgrade the company’s IT infrastructure to address the demands of the 21st century customer. With the advent of broadband services in Malaysia – an initiative led by Telekom Malaysia – the company adopted a new next-generation network (NGN) on a wide scale. Today, Oracle’s integrated application suite enables Telekom Malaysia to support multiple business models, including wholesale, enterprise and retail; and bundle more services and launch them faster. The provider has established a stable platform for high-speed broadband deployment and service delivery.
Supporting Quotes
“Oracle’s solutions have been instrumental in helping us adjust to rapidly changing market dynamics. By integrating our silos and automating virtually all of our orders, we have seen significant reductions in costs. Our IT department has become a catalyst for change, increasing the company’s agility, innovation, customer responsiveness and operational efficiency,” said Radu Cretu, general manager, IT executive directorate, Romtelecom.
“At Telekom Malaysia we are focused on strengthening our position as the ‘new-generation service provider.’ Hence, our role is to deliver cutting-edge services and flexible bundles to meet customer demand quickly and accurately. Oracle’s applications have already helped us meet these demands. We have the agility to expand our business models quickly and pursue a flexible go-to-market strategy, which will lead to significant service improvement and revenue growth,” said Nizam Arshad, vice president of group IT, Telekom Malaysia.
“Communications service providers are under constant pressure to deliver increasingly complex, convergent services, flexible offers and bundles in a timely manner, while reducing operational costs. Companies like Romtelecom and Telekom Malaysia have demonstrated that by automating their order processes and integrating their network silos with Oracle rapid offer design and order delivery solutions, they can increase operational efficiency and maximize revenue,” said Dan Ford, vice president of product marketing, Oracle Communications.
Only Oracle’s software and systems span the communications industry technology landscape — from carrier-grade servers, storage and IT infrastructure, to mission-critical business and operational support systems and service delivery platforms; from business intelligence applications and retail point-of-sale solutions to the Java platform running on more than two billion mobile and handheld devices. Oracle helps 100 of the world's top 100 service providers innovate and exploit new business models, build strong, profitable customer relationships, and streamline operations. For more information, visit http://www.oracle.com/communications
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) provides the most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems in the world. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Utilities Worldwide Succeed with Oracle Utilities Applications
Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:00:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Utilities Worldwide Succeed with Oracle Utilities Applications
More than 100 Utilities Selected or Implemented Oracle Software in Fiscal Year 2010
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 28, 2010
News Facts
More than 100 utilities worldwide selected or implemented Oracle Utilities applications in fiscal year 2010 to respond to environmental imperatives, adapt to changing business conditions, meet and exceed customer expectations, implement smart grid components and address operational issues.
For example, Honolulu Board of Water Supply (HBWS), which serves the Hawaiian island of Oahu and manages water billing for Oahu’s Department of Environmental Services and the counties of Maui and Kauai, selected Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing to replace its legacy customer information system (CIS). HBWS chose Oracle to replace a homegrown system that had reached the end of its supportable service life, to enhance integration with other core systems and increase functionality.
Additional customers who have recently selected or implemented Oracle Utilities applications include: Acea Distribuzione, California Water Service Company, Denver Water, EDF, Enersource Hydro Mississauga Inc., Modesto Irrigation District, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Total Infrastructure Gas France, Visayan Electric Company and Western Power.
Supporting Quotes
“We selected Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing to provide better flexibility in managing customer billing and to migrate from a platform that is no longer supportable,” said Brian McKee, chief information officer, Honolulu Board of Water Supply.
“Utilities today are focused on managing operations agilely and providing customers with actionable information about their energy use. Oracle’s broad offering enables both immediate benefits and an easier transition to a full smart grid architecture in the future. Our recent traction in the industry illustrates the solid value we bring to our customers,” said Stephan Scholl, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Utilities.
Oracle Utilities delivers proven software applications that help utilities of all types and sizes achieve competitive advantage, business performance excellence and a lower total cost of technology ownership. Oracle Utilities integrates industry-specific customer care and billing, network management, work and asset management, mobile workforce management and meter data management applications with the capabilities of Oracle’s industry-leading enterprise applications, business intelligence tools, middleware and database technologies. The software enables customers to adapt more nimbly to market deregulation, meet ever-evolving customer demands and deliver on environmental conservation commitments. Additionally, Oracle Utilities helps utilities prepare for smart metering and smart grid initiatives that enhance efficiency and provide critical intelligence metrics that can help drive more-informed energy and water usage decisions for consumers and businesses. For more information, visit www.oracle.com/goto/utilities.
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) provides the most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems in the world. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Janice Hazen
O'Keeffe and Company
+1.770.938.4753
jhazen@okco.com
Independent Research Firm Recognizes Oracle as a Leader in CRM Suites
Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:00:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Independent Research Firm Recognizes Oracle as a Leader in CRM Suites
Redwood Shores, CA – July 28, 2010
News Facts
Oracle has been named a Leader in two new Forrester Research, Inc reports focusing on CRM. “The Forrester Wave™; CRM Suite for Large Organizations, Q2 2010” and “The Forrester Wave™; CRM Suite for Midsized Organizations, Q2 2010,” published in June 2010 and written by Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst William Band, positioned Oracle CRM On Demand as a Leader.
In the reports, Forrester noted that Oracle CRM On Demand “has achieved success in the market by offering the same benefits as other CRM SaaS solutions: quick time-to-value, strong usability, and low upfront costs. This value proposition attracts midsized organizations, and it is finding increasing acceptance in units of large companies.”
Additionally, the reports found: “Oracle CRM On Demand also features innovative new capabilities such as social CRM, which promotes increased collaboration, innovation, and adoption of CRM within organizations as well as delivering differentiated sales and service to their end customers. The product offers strong sales force automation (SFA) capabilities and partner channel management, and it provides sound support for customer service, customer data management, and analytics.”
Forrester also named Oracle’s Siebel CRM a leader for large organizations: “Siebel CRM is designed to provide robust capabilities that empower users to better address customer needs … The Siebel CRM product for large organizations has achieved best-of-breed status for most CRM functionalities, including: sales, marketing, customer service, field service, partner relationship management, and customer data management.”
In addition, Forrester recognized Oracle E-Business Suite CRM and Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM: “Oracle E-Business Suite CRM and PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM are good options for ERP customers. Oracle continues to support two other important CRM customer franchises. Oracle E-Business Suite CRM attracts customers by providing ease of integration into the rest of the Oracle E-Business Suite and offering strengths in field service and sales compensation management. Similarly, PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM attracts companies already using PeopleSoft Enterprise by providing strong integration benefits.”
Supporting Quote
“Oracle CRM enables organizations of all sizes to transform their customer experience by promoting customer acquisition, increasing loyalty and lowering the cost of marketing, selling and servicing,” said Anthony Lye, SVP of Oracle CRM. “We are pleased that Forrester recognized Oracle for its diverse range of solutions, targeted industry expertise, and flexible deployment options.”
Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go to: www.oracle.com/applications
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Higher Education Institutions Improve Decision Making with Oracle
Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:41:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Higher Education Institutions Improve Decision Making with Oracle
Colleges and Universities Gather and Use Actionable Data to Operate More Strategically with Oracle’s Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence Solutions
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 27, 2010
News Facts
In order to drive informed decision making and operate more strategically, higher education institutions turn to Oracle’s Hyperion performance management applications and business intelligence solutions. With Oracle, institutions create and manage analytics systems that put actionable intelligence directly in the hands of users who can apply it to their daily work.
Oracle Higher Education Customer Details
The California State University (CSU), the nation’s largest and most diverse university system serving almost 433,000 students, has begun deploying Oracle solutions to efficiently produce system-wide reporting statistics and analysis. Challenged with decreasing budgets, the university was seeking to standardize its reporting practices as well as look for savings through consolidation and common business practices. By combining Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition with the university’s previously deployed Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management 9.0, CSU will be able to consolidate data onto a single repository, delivering greater visibility into business-critical information. The university successfully deployed the solution on three campuses and will transition the remaining 20 campuses over the next year. Once implementation is complete, university officials will have the resources to improve decision making and build more efficient business processes, helping the university continue to thrive.
The University of Massachusetts, a multi-campus institution dedicated to quality education and research, has deployed Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition as part of its Summit Program, using a business driven model which brings together IT and business users across campuses. The Oracle solution provides users with access to actionable data via a series of dashboards – helping them to perform their jobs more efficiently and improve decision making. The dashboards will pull data from the university’s Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise human resources, financials and student information systems to support areas ranging from grants management to enrollment management. For example, the university’s first deployed dashboards provide role-based access for research grant data, enabling users such as administrators and principal investigators to track grant spending across the duration of the grant, alerting them if they are tracking significantly over or under budget and enabling them to plan more effectively. The university ultimately plans to add several additional dashboards with role-based user access across a broad range of business areas.
Yeshiva University, a prominent research university focused on Jewish and secular education, has selected several Oracle financial management and business intelligence tools to improve financial reporting. In as little as six months, the university deployed Oracle Hyperion Financial Management to centralize the finance and accounting divisions and enhance reporting to both the university’s senior external and management teams, moving away from a 43-year-old legacy system that allowed for little useful financial analysis. With the goal of establishing an “all funds budgeting” process which will utilize all the university’s planning components, the university is now working to implement Oracle’s Hyperion Public Sector Planning and Budgeting solution, which will provide configurable budgeting models and a detailed salary planning structure, as well as integrate with Hyperion Financial Management to produce high-quality budget reports.
The University of Minnesota, a prominent research institution with more than 67,000 students, has selected Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to standardize and consolidate data across the university’s five campuses. By deploying a standardized business intelligence tool that will integrate with the university’s recently selected PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management and PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management applications, as well as Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions Warehouse, the university will be able to deliver real-time information in a secure format to key executives, enhancing the decision-making process. The University of Minnesota has completed a successful pilot program with Oracle Business Intelligence and demonstrated that the university will reduce software costs while significantly reducing burden on the IT team as it moves forward with its full implementation.
Georgia Institute of Technology, one of the nation’s top research and technological institutions, has selected Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance to enable better understanding of the financial implications of specific planning scenarios. Historically, the university used multiple Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and internally developed modeling systems to develop long-term financial plans, but found that these tools did not provide the necessary financial visibility. Hyperion Strategic Finance will enable the Institute to develop a student enrollment-driven long-term plan with scenario planning capabilities at the university, campus, college, and account levels. The implementation will enable Georgia Tech to project its long-term operating budget while evaluating scenarios impacted by variables such as capital projects, state appropriations, cost recovery, tuition growth, and inflation. Georgia Tech is working with Edgewater Ranzal on the implementation.
“Considering the tough economic climate for higher education institutions throughout the country, it is critical for universities to gather business-critical information in a concise and efficient manner to ensure they are making optimal financial decisions,” said Jessie Lum, senior director for CMS, chancellor’s office, California State University. “Oracle’s solutions will provide CSU with the relevant and timely information it needs to develop effective short and long-term strategies for the University, helping maintain a vital role with our students, faculty and staff at the campuses and in California’s communities.”
“The Business Intelligence/Summit enterprise reporting program provides users at all levels of the university easy access to financial information in a comprehensive format. We are creating dashboards that summarize our data, giving administrators the ability to see trends and details that help them efficiently manage operations,” said Jacqui Watrous, director of administrative systems for administration and finance, University of Massachusetts.
“After being hampered by an antiquated legacy system, we knew we would need new software to build a detailed salary budgeting and employee profile model to enhance human resources and payroll planning,” said Mike Gower, chief financial officer, Yeshiva University. “Oracle’s Hyperion and Business Intelligence solutions provide comprehensive analytical tools that deliver the insight we need to plan and execute effectively for optimum financial efficiency.”
“Oracle Business Intelligence is the most effective solution in the market for generating actionable data from Oracle’s PeopleSoft applications, while providing an integrated tool set that business officers can use for secure and comprehensive reporting,” said Bernie Gulachek, senior director for strategy management, information technology, University of Minnesota. “This implementation will give us the necessary tools to create accurate financial forecasts and adjust the university’s resources accordingly.”
“In order to plan strategically for the future, we need comprehensive financial forecasting models, “said Jim Kirk, director of budget planning and administration, Georgia Institute of Technology. “Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance further enhances our capabilities of developing a long-range plan driven by the many workload factors that affect the Institute’s budget, especially the projected research activity and student enrollment mix. The application provides us the ability to test a number of scenarios, as we support our executives in making informed decisions about Georgia Tech’s growth through our current strategic planning process (http://www.gatech.edu/vision/).”
“Sophisticated higher education institutions understand that it is no longer sufficient to collect data,” said Theo Bosnak, senior director for education and research, Oracle Higher Education. “They must put that data into user’s hands quickly and easily so that they can begin to derive real benefits via more strategic and efficient decision making. Whether tracking research grants, monitoring budgets or keeping an eye on enrollments, Oracle’s Hyperion and Business Intelligence tools provide the stable foundation for reliable, flexible data and analytics systems.”
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) provides the most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems in the world. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com.
About Oracle Applications
Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go to www.oracle.com/applications.
Trademark
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Gartner defines IT Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) applications as those that “primarily automate and centralize the collection of data about demand, costs, schedules and resources for investment prioritization, as well as the execution of the programs and projects delivering new technologies and other IT assets to the business. They can also be used to assess, justify, rationalize and otherwise control the investment in ongoing IT operations or specific applications.”
Oracle's PPM solutions support the full lifecycle of project and portfolio management with an integrated, accurate view of all project-related activities, helping companies and organizations achieve and maintain strategic advantage over their competitors.
Supporting Quote
“Oracle’s PPM for IT is an integrated solution with capabilities to help assess, select and manage complex project portfolios. The solution provides enterprise visibility into project resources, schedules, budgets, costs and challenges to enable better IT project planning, execution, and governance. With these tools, an IT organization acquires an intuitive platform to increase IT agility, effectiveness and structured portfolio assessment methods rapidly,” said Joel Koppelman, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle’s Primavera Global Business Unit. “Oracle is pleased to be recognized by Gartner as a leader in the Magic Quadrant for IT Project Portfolio Management.”
*Gartner “Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management, 2010,” by Daniel B. Stang, June 7, 2010.
About the Magic Quadrant
The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2010 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
About Oracle Applications
Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go to: www.oracle.com/applications.
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
NaviSite Uses Oracle’s Sun Servers as a Foundation for its Managed Services Offering
Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:00:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
NaviSite Uses Oracle’s Sun Servers as a Foundation for its Managed Services Offering
Helps Customers Lower IT Costs and Boost Performance with Combination of Oracle Technologies
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 27, 2010
News Facts
NaviSite, Inc. (NASDAQ: NAVI), a premier provider of complex hosting, application management and managed cloud services for the enterprise market, is using a combination of Oracle’s Sun servers and Oracle software to run its mission-critical systems.
With more than 1,500 customers in 10 datacenters across the US and UK, NaviSite needed to expand its virtualization platform to meet the growing infrastructure demands of its customers, while delivering industry-leading performance and availability.
The company uses Sun SPARC Enterprise servers for applications requiring a high-level of performance, reliability and security.
Oracle’s Sun x86 blade servers are ideal for virtualized application environments, delivering excellent performance and superior energy efficiency, while reducing datacenter costs and complexity.
NaviSite also runs many of its internal systems, including Oracle E-Business Suite Financials and customer portal, on the same Oracle platform.
With Oracle, NaviSite has improved the flexibility of its service offerings, decreased the time to provision the computing platform for managed applications and gained the ability to scale application environments as business grows.
Using NaviSite’s managed application services, customers can reduce costs while delivering high service levels. Typically, customers benefit from at least a 20 percent cost reduction, higher application availability and 20 percent better application performance all while lowering IT costs – when compared to managing their applications internally or outsourcing to another provider.
Supporting Quotes
“This combination of Oracle technologies provides exceptional performance, scalability and reliability – and is the perfect platform for running our Oracle managed application services and our internal systems,” said Brady Reiter, General Manager, Enterprise Architecture and Application Strategy, NaviSite.
“We look forward to our ongoing relationship with NaviSite as they continue to grow and expand their managed application service offerings,” said Cheryl Martin, senior director of marketing for Sun Systems, Oracle. “We are focused on providing companies like NaviSite with a portfolio of mission-critical systems that deliver high performance, simplified management and cost savings – while easily scaling to support future growth.”
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest business software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
High Availability and Capacity Capabilities Extend Company’s Leadership in Enterprise Tape Market
Redwood Shores, CA – July 26, 2010
News Facts
Extending its leadership in the enterprise tape market, Oracle announced high availability and capacity enhancements to its StorageTek tape libraries and drives.
Oracle’s tape product portfolio delivers the most scalable, cost-effective, energy-efficient solution in the storage hierarchy for customers that need to archive and protect growing amounts of data.
New features of the StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System include an increase in scalable capacity from 70,000 to 100,000 tape slots and redundant electronics to help customers manage growth, increase availability and reduce risk.
Oracle’s StorageTek LTO-5 tape drives, with 1.5 terabytes of native capacity, are now available, and supported, on StorageTek tape libraries.
The StorageTek LTO-5 drive coupled with the StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System makes Oracle the first enterprise tape automation vendor to offer up to 150 petabytes of native storage capacity managed in a single tape library – more than a 100 percent increase in total system capacity.
StorageTek tape libraries and drives lead the industry in quality and reliability and are designed to help customers with heterogeneous data protection, consolidation and long-term data preservation.
Scalable Capacity, High Availability Support Growth
The StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System offers:
Industry-leading scalability: Ten StorageTek SL8500 Modular Tape libraries can be linked and managed as one massively-scalable 100,000 slot library, reducing complexity while boosting capacity to five times that of other enterprise tape libraries.
Unsurpassed reliability: The only tape library with non-disruptive hot-swappable robotics that also provides redundant electronics and hot-swappable library control cards. These new features maximize availability by providing automatic failover capabilities that are transparent to host applications.
Simplified management: The Storage Tek SL8500 Modular Tape Library System enables superior tape consolidation across multiple, heterogeneous system environments with on-line service and upgrades and per-slot mixing of media so storage administrators can spend more time addressing business critical issues and less time managing islands of storage.
Cost savings: The improved scalability and enterprise-wide consolidation capabilities of the StorageTek SL8500 Modular Tape Library System helps reduce acquisition, maintenance and administrative costs since a single library supports mainframe, open systems and technical computing environments.
• The StorageTek LTO-5 tape drive provides:
High capacity: 1.5 terabytes of native capacity and a throughput of 140 megabytes per second, uncompressed, a 90 percent increase in capacity over LTO-4 drives and a 16 percent improvement in overall performance.
Energy efficiency: Significantly reduced energy costs from LTO-4, consuming 48 percent less power when idle.
• StorageTek tape libraries and drives are part of a complete data management solution, which includes data protection with Oracle Secure Backup and Oracle Recovery Manager 11g. Oracle Recovery Manager 11g’s support of the StorageTek tape and library families ensures superior data protection capabilities for Oracle Exadata V2 and other mission-critical database environments.
• The StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System and StorageTek LTO-5 tape drives combine with Oracle’s Sun Storage Archive Manager and multiple tiers of Oracle storage to simplify storage operations and reduce the overall cost of storage by up to 70 percent when compared to a single tier of performance-optimized disk.
• The StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System and StorageTek LTO-5 tape drives are the latest additions to Oracle’s complete portfolio of software and hardware products, designed to enable customers to start small and grow into next-generation cloud computing infrastructures.
Supporting Quote
“Over the past 40 years, Oracle’s StorageTek tape library solutions have incorporated innovative technology to improve scalability, performance and reliability while continuing to lower the total cost of ownership,” said Jim Cates, vice president, Tape Development, Oracle. “With today’s announcement, large tape users now have the capacity to accommodate the explosion of data in their organizations. Only Oracle’s StorageTek enterprise tape solutions enable customers to easily scale capacity to upwards of 150 petabytes in one, easy to manage storage system – while systems remain up-and-running.”
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Washington State University to Enhance Student Experience and Operational Efficiency with Oracle
Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:26:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Washington State University to Enhance Student Experience and Operational Efficiency with Oracle
Leading Research Institution Will Optimize Student Systems and Increase Reliability While Adding New Analytical Capabilities
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 26, 2010
News Facts
Washington State University (WSU), a world-class land grant research university serving more than 26,000 students, has selected a comprehensive set of Oracle software and infrastructure technology solutions to modernize its student data systems, improve service to students and deliver actionable business insight to university leaders. Washington State is partnering with Oracle Consulting on the project.
As WSU has grown in recent years, demands on its legacy student system have increased, resulting in a breaking point during student registration last fall. The university turned to Oracle to deploy a centralized student system with a reliable technology infrastructure supporting it. By combining Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions with Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, WSU will create a comprehensive and reliable student administration system that is user-friendly and secure, minimizes the demands on IT and integrates easily with other campus systems.
The new student system will enable the university to effectively meet and adapt to the changing needs of its student body across all four campuses and a distance learning program. It will provide each of the university’s 26,000 student and 6,000 faculty and staff users with timely data and self-service tools. For example, students will have access to personalized tools to manage academics, financial transactions and collaboration with other students and faculty. With the high performance inherent in Oracle’s technology, the system will be able to handle high-traffic events such as registration and new student orientation.
WSU will also add Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus and Oracle Campus Fusion Intelligence to deliver actionable student data via a series of dashboards – helping officials to perform their jobs more efficiently and improve decision making across the university. WSU administrators will be able to analyze student application and retention rates and course enrollment trends, as well as examine financial aid disbursement to make more informed decisions.
To minimize the IT resources, risk and maintenance efforts required, WSU opted to have Oracle host the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions Warehouse, PeopleSoft Enterprise Student Administration, PeopleSoft Enterprise Self Service for Student Administration, PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal and the Oracle User Productivity Developer, Employee and Student Administration content via Oracle On Demand.
Supporting Quote
“Oracle’s solutions will provide us with the necessary resources to not only maintain our status as a leading public land grant research university but also to move the institution toward a digital campus. By using Oracle On Demand to host our student solution, we will be able to minimize risk and maintenance efforts as well as deliver the project on time,” said Viji Murali, vice president for information services and chief information officer, Washington State University.
“Sophisticated higher education institutions understand the importance of giving each student the flexibility to create his or her own unique campus experience. At the same time, these institutions know first-hand the challenges of rising educational costs, increased global competition for students and heightened regulatory requirements,” said Steve Koporec, vice president, Oracle Higher Education. “By optimizing their student systems with PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions and Oracle’s reliable technology infrastructure and advanced business intelligence tools, universities can provide students with tools that help them reach their full potential while giving administrators the tools to maximize the university’s operational efficiency.”
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com.
About Oracle Applications
Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go to www.oracle.com/applications.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
City of Boston and City of Sacramento Use Oracle Software to Enhance Decision-making and Improve Service Delivery to Citizens
Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:07:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
City of Boston and City of Sacramento Use Oracle Software to Enhance Decision-making and Improve Service Delivery to Citizens
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 26, 2010
News Facts
• Several innovative cities recently implemented Oracle applications and infrastructure software to improve data transparency and citizen service quality, while cutting costs and enhancing operational efficiency.
• As city leaders focus on investing in infrastructure and improving service delivery despite rising costs and reduced budgets, they also understand that constituents want to see their tax dollars invested wisely, in an open and transparent fashion. As a result, many innovative governments are turning to Oracle to modernize their underlying IT infrastructures and meet goals for increased transparency and efficiency.
Oracle Smart Cities Details
City of Boston, the largest city in Massachusetts with a population of more than 600,000, deployed Oracle’s Hyperion applications as the backbone of Boston About Results (BAR) – the city's centralized performance data and management system. The city uses Oracle Hyperion Performance Scorecard and Oracle Hyperion Planning to pull data from various enterprise systems – including Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management and PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management – to communicate results to the public and department managers and track investment impact. The Hyperion applications enable the city to deliver user-friendly reports with built-in charts, trend arrows and color-coded indicators based on how the city’s actual performance is tracking against annual targets. The city also uses Oracle’s Hyperion Web Analysis to make BAR data available online to citizens, who can view performance information from the city’s 15 largest departments, ranging from police and fire to the library system.
City of Sacramento, which serves approximately 460,000 constituents, implemented a shared services 311 operation based on Oracle’s Siebel CRM to improve the quality and transparency of citizen services, increase operational efficiency and produce data from a single source in order to enhance city services. With Oracle, the city provides multichannel access to various resources, improving real-time information accessibility and enabling individual citizens and community groups to more easily provide input. The consolidated 311 system has also significantly boosted constituent satisfaction by enabling the city to reduce call wait times and accelerate issue resolution within the call center.
Supporting Quotes
“Oracle’s Hyperion applications represent a significant improvement for Boston About Results. Managers find the trend arrows and traffic light indicators very valuable in helping them quickly identify trends. Overall, our ability to present results in a standard management report has made decision-making much easier and more efficient,” said Lisa Calise Signori, director of administration and finance, City of Boston.
“Implementing our 311 service based on Oracle’s Siebel CRM applications has transformed citizen access to city services. Even in the program’s infancy, we realize that we have created an opportunity to dramatically improve service and accessibility to our customers, while gathering information never before captured,” said Gina Knepp, manager, 311 Division, City of Sacramento.
“Local governments face unfunded mandates and reduced tax revenues while their constituents are demanding improved services. Cities must innovate and integrate across their employees, citizens and businesses to thrive in the age of globalization. Oracle helps local governments like Boston and Sacramento improve data accessibility, optimize program delivery, and empower employees to provide citizens with consistent, valuable information,” said Mark Johnson, senior vice president, Oracle Public Sector.
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, visit oracle.com
Trademark
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Contact Info
Katie Barron Janice Hazen
Oracle O’Keeffe & Company
+703-364-2488 +404-254-5881
katie.barron@oracle.com jhazen@okco.com
Oracle Introduces Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager
Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:01:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Oracle Introduces Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager
New Application Helps Pharmaceutical Organizations Comply with New Regulatory Requirements and Reduce Business Risk
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 26, 2010
News Facts
Oracle today announced the availability of Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager, an integrated mass-serialization and pedigree application designed specifically to improve supply chain integrity in the pharmaceutical industry.
The new solution helps pharmaceutical manufacturers facilitate compliance with emerging electronic pedigree (ePedigree) initiatives and regulatory requirements, reduce business and reputational risk associated with the rising incidence of drug counterfeiting and product diversion while extending value across the pharmaceutical supply chain.
Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager generates, stores, transmits and authenticates drug product serial data and ePedigree data as pharmaceutical products move across the supply chain. This facilitates counterfeit threat identification and streamlines compliance. In addition, integrated analytics within the solution provide pharmaceutical manufacturers with expanded insight into possible threats.
Pharmaceutical companies can use this solution to improve the efficiency and accuracy of returns management and reduce associated losses. Non-repudiation capabilities automate assessment and reconciliation of products returned against products shipped, helping to reduce write offs.
In addition, this software helps pharmaceutical companies maintain stronger channel integrity by enabling them to reduce product diversions, such as from lower reimbursement locations to higher reimbursement locations. It also can help reduce revenue leakage by helping to improve scrutiny of chargeback rebates paid out to wholesalers.
Built on an open standards-based Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Oracle Fusion Middleware applications, Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager is built to integrate seamlessly with existing Oracle and third-party systems for manufacturing, packaging and shipping and receiving.
Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager, which supports Web services and features an intuitive interface, is built with flexibility designed to aid compliance with evolving global regulatory mandates for product mass serialization management.
Although designed to address the product identification needs of pharmaceutical companies, Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager can also be used in any industry dealing in high-value products at risk for counterfeiting and piracy, such as medical devices, high technology or luxury goods.
Supporting Quotes
“Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager is well positioned to quickly capitalize on the present solution gap in the drug pedigree space,” said Eric Newmark, Research Manager, IDC Health Insights. “It delivers all the bells and whistles you'd expect in a serialization and pedigree solution.”
“Ensuring supply chain integrity is not only about compliance and protecting your brand, it’s also about protecting your bottom line,” said Oracle’s Jon Chorley, vice president SCM Product Strategy. “By definitively identifying your products in the supply chain and providing a broad set of analytic insights on that data, Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager will deliver both. The result is a safe and secure pharmaceutical supply chain, combined with a strong ROI.”
General Availability
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go to: www.oracle.com/applications
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Oracle Named a Leader in Transportation Management Systems and Supply Chain Execution by Leading Analyst Firm
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:02:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Oracle Named a Leader in Transportation Management Systems and Supply Chain Execution by Leading Analyst Firm
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 22, 2010
News Facts
Oracle has been named as a leader in two recent Gartner, Inc. reports on supply chain management as described in the “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems (TMS)(1)” and the “Market Share: Supply Chain Management, Worldwide, 2009 (2)” reports.
In its 2010 report, “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems (TMS),” Gartner positioned Oracle in the Leaders Quadrant.
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report positions vendors within a particular quadrant based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute.
According to Gartner, “Leaders have a compelling vision and a reliable ability to execute. TMS market leaders have broad, deep and formidable functionality that addresses a broad range of user requirements. These vendors have proven products, track records of customer success and demonstrated momentum in growing their market presence. Leading vendors support sophisticated and complex transportation strategies for large customers with substantial freight spending, as well as being deployable in smaller shippers. They also meet the needs of users throughout the transportation process, with offerings from strategic planning and procurement through to freight payment and audit functionality. Leaders also offer adaptable technical architectures that allow for rapid innovation, which is needed to stay ahead of market demands. Leaders are innovators and have compelling strategies for addressing the ongoing market changes related to the emergence of new technologies, the integration of dedicated and private fleet assets, the convergence of TMS with other SCM functionality, and support for global transportation operations. Leaders are extending the reach of TMS beyond traditional shippers to include LSPs and other styles of transportation, such as bulk commodities, adding functionality to address the unique needs of emerging markets. They're out in front of the evolution of transportation management as an enterprise shared service. Leaders are also furthest in front supporting the transportation needs of multiple geographies, and adding capabilities to support the complex needs of multileg global logistics and transportation.”
In its Market Share: SCM, Worldwide, 2009 report, Gartner ranked Oracle No. 1 in worldwide market share in the Supply Chain Execution marketplace based on total software revenue for 2009.
In Gartner’s Market Share: SCM, Worldwide, 2009 report, Gartner defines total software revenue as “revenue that is generated from appliances, new licenses, updates, subscriptions and hosting, technical support, and maintenance. Professional services revenue and hardware revenue are not included in total software revenue.”
Oracle Value Chain Execution Solutions Help Customers Streamline Supply Chain Logistics
Oracle Transportation Management is the only solution that enables companies to manage their comprehensive trade compliance and transportation requirements, including common carrier and private fleet operations, on a global basis within one central platform.
Oracle Value Chain Execution is a comprehensive set of supply chain execution solutions that work together to provide Oracle customers with a broad array of logistics capabilities. Using a combination of the Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle standalone applications, Oracle Value Chain Execution provides users unprecedented flexibility in how they purchase, design, implement and manage their supply chain solutions.
Supporting Quotes
“Driven by freight cost volatility and globalization, many organizations are looking for a single, global platform to optimize their transportation business processes for cost control and supply chain agility,” said Derek Gittoes, Oracle Vice President, Logistics Product Strategy. “We believe that Gartner’s recognition affirms our commitment and investment in delivering best-of-breed transportation management solutions for a broad range of transportation functions that support the needs of both shippers and Logistics Service Providers.”
“Oracle recognized early that globalization has made logistics and supply chain execution the essential infrastructure to any product-oriented company,” said Jon Chorley, Oracle Vice President, Supply Chain Product Strategy. “This is why Oracle chose to make and sustain a set of major investments in this area, as part of our overall Information-driven Value Chain strategy. We are pleased to be recognized by Gartner as the market leader supply chain execution for 2009.”
(1) Gartner, Inc. “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems” by C. Dwight Klappich, April 13, 2010
(2) Gartner, Inc. “Market Share: SCM, Worldwide, 2009” by Chad Eschinger et al, April 29, 2010
About the Magic Quadrant
The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2010 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
About Oracle Applications
Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go to: www.oracle.com/applications
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Oracle Announces Significant Advances in Application Security with Oracle Identity Management 11g
Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:00:00 UTC
Oracle Press
Release
Oracle Announces Significant Advances in Application Security with Oracle Identity Management 11g
Service-Oriented Security, Unparalleled Integration, and Intelligent Compliance Represent Breakthrough Industry Advances
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 21, 2010
News Facts
To help organizations simplify application security, Oracle announced Oracle Identity Management 11g - the most complete, integrated and open set of best-of-breed components built on a common platform and engineered to deliver unparalleled integration both within and across the suite through a series of common components.
As the industry’s first Service-Oriented Security architecture, Oracle Identity Management 11g provides developers with shared services for identity administration and password management, strong authentication and authorization, workflow and auditing, thus radically simplifying application security. This services based architecture is also designed to naturally extend to cloud computing environments, providing a single point of control for on-premise and off-premise applications and systems.
Oracle Identity Management 11g, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, offers breakthrough intelligent compliance capabilities driven by identity analytics to provide a complete view of an organization’s security and compliance posture, which will accelerate compliance, improve transparency and proactively mitigate risk.
New Capabilities Bring Service-Oriented Security to Today’s Data Center
The entire Oracle Identity Management 11g product line is optimized to support the evolving needs of modern enterprises, such as cloud computing, with a unified, secure, easy-to-deploy set of identity management functions. In addition to delivering services-based architecture, tighter integration and dynamic new user interfaces throughout the Suite, key enhancements of each product include:
Oracle Identity Manager 11g: full-featured identity administration and provisioning with integrated user and role administration, as well as Universal Delegated Administration based on fine grained authorization policies and self service request and approval models based on open, flexible BPEL workflows;
Oracle Access Manager 11g: Single Sign-On (SSO) for enterprise web applications, now providing in-memory session management based on Oracle Coherence. Additionally, SSO Security Zones support secure application boundaries;
Oracle Adaptive Access Manager 11g: Enterprise fraud prevention with One Time Password Anywhere, which delivers one-time password support through short message service (SMS), Interactive Voice Response, email and instant messaging;
Oracle Identity Analytics 11g: Enterprise Compliance and Governance combining business intelligence and security, while running on a rich Identity Warehouse; features include Cert360 - an intelligent 360 degree view of an organization’s security and compliance health;
Oracle OpenSSO Fedlet and OpenSSO STS 11g: full integration and certification of Sun’s Fedlet for rapid on-boarding of federation partners, as well as the Secure Token Service (STS) functionality of Sun Open SSO STS for identity propagation;
“The innovation and integration advancements in Oracle Identity Management 11g represent the most significant breakthroughs in identity management in the last five years,” said Amit Jasuja, vice president, Oracle Identity Management. “Traditionally, being best of breed and fully integrated were at opposite sides of the spectrum, but Oracle Identity Management 11g sets a new bar by delivering both.”
“At Telenor Key Partner, we strive to be a driving force in the Shared Service Industry, consistently bringing ground-breaking technologies to our customers,” said Geir Jovik, CIO at Telenor Key Partner. “To succeed in reaching our vision, we need an agile and compliant technology. Oracle Identity Management 11g meets these needs, ensures necessary flexibility and fully supports us in reaching our vision.”
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest business software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.
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Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Enhanced smart grid support: The application provides the necessary operational framework to integrate more tightly with smart switches and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems on the grid. This functionality helps utilities support "self-healing" operations to restore customers’ power automatically, increasing customer satisfaction and meeting key performance indicators (KPIs) by diminishing sustained outages.
Increased security: Oracle Utilities Network Management System helps utilities meet today’s increasingly tight security requirements. The new release provides more secure network connectivity, database transactions and user authentication. For example, the solution now ties directly into a utility’s active directory or open Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), rather than requiring separate passwords for the network management system.
The new release also enables enhanced damage assessments (DA), expanded outage management alerts and advanced analytics for suggested switching and Volt/VAr optimization.
Oracle will host a live Webcast, “The Evolving Smart Grid: Optimizing Your Distribution Network,” on August 12, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. PDT to discuss how Oracle Utilities Network Management System can support utilities’ smart grid initiatives. Additional details and registration information can be found here.
Supporting Quotes
“The need for cyber security becomes more evident as the smart grid comes to fruition. Oracle Utilities Network Management System 1.10.0 continues to expand the application’s cyber security functionality by providing more secure network connectivity
