Tag Archives: oracle

Oracle acquires Nimbula for hybrid cloud software

With the intent of rounding out its software stack for building hybrid clouds, Oracle is acquiring Nimbula, a provider of private cloud infrastructure management software.

Based in Mountain View, California, Nimbula was co-founded by Chris Pinkham, who managed the development of Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), along with a number of other EC2 team members now with Nimbula. The company also has expertise with the OpenStack cloud software stack.

Nimbula’s flagship software, Nimbula Director, is designed to deploy and manage workloads across both private and public clouds. The software can be used for managing such cloud jobs as distributed software development, IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) and SaaS (software-as-a-service) hosting, batch processing and Hadoop deployments. The company recently provided Nimbula Director with API (application programming interface) access to OpenStack, allowing customers to manage the open-source cloud platform through Nimbula.

Nimbula’s products are complementary to Oracle’s own, Oracle said in a brief statement announcing the pending acquisition.

Thus far, much of Oracle’s efforts around cloud computing have been in providing hardware and software to run private clouds, through engineered systems such as Exalogic, and by customizing its databases, applications, and middleware to run in cloud configurations.

Oracle also has a publicly hosted cloud service that offers a number of its Oracle applications, databases and middleware as services.

Oracle was not the only company on the prowl for hybrid cloud management software. Red Hat also recently acquired a company, ManageIQ, which offered similar technologies.

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2013. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/oracle-acquires-nimbula-hybrid-cloud-software-214489

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Is Big Data the Latest Outsourcing Trend?

Social platforms, search engines and millions of other consumer-facing websites continuously collect data as users surf, search, read, play and transact online. However, it has only been fairly recently that businesses started realizing that the cumulative volume of data has become “big,” and actually so big and unstructured that companies require dedicated staff and analytics to help make sense of it.

Big Data Volumes Pose Challenge
In a recent white paper Nouvera, a provider of Big Data analytics solutions and services, quotes a McKinsey report stating that terabytes and petabytes of data are generated from social networking sites (30 billion pieces of content are generated every month). Add to that the roughly 5 billion mobile phones now in usage, as well as all the data that private companies and state agencies collect for their own purposes.

This data, which comes from so many sources, is not only unstructured, it is also ever-changing. It is challenging to get analytics capabilities for this volume of data in place. However, by acquiring geospatially contextualized real time analytics, companies can make solving that challenge worthwhile.
Of course, if the cost of analyzing Big Data is more than the ROI, there is no business reason for Big Data analysis. And many organizations lack the skills, capacity and infrastructure to properly collect and analyze Big Data in house. This makes Big Data analysis a prime candidate for outsourcing/offshoring.

Big Data Fits BPO
However, the “Big Data” a typical organization collects is also not as easy to share for outsourcing without making heavy investments in hardware and software and creating infrastructure. While big data analytics is tempting for organizations, it needs to be performed in a manner that is cost-effective, high-quality and convenient. The only method that fits in that scenario is a cloud- and cost arbitrage-based model of outsourcing. With outsourcing is a proven model for cost effectiveness and cloud proven to be convenient, the marriage between the two is timely and inevitable.

But outsourcing, and indeed offshoring Big Data analysis to locations such as India may work, not only because of the arbitrage model, but also because there is an apparent shortage of analytics skill in industrialized countries.  According to the Nouvera white paper, in the US “there is a shortage of some 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills and an even higher number of managers and analysts (1.5 million) to analyze big data for decision making.”

Some major global IT companies, such as Oracle, are heavily into Big Data analytics.  In addition, with its new Genome offering, Yahoo aims to deliver highly targeted online advertising and marketing supported by Big Data analysis.

The big question, however, is that while data is there, what companies get out of it is based on what they want. It is the information strategists who have to understand what they require from Big Data and how that information would be utilized before BPO providers can deliver the true value of Big Data analytics to their customers.

Source:http://bpooutcomes.com/big-data-outsourcing-trend/

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Oracle to Spring developers: Convert to Java EE

Oracle is promoting conversions from the popular Spring Framework for Java development to Java EE (Enterprise Edition). But the founder of Spring counters that these technologies can work together and cites a financial incentive for Oracle’s campaign.

Oracle has been promoting these migrations in a series of Web presentations going on for many months. A Java Spotlight posting this week pertaining to migrations to Java EE 6 links to an interview with Paul Bakker and Bert Ertman from Luminus Technologies in the Netherlands. They argue Spring no longer has advantages over enterprise Java that it might have had previously.

Some users have been holding onto beliefs about enterprise Java inadequacies from several years ago based on books from Spring Framework inventor Rod Johnson, said Bakker, senior software engineer at Luminis. "But nowadays, when we have Java EE 5 and Java EE 6, we [have] completely revised programming models, which are very lightweight and POJO-based (plain old Java objects)," Bakker said. "It’s about time to re-educate people that Java EE no longer stands for Java Evil Edition, but it’s actually quite ready to build some very good enterprise applications with."

Dependency injection, popularized in Spring and used for linking related objects, is now enabled in Java EE 5, the Luminis technologists stressed. Lightweight, aspect-oriented programming is now implemented in Java as well, they argued. But Johnson, in an emailed response to questions, dismissed the notion of a conflict between Java EE and Spring, calling it "fictitious." Spring and Java EE 6, Johnson said, "can work very nicely together."

"The ‘Java EE 6 does away with the need for Spring’ argument is essentially commercially motivated," Johnson said "Spring has reduced the need for traditional application servers like Oracle WebLogic and has enabled users to choose lighter-weight infrastructure. While Java EE 6 is an improvement on previous versions of Java EE, Spring offers significant additional value."

Spring works in a broader set of scenarios than Java EE 6, thus giving Spring users greater choice, said Johnson. "They may not wish to use a Java EE application server; even [if] they are on Java EE, they may not be running Java EE 6; they may be in a cloud environment where Java EE is not available; they may not be using any app server; or they may wish to be able to deploy in different scenarios. Spring’s portability is highly valuable."

Spring’s ecosystem solves a wider range of problems than Java EE, such as integration, batch, and nonrelational data, Johnson said. Fine-grained security is supported as well, he said. "Using the Spring component model can offer many other benefits."

Elsewhere in the Java EE realm, Oracle is looking to the planned Java EE 7 release to extend transactional capabilities of Enterprise JavaBeans and its transactional semantics, according to Oracle’s Arun Gupta. "What we’re doing in Java EE 7 is we are abstracting the semantics so they can be more widely applicable," for example, to Managed Beans or CDI Beans, Gupta said in Java Spotlight. With CDI Managed Beans, a managed bean is implemented by a Java class, called a bean class.

A top-level Java class is a managed bean if it is defined as so by any other Java EE technology specification or meets conditions such as not being a nonstatic inner class, according to a Java EE 6 tutorial. Java EE 7 is expected to be released this summer and featured in the GlassFish Server 4 application server.

Source:http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/oracle-spring-developers-convert-java-ee-195158?page=0,1

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Oracle-SAP retrial delayed

Oracle and SAP will have to wait a bit longer to retry their corporate-theft lawsuit, according to a filing made Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The previously set start date of June 18 has been vacated and now the SAP-Oracle retrial "will trail a criminal trial set to begin on August 27," according the filing

The change was due to a scheduling conflict affecting Oracle’s legal team, SAP spokesman James Dever said Monday via email. Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger declined comment.

SAP has already admitted liability for illegal downloads of Oracle software and support materials that were conducted by a former subsidiary, TomorrowNow, which offered lower-cost support to Oracle customers. A jury in the first trial awarded Oracle US$1.3 billion in November 2010 but that award was set aside. Oracle declined to accept a lower amount, and instead opted for a new trial on damages.

In a joint filing made last week prior to the trial’s delay, Oracle indicated it plans to attack the validity of SAP’s admission of liability.

"It is a common enough strategy for a defendant that cannot avoid liability to claim that it accepts responsibility for the harm it has caused," Oracle attorneys wrote. "The purpose of that time-honored tactic is to build credibility with the jury by establishing that the defendant is not hiding anything, and asks only that it be held to a just account. SAP is entitled to tell the jury that story."

However, "trials are about credibility, and Oracle is entitled to tell the jury the different story that SAP’s top two executives have told the world," Oracle added, referring to SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner and co-CEO Bill McDermott. "Outside of Court, when they thought trial had ended, SAP’s executives boasted publicly that SAP’s offer to take responsibility for its misdeeds is nothing more than a self-serving gambit to reduce the damages it owes."

SAP attorneys responded to Oracle’s claims, saying they show that the company "plans to present a case about liability and punishment, not damages."

"Descriptions of Defendants’ business and legal reasons for stipulating to liability are not probative of any issue related to damages," SAP attorneys added. Oracle will use these statements to conflate the issues of liability and damages, and it will attempt to convince the jury that liability has not been fully resolved–all in an effort to increase the jury’s award."

Source:http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227959/Oracle_SAP_retrial_delayed?taxonomyId=72

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Cloud computing: Oracle becomes a believer

Business software maker Oracle is finally adapting to a shift in computing that is threatening to turn the company into a relic.

The 35-year-old company hailed its technological transition Wednesday at its Redwood Shores, California headquarters, where hyperbolic CEO Larry Ellison announced plans to distribute more than 100 business software applications over the Internet instead of selling them as products that have to be installed on individual office computers.

The concept of leasing software applications reachable on any Internet-connected device is known as "cloud computing." It’s an idea that Ellison has frequently mocked as a passing fancy, but his comments Wednesday made it clear that he realized some time ago that the trend had become a serious business.

RELATED: Five things you need to know about the cloud

Ellison said it took thousands of Oracle engineers the past seven years to develop the company’s suite of cloud computing services. The work was code-named "Fusion," but Ellison acknowledged it became so disjointed that he understood why it was skewered as "Project Confusion."

Despite all the manpower and money that Oracle poured into its cloud computing expansion, the company still couldn’t build everything on its own. To fill the gaps, Oracle has spent more than $3.5 billion buying some of the early pioneers in cloud computing, including RightNow Technologies and Taleo.

"This was as difficult a thing that we have ever done at Oracle," Ellison conceded Wednesday during a presentation that The Associated Press watched on a webcast. He said he now believes Oracle has "the most comprehensive cloud on planet Earth."

All boasting aside, Oracle will have to prove that it can adjust to the changes triggered by cloud computing. All this while still trying to profit from the old model of installing and maintaining software on the premises of its corporate and government customers.

Ellison acknowledged it won’t be easy, saying "very few technology companies cross the chasm from one generation to the next."

Oracle Corp. is in no danger of fading away anytime soon. The company remains of the of the world’s most successful software makers, with annual revenue of about $37 billon and a market value of $137 billion.

But the 67-year-old Ellison, an elder statesman among Silicon Valley’s CEOs, doesn’t want to risk becoming obsolescent. He is trying to stay a step ahead of longtime rival SAP as it also embraces cloud computing while Oracle tries to catch up to one of Ellison’s former proteges, Marc Benioff, who is now CEO of Salesforce.com Inc. Not long after leaving Oracle to start Salesforce, Benioff emerged as cloud computing’s more persuasive evangelist.

Salesforce.com is expected to generate $3 billion in annual revenue this year and has a market value of $19 billion.

Ellison, who has an estimated fortune of $36 billion, was one of Salesforce’s earliest investors. He also owns a 46 percent stake in a Salesforce rival, NetSuite Inc., run by another former Oracle executive, Zach Nelson.

Oracle’s expansion into cloud computing also puts Ellison on a collision course with an old antagonist, software entrepreneur David Duffield. Ellison bought Duffield’s former company, PeopleSoft, for $11.1 billion in 2005 after a bitter takeover battle that lasted 18 months. Duffield has since started a cloud-computing service called Workday that sells human resources management tools.

Ellison predicted Oracle eventually will trump Salesforce and Workday by offering a wider and more secure range of services that will fulfill all the cloud computing needs of big companies and government agencies.

Oracle’s new services include "”social relationship management" tools to analyze what people are saying on Facebook’s social network and other online forums such as Twitter. In an apparent effort to underscore his commitment to Oracle’s new focus, Ellison sent his first tweet shortly after leaving the stage Wednesday. His message promoted Oracle’s new cloud computing applications while still saving enough space to throw a jab at SAP.

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Oracle CEO to lay out ‘cloud computing’ strategy

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison will outline his company’s strategy for selling more business software services over the Internet, a rapidly growing concept pioneered by Salesforce.com.

Wednesday afternoon’s presentation at Oracle Corp.’s Redwood Shores, Calif., headquarters is the latest sign of the intensifying battle in "cloud computing" — the technology industry’s catchphrase for software that can be accessed on any Internet-connected device that subscribes to the service. The approach is a departure from the traditional method of licensing and installing business applications on individual machines, a sales system that has helped established Oracle as one of the world’s most successful software companies.

Ellison, a flamboyant leader known for his acerbic remarks, publicly ridiculed cloud computing as a passing fad for years even though he invested some of his personal fortune in Salesforce.com Inc. and another similar company, NetSuite Inc.

Now that Salesforce has grown into a company on track for $3 billion in annual revenue, Ellison is trying to ensure that Oracle gets a share of the business. So far this year, Oracle has agreed to pay more than $3.5 billion to buy several cloud computing rivals. Another rival, SAP, also has been snapping up cloud computing services to expand into the field, too.

Earlier this week, Salesforce.com announced that it’s paying $689 million to buy Buddy Media to help its customers manage their marketing campaigns on Facebook and other social networking elements. Those offerings run on the cloud computing model. A day later, Oracle said it’s buying Collective Intellect Inc. for an undisclosed sum as it also expands its social media tracking services.

Source:http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06/D9V7O45G1.htm

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Android, Java, and the tech behind Oracle v. Google (FAQ)

The eyeless, mouthless Java mascot named Duke cartwheels across a T-shirt from a JavaOne conference.

Sun Microsystems’ years-long effort to profit from Java has come to this: the chief executives of two of tech’s most powerful companies, Oracle and Google, being grilled in court.

Scrapping over copyrights, patents, and licensing deals is an ignominious outcome for a technology that a decade and a half ago spooked Microsoft and seemed poised to inject dynamism into a largely static Web. Back when it debuted, Java was a brand that carried impressive power.

Though Java has been technologically influential, its brand clout with the average person has diminished as other software such as Apple’s iOS and cloud computing rose to prominence. So now probably is a good time to dig into some of the details on which Oracle’s case hinges.

What is Java?

Java — invented at Sun in the early 1990s and absorbed into Oracle with Oracle’s Sun acquisition in 2010 — is several things.

First, it’s a programming language — a carefully defined way of issuing instructions to get a computer to do something useful.

Second, Java comes with software called a virtual machine that runs programs written in Java. The Java virtual machine (JVM) looks to Java programs like a real computer, but it’s really a layer that hands off instructions to the lower-level operating system actually running on some computing hardware. By building JVMs tailored for a variety of computers, the same Java program can at least theoretically run on both a Mac and a Windows computer. Thus Java’s initial tagline: "write once, run anywhere."

Third, Java includes pre-written code called class libraries that does all manner of work — everything from cryptography to communicating using Bluetooth. A Java programmer wanting to tap into this prefab power does so through a carefully defined mechanism called an application programming interfaces, or API. A sizable collection of companies define these APIs for Java.

Collectively, these three components are collectively called a Java runtime environment, or JRE, and it’s what you need on your computer to run Java software. To be able to slap a Java logo on a particular device, it has to pass tests to ensure it runs Java programs correctly.

 

Happier times: Sun and Google were Java allies in 2005, when Sun's then-president Jonathan Schwartz, left, and CEO Scott McNealy, center, joined Google CEO Eric Schmidt to tout a partnership that ultimately fizzled.

 

Well, that sounds simple enough
Guess again. Java quickly gets more complicated than that.

There are different varieties for different uses. The initial Java Standard Edition was geared for personal computers. It was joined by the Enterprise Edition, which defined APIs for server tasks such as managing databases, and the Micro Edition, which defined APIs for mobile tasks such as sending text messages on a phone.

And it got even more complicated: the Micro Edition had different varieties: the Connected Limited Device Configuration, the Personal Profile Specification, the Mobile Information Device Profile, the Mobile Information Device Profile 2.0, and more.

The upshot was that programmers couldn’t necessarily predict what APIs a particular device would support. Would a phone allow accelerated 2D graphics through Java? How about 3D graphics? That’s important to know if you’re writing a game. The lack of consistency led to the mocking tagline of "write once, test everywhere."

A last gasp came in the form of JavaFX, which aimed to sweep away the muddle with a prepackaged software foundation from Oracle. But as it was arriving, another force attracted mobile programmer attention instead: Apple’s iOS.

Oracle argues that Android has fragmented Java, undermining its write-once, run-anywhere promise.

Read More:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57417144-92/android-java-and-the-tech-behind-oracle-v-google-faq/

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Oracle-Google case shows patent system flaws

The big news out of the Oracle versus Google showdown on Monday was that one of Oracle’s patents was brought back from the dead, put back into play after the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office reversed its earlier rejection.

But let’s be clear: One zombie patent isn’t the remarkable thing in this case. The remarkable thing is that, when the dust settles, five of the seven patents Oracle claimed that Google violated will likely be overturned because Google forced the patent office to take a second look.

Oracle filed the lawsuit in 2010, alleging Google infringed on patents and copyrights related to its Java programming language in developing the popular Android smart-phone software.

If only two of Oracle’s patents hold up on review, that means the patent office got it right less than 30 percent of the time, an average we have every reason to believe is representative of the entire sector’s patents. In fact, software patent holders lose nearly 90 percent of the time in litigation, Stanford law Professor Mark Lemley found in a research paper published last year.

Invalid claims

Yet these overwhelmingly invalid patent claims have had dramatic impacts on the industry. They’ve allowed an entire sector of patent trolls to emerge with the sole aim of strong-arming companies into forking over licensing fees. They’ve forced tech giants to drop billions on legal fees or defensive patent portfolios, money that might have gone into research and development.

"It’s approaching crisis levels," said James Bessen, a lecturer at Boston University School of Law and co-author of "Patent Failure." "In most industries, the patent system has become a disincentive to innovation."

Still, companies are left with little choice but to play the game and act as if all patents are legitimate. It’s so expensive and time consuming to challenge them in court or through the patent office that most companies simply acquiesce to licensing fee demands. Or they buy up patents of their own in hopes of discouraging claims through a sort of mutually assured legal destruction. You sue me, I’ll sue you.

Google is acquiring Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, a purchase largely geared to gain access to the company’s trove of mobile and wireless patents. Microsoft spent more than $1 billion to buy nearly 1,000 patents from AOL. And Facebook announced plans Monday to purchase about 650 of Microsoft’s newly acquired patents for $550 million. That’s likely to provide ammunition in its legal battle with Yahoo, which filed a patent suit in March; Facebook responded with a countersuit several weeks later. It’s one of dozens of patent cases now embroiling the online and mobile industries, as Apple, HTC, Kodak, Samsung, Motorola, LG and many others duke it out.

So how did we get here?

For starters, we have an overworked and underfunded patent office staff, said Gregory Aharonian, who performs research on behalf of companies challenging patent awards, in an earlier interview. Staff members routinely approve redundant, unoriginal or vaguely worded patents. They simply don’t have the resources and motivation that a company like Google can bring to bear in digging up "prior art," or examples of the technology that precede and thus invalidate the patents.

There’s a complicating factor when it comes to software patents. Since software – unlike, say, chemical compounds – can be described by different firms in completely different language, the only foolproof way for a company to ensure that it’s not bumping up against existing patents is to hire attorneys to examine every one.

Since there are hundreds of thousands of software patents, with 40,000 new ones approved every year, one firm could easily spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to perform patent research on just one piece of software, said researchers Timothy Lee and Christina Mulligan in a summary of their recent paper on the tech blog Ars Technica.

"It’s so difficult, in fact, that the vast majority of software developers don’t even try" to perform that patent research, they wrote.

Read More:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/24/BUCM1O88OR.DTL&type=tech

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SAP Develops Database Software to Challenge Oracle

German software maker SAP said on Thursday that it plans to become a large database software developer, which exacerbates the long-term hostile relationship between the company and Oracle. Moreover, on April 10, SAP will hold a press conference in San Francisco, not far away from Oracle headquarter.

SAP is the world’s largest business management software developer, whose products could manage accounting, manufacturing and wages and other aspects. Although Oracle is in the second place in this area, thanks to the leadership position of database market, its total income is still higher than SAP.

SAP said in a statement that it will launch a unified data management product set and prove how they will become the industry leader of database.

In July 2010, SAP purchased Sybase, the fourth largest database software developer in the world. After the ransaction, Sybase CEO John Chen still served as CEO of SAP Sybase sector. However, SAP spokesman Scott Behles said John Chen would not speak at the press conference on April 10.

Since the acquisition of Sybase, SAP has been working to expand Sybase’s mobile software product line, rarely disclosing the related database technology program. Moreover, SAP will challenge the two industry giants IBM and Microsoft in the process of marching to database business.

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Apple to Up IT Outsourcing to India Four-fold

Apple seems to be extending their partnership to two main IT companies in India. We hear Apple chief information officer (CIO) Niall O’Connor had talks with Infosys and Wipro, in upping the outsourcing of software development, testing and internal IT operations in the country.

Both the companies are trying to ink a contract with the Cupertino based company as they consider it “as a badge of honor”. In addition, the companies recognize the importance of a secure source of income that will get through Apple, by satisfying the software design standards.

Currently, Apple is reported as having about a $100 million work deal with the Indian companies. They want to amplify the current money invested in outsourcing to India four-fold.

Back in 2006, the company had started a development center in Bangalore, which was shut quickly after few months. Meanwhile, the news of an IT sector slow down in the West is also considered as a reason for increasing the ties with Indian companies.

Compared with the outsourcing deals with General Electric (GE), the companies will desire Apple due to the high profitability and quality of work. Other than GE, Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, HP, AT&T wireless, Rand McNally and many more now have outsourcing deals with Indian companies.

Additionally, Apple maintains good relationships with the companies they are partnered with. One of the best examples is the Foxconn, where the Cupertino based company has investigated and provided support to perk up the working conditions at the plants that assemble their products. The companies, thereby, will be more interested in entering into outsourcing deals with Apple in the coming days. What do you think of Apple’s latest plans?

Source: http://www.gizmocrave.com/10990-apple-to-up-it-outsourcing-to-india-four-fold/

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