Trade group reports controversial Oracle advertisements to FTC

An advertising industry oversight group has reported Oracle to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission after the vendor allegedly failed to comply with previous rulings.

The National Advertising Division, which is controlled by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, investigated three Oracle advertising campaigns last year after complaints from IBM. Each of the campaigns contained “an overbroad and unsupported comparison between one Oracle product and one IBM product,” the group said in a statement late Thursday.

In July 2012, Oracle agreed to pull advertisements claiming that its Exadata database machine was vastly more powerful than IBM’s Power Systems hardware, but said at the time it believed the NAD’s ruling was too broad.

“Now, IBM has brought NAD’s attention to a fourth Oracle advertising campaign, featuring the claim that Oracle’s Sparc T5 has ‘2.6x Better Performance’ as compared to IBM’s Power7+ AIX server,” the NAD said. “The advertising in question features the same stark, overbroad IBM-versus-Oracle comparison that NAD recommended against in the three previous cases.”

Oracle has repeatedly failed to “make any (much less a good faith) effort to bring its advertising into compliance,” which has required referring the matter to the FTC, according to NAD’s statement.

An Oracle spokesman said via email Friday that the company disagrees with the NADs’ decision, and “believes the ad is fair and accurate.”

“The ad provides a clear and objective comparison between an IBM Power7+ AIX system and an Oracle Sparc T5 system using industry standard benchmark results that legitimately show 2.6x better performance by the Oracle system,” said spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger. “NAD has failed to take into account the sophistication of the ad’s target audience, namely businesses that purchase enterprise hardware systems.”

Meanwhile, IBM is “gratified” by the NAD’s decision, spokesman Jeffrey Cross said in a statement.

The Sparc T5 advertisement “suffers from the same problems as its former campaigns: A disconnect between the message conveyed by the advertising and the testing offered in its support,” he added.

There’s little love lost between Oracle and IBM, who are fierce competitors in the high-end server market.

Oracle’s hardware revenue has consistently fallen since it got into the business with the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, but company officials maintain they are focused on selling higher-margin products like Exadata, which customers must also load up with lucrative software licenses.

Oracle sues companies it says provide Solaris OS support in illegal manner

Oracle is continuing to crack down on companies it claims are providing support services for its products in an illegal fashion.

Last week, Oracle sued IT services providers Terix and Maintech, alleging they have "engaged in a deliberate scheme to misappropriate and distribute copyrighted, proprietary Oracle software code" in the course of providing support for customers using Oracle's Solaris OS.

Terix and Maintech officials have "falsely told unwitting end users they are authorized to access and distribute Solaris Updates to the end users and/or that the end users are entitled to perpetual support on [Solaris], including to receive Solaris Updates, based on their original purchase on the hardware on which the operating system was installed," adds Oracle's complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

But Oracle, "and Sun before it, have long required customers to purchase an annual support agreement to receive that support," according to the complaint.

Oracle customers who buy support services receive an identification number that allows them to create a login for Oracle's support site and download updates for systems covered under the agreement, Oracle said.

Terix and Maintech induced a number of customers, including Sony, Comcast and Bank of New York Mellon, to "improperly obtain unauthorized Solaris Updates, including by using login credentials to Oracle's password-protected support sites after their Oracle support on the relevant servers had expired," according to the complaint.

Terix and Maintech convinced customers to cancel their support agreements with Oracle by "falsely representing" they could legally provide service and support for less money, it adds.

Oracle is asking for both a preliminary and permanent injunction against the defendants, an order dictating the return of any of Oracle's intellectual property they hold, and punitive damages and restitution.

One of the companies named in Oracle's suit strongly denied the allegations.

"Oracles complaint is without any basis in either law or fact," Terix CEO Bernd Appleby said in an emailed statement Thursday.

"Terix fully respects and diligently strives to protect the intellectual property of any third party," Appleby added. "Terix acts only as an authorized agent of the end-users, pursuant to their rights, to facilitate support services. Each end-user referenced in the complaint has valid license, rights, entitlements and credentials provided by Oracle. Each end-user has their unique login credentials which are only used for the sole benefit of that end-user and are never shared."

Maintech couldn't immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

Oracle's allegations are similar to ones it has made in lawsuits against other Solaris service providers, such as ServiceKey, as well as Rimini Street, which provides third-party support for Oracle and SAP applications.

Like Terix, other third-party providers have maintained they operate within the legal boundaries of customers' license rights.

Software vendors derive handsome profits from support and maintenance revenues, which also provide continuous income even when customers scale back on new license purchases, and are undoubtedly loath to see money siphoned away to third parties.

There are a few lessons for all customers to take away from the swirl of ongoing litigation, said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research.

"Customers who have paid maintenance should always be in the process of downloading all the patches, updates, and fixes they are entitled to before they cancel the contract," Wang said via email.

"It's an unfair trade practice to force customers away from third party maintenance options," he added. "This lock-in is monopolistic in general, regardless of the vendor. Customers should make sure they do not bundle any Oracle and Sun contracts to avoid any other issues that continue a lock-in behavior."

Oracle and ARM to tweak Java

Oracle and ARM are working together to make the Java programming language more suitable for ARM processors, in order to encourage its use for embedded systems and enterprise software.

The work will customize the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) for ARM 32-bit platforms, making it more suitable for embedded systems, and the Java SE for ARMv8 64-bit platforms, where it could be used to build enterprise software and networking firmware to run on ARM servers and networking gear.

While Java was originally developed to work across different platforms, the new work will focus on improving the throughput and scalability of Java applications on ARM multicore systems.

In the market for embedded systems, Java could play a role in the emerging, so-called Internet of things, where it could be used in conjunction with energy-efficient ARM chips to build industrial control and factory automation systems.

As ARM pitches its processors as an energy-efficient alternative to x86 chips for servers, a boost in the one of the chief programming languages and runtime environments for enterprise software could help attract more organizational customers.

An optimized Java Virtual Machine (JVM) could enhance performance of enterprise Java systems on ARM multicore systems in a number of ways, according to ARM. Bootup times could be cut and more power could be saved through the additional work.

“A diverse, optimized software ecosystem must be in place to support these systems. This extended relationship with Oracle to enhance Java SE is an important step in growing the ARM ecosystem,” said Ian Drew, an ARM chief marketing officer and executive vice president for business development, in a statement.

Although ARM did not specify what work specifically the two companies would do, Java and ARM are no strangers. Oracle, and former Java owner Sun Microsystems, have been working on making Java and ARM compatible since 1996, when ARM helped port the JavaOS to the ARM architecture.

The company has done a lot of work with setting standards for Java in the embedded market in particular. ARM engineers have served on the Java Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) subcommittee, which helps establish benchmark metrics for the embedded market, as well as on the Java Community Process Executive Committee, which helps to outfit Java for the embedded systems.

Oracle and ARM to tweak Java

Oracle and ARM are working together to make the Java programming language more suitable for ARM processors, in order to encourage its use for embedded systems and enterprise software.

The work will customize the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) for ARM 32-bit platforms, making it more suitable for embedded systems, and the Java SE for ARMv8 64-bit platforms, where it could be used to build enterprise software and networking firmware to run on ARM servers and networking gear.

While Java was originally developed to work across different platforms, the new work will focus on improving the throughput and scalability of Java applications on ARM multicore systems.

In the market for embedded systems, Java could play a role in the emerging, so-called Internet of things, where it could be used in conjunction with energy-efficient ARM chips to build industrial control and factory automation systems.

As ARM pitches its processors as an energy-efficient alternative to x86 chips for servers, a boost in the one of the chief programming languages and runtime environments for enterprise software could help attract more organizational customers.

An optimized Java Virtual Machine (JVM) could enhance performance of enterprise Java systems on ARM multicore systems in a number of ways, according to ARM. Bootup times could be cut and more power could be saved through the additional work.

"A diverse, optimized software ecosystem must be in place to support these systems. This extended relationship with Oracle to enhance Java SE is an important step in growing the ARM ecosystem," said Ian Drew, an ARM chief marketing officer and executive vice president for business development, in a statement.

Although ARM did not specify what work specifically the two companies would do, Java and ARM are no strangers. Oracle, and former Java owner Sun Microsystems, have been working on making Java and ARM compatible since 1996, when ARM helped port the JavaOS to the ARM architecture.

The company has done a lot of work with setting standards for Java in the embedded market in particular. ARM engineers have served on the Java Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) subcommittee, which helps establish benchmark metrics for the embedded market, as well as on the Java Community Process Executive Committee, which helps to outfit Java for the embedded systems.

Remote access a priority for latest Oracle patch update

The vulnerabilities that allow for remote unauthenticated access should be a priority for administrators applying the latest Oracle Critical Patch Update (CPU) say security experts.
This means businesses will need to focus on applying more than 40% of the 89 updates that cover most of Oracle’s product groups.

Java is on a different update cycle of every four months, but it will be migrated to the same schedule from October 2013. 

Oracle’s flagship product, the Oracle database, gets six updates this month, with four being remotely exploitable.
The XML parser vulnerability, which is remotely accessible but requires authentication, has the highest Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of the Critical Patch Update, scoring nine on a scale of 10, indicating high criticality.

“One mitigating factor is that Oracle databases are typically not exposed the internet,” said Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer at security firm Qualys.

Oracle’s MySQL database has 18 vulnerabilities addressed, including two that are remotely accessible and have a CVSS score of 6.8.

“MySQL is often found exposed to the internet, even though this is not considered best practice. If you use MySQL in your organisation, it makes sense to run a perimeter scan to collect information on all databases externally exposed,” said Kandek.

The Oracle Sun product line has 16 updates, with eight being remotely accessible. The highest CVSS score is 7.8.

“If you have Sun Solaris servers in your organisation, review these patches and start with the machines on your perimeter and DMZ,” said Kandek.

Oracle’s Fusion Middleware has a total of 21 vulnerabilities and includes many components that are typically found on the internet, such as the Oracle HTTP server.
Of the 21 vulnerabilities, 16 are accessible remotely, with a maximum CVSS score of 7.5. “Again, a perimeter scan is helpful, or even a quick query to Shodan, which shows more than 500,000 machines with Oracle’s HTTP out on the internet,” said Kandek.

The highest CVSS score is 7.5, which should not be ignored, said Ross Barrett, senior manager of security engineering at Rapid7.

Fusion contains the Outside-In product that is used in Microsoft Exchange for document viewing. Outside-In has, in the past year, caused two updates in Microsoft’s email product to address the vulnerabilities in MS12-058 and MS12-080.

According to Kandek, recent research by Will Domann shows that Outside-In has the potential for more vulnerabilities. He recommends turning off the WebReady feature, which means that users have to download the documents to the local disk for viewing.

Other product areas with security updates include Peoplesoft, E-Business, Virtualisation and Solaris, which has been hit with two remote denial of service (DoS) attacks, plus a couple of local elevation of privilege issues, said Barrett.

This free Computer Weekly special report on Oracle gives an independent view of the challenges facing Oracle, its financial performance, the services it offers, its place in the IT market and its future strategy.
“With such a diverse range of products in this quarter’s patch, it's hard to tackle these from top to bottom. I recommend patching any vulnerable Oracle Database Server instances as soon as possible, and don’t neglect the stability or integrity of the Solaris deployment,” he said.

Kandek said dealing with the large sizes of the Oracle CPUs would be easier if a good map of the currently installed software exists.

“In any case, we recommend addressing vulnerabilities on systems that are internet accessible first, such as Fusion Middleware, the Solaris operating system and MySQL,” he said.

According to Craig Young, a security researcher at Tripwire, Oracle has acknowledged and fixed 343 security issues so far this year.

“In case there was any doubt, this should be a big red flag to users that Oracle’s security practices are simply not working,” he said. “The constant drumbeat of critical Oracle patches is more than a little alarming, particularly because the vulnerabilities are frequently reported by third parties.”

This month’s CPU credits 18 different researchers coming from more than a dozen different companies, he added.

Oracle ups memory, storage of Exalytics analytics appliance

Oracle is introducing a new generation of its Exalytics appliance for high-speed data analysis that comes with a slightly higher price tag but major increases in memory and storage capacity.

Exalytics In-Memory Machine X3-4, which was announced Monday, includes 2TB of RAM, 2.4TB of flash storage as well as 5.4TB of traditional disk storage. As with the first incarnation, released last year, the Exalytics box is certified for a range of integrated Oracle software, including BI Foundation Suite, the TimesTen in-memory cache, Hyperion Essbase and Endeca Information Discovery.

OracleOracle Exalytics Business Intelligence machine
All of those software products were recently updated as well, said Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management for Oracle Business Intelligence.

The initial version of Exalytics, X2-4, had only 1TB of RAM and 3.6TB of raw disk, although Oracle already introduced a 2.4TB flash expansion pack option.

Oracle has also maintained the same level processing power, including four 10-core processors in the rack. The company is planning to offer X2-4 users the ability to add more RAM to their machines, Rodwick said.

X3-4’s hardware lists for $175,000, compared to $135,000 for X2-4, according to an official price schedule.

Exalytics works in conjunction with Oracle’s original “engineered system,” Exadata, although the latter can run both transactional and analytic workloads in the same box.

Exadata is the most popular so far of Oracle’s engineered systems, but the company is now seeing customers buy multiple Exalytics machines at once as well as make subsequent purchases, according to Rodwick. He declined to provide current sales totals.

Oracle is betting big on the engineered system strategy. Officials have defended steadily-falling hardware revenues since Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, arguing that the company is focusing on higher-margin products like Exadata and Exalytics, which also carry plenty of lucrative software licenses, rather than commodity servers.

Exalytics was linked to Oracle’s decision to cut the price of BI Foundation Suite significantly, from $450,000 per processor to $300,000, according to Rodwick. By doing so, Oracle hopes customers will be more inclined to license the software for every processor in an Exalytics box, as well as multiple boxes, he said.

“Companies run Oracle BI in mission-critical fashion,” he said. “There’s more and more interest in high availability for analytics. When the system is down, the company is essentially blind.”

Oracle is running into many companies that want to set up redundant Exalytics environments in order to ensure continuous access to analytics, he said.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c gears up for the private cloud

For the latest update of Oracle Enterprise Manager, the company has taken additional steps to help organizations set up their own private clouds, using Oracle systems, software and even non-Oracle products.

"Our goal is to is to allow enterprises to take any [Oracle] platform and offer it as a service," said Sushil Kumar, vice president of product strategy and business development.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 3, released Tuesday, comes with new workflow capabilities and new connectors for managing additional Oracle products and systems.

Oracle Enterprise Manager was originally created to deploy and manage groups of Oracle databases. Over the years, Oracle has extended the software to manage the Oracle Application Server and third-party software packages from Microsoft and others, through the use of plug-ins and connectors. Today, the Oracle Enterprise Manager Extensibility Exchange, a sort of app store for the software, offers more than 135 add-ons for third-party programs.

In addition to aiding in the deploying and managing software, Oracle Enterprise Manager also offers a number of operational health metrics, based on information collected by agents installed on the same server as the software being monitored.

To help organizations set up cloud services for internal use, Oracle has been adding more features to Oracle Enterprise Manager.

In this version, reporting capabilities for charge backs have been enhanced in the software. Organizations running internal clouds may want to bill individual business units for their cloud usage. Earlier editions of this software could provide reports of usage by processor, storage, database queries and other metrics. This version allows organizations to create their own usage reports based on other metrics provided by the software, which then can be used as the basis for internal billing.

OracleThe activity planner tool.
An activity planner has been added, which will allow administrators to set up workflows to automate a series of tasks, such as updating a set of databases. "The change activity planner helps administrators plan, execute, tracks and report on long-running operations," Kumar said. The software uses the built-in operational health metrics as a way to determine that individual steps of a workflow have been completed.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 3 also improves on a new capability introduced in the last version, the ability to build and manage a Java-based PaaS (platform as a service).The prior version of the software required administrators to provision and coordinate multiple WebLogic servers in order to build a service. This update eliminates that step.

"In a physical environment people had to pre-deploy the WebLogic software on the machines, and then Enterprise Manager could dynamically create the domains," Kumar said. A domain is any one of a number of logical containers that WebLogic creates to hold applications. "It goes one step further in that you do not have to pre-deploy the software."

The software adds more support for Oracle engineered systems. It now allows administrators to control multiple Exadata racks as a single entity. It provides the first full support for the Oracle Exalytics in-memory data analysis system. In addition to WebLogic, Oracle Enterprise Manager now can work with Oracle's other application servers, Glassfish (which Oracle acquired in the Sun Microsystems purchase) and Tuxedo (acquired in the BEA Systems purchase).

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R3 will also "fully support" the newly released Oracle 12c database, Kumar said. Oracle 12c was released last month with little advance notice from Oracle, and features a number of new advanced capabilities, such as multitenancy.

Kumar, however, would not discuss in detail how Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R3 supports Oracle 12c, noting that Oracle will make another announcement within a few weeks. "We have all the capabilities for supporting database 12c," he said, including the ability to control individual tenants in the database, as well as the ability to manage Oracle 12c itself in the same way it manages prior versions of the database.

When asked about Oracle's reluctance to go into details about Oracle Enterprise Manager's support of the new Oracle database, Ovum principal analyst Tony Baer noted that, while the Oracle Enterprise Manager officially supports the database, the company may still have yet to work out all the particulars of assuring the management software works with the database across all possible scenarios, a large undertaking given the complexity of the new database and the wide variety of possible deployment scenarios.

Oracle and Salesforce.com's love-fest: The ripple effects

Oracle’s string of high-profile cloud-computing partnership announcements with Microsoft, Salesforce.com and NetSuite dominated tech news headlines this week.

 

While certain aspects of them weren’t as “startling” as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison had promised they would be, its deal with Salesforce.com definitely lived up to the hype and could have some lasting ramifications. Here’s a look at the potential fallout.

 

The partnership announced this week by Oracle and Salesforce.com, under which Salesforce.com will commit to Oracle’s database and other technology for 12 years, stands to provide a major initial test case for the cloud computing-friendly capabilities built into Oracle’s newly released Database 12c.

 

The release’s most-hyped feature, “pluggable databases,” allows many individual databases to reside inside a single instance. It represents Oracle’s take on multitenancy, the architectural approach SaaS (software as a service) vendors such as Salesforce.com have used to serve many customers more efficiently.

 

But Salesforce.com has used multitenancy at the application tier; Ellison claims Oracle 12c’s method is superior and more secure.

 

Chris KanaracusMark Benioff

 

While Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff didn’t explicitly call out the pluggable database feature during a joint conference call with Ellison on Thursday, he expressed confidence that Oracle’s technology can carry Salesforce.com through “the next one or two decades” and said the company expected to cut its database server costs in half.

 

As Ellison noted on the call, Salesforce.com is the industry’s largest pure cloud vendor. Assuming Salesforce.com makes a successful migration to 12c, expect Oracle to spare no effort in telling the industry about it in hopes of proving 12c’s readiness for mega-scale deployments.

 

Under the deal, Salesforce.com’s CRM software will be integrated with Oracle Fusion HCM (human capital management) and cloud-based financial products, and Salesforce.com will implement those two Oracle applications “throughout the company.” This has resulted in speculation about Salesforce.com’s ongoing relationship with cloud HCM and financial vendor Workday, which has been close.

 

Workday should contemplate drastic steps in response, according to one observer.

 

“Now that SFDC and Oracle are no longer enemies, we aren’t convinced that WDAY should still consider CRM a friend,” Cowen and Company analyst Peter Goldmacher said in a research note. “It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise if Oracle and SFDC elevate the partnership beyond formalized product integration in the coming quarters. Workday needs to control its own destiny.”

 

To that end, “we think Workday has to reconsider creating its own CRM product,” along with LinkedIn, Goldmacher added. A next-generation CRM application from those companies could make Salesforce.com “a legacy system in world record time,” he wrote.

 

Oracle and Salesforce.com’s plan to integrate their software applications will be good for customers, since packaged and supported integrations will be lower-cost than expensive custom development projects, according to Ellison.

 

Larry Ellison

 

“Salesforce.com is a big company now,” Ellison said on the call. “Customers expect us to work together professionally toward the benefit of those customers.”

 

But for whatever good comes of that, other damage has been done, according to analyst Ray Wang , CEO of Constellation Research. “Most customers we have spoken to feel betrayed by Marc,” Wang said. “They bought into the Salesforce.com religion of the past. This was a mantra of in your face, no software, no legacy IT and trailblazing the future.”

 

The expansive deal announced this week “took that coolness away,” even though Salesforce.com always ran Oracle’s database, Wang added.

 

But one customer of both Salesforce.com and Oracle expressed positivity toward the companies’ new relationship.

 

“It’s a super-big win for us,” said Dave Hansen, CEO of security vendor SafeNet, which uses Salesforce.com CRM and Oracle for financials. Salesforce.com “is by far the leader” in CRM and is probably never going to move deeply into financials, where Oracle is especially strong, Hansen added.

 

SafeNet has been working to integrate Salesforce.com with its on-premises Oracle system but “we want to do more,” he said.

 

Therefore, a standard integration between Salesforce.com CRM and Oracle financials “would be a really powerful thing,” Hansen added. “That’s where I think this [partnership] is going to be really good.”

 

NetSuite has long used Oracle technology and Ellison remains an investor in the company, but it and Oracle have still remained somewhat at arms-length until this week, when the companies announced a partnership based on integrating NetSuite’s cloud ERP software with Oracle’s cloud HCM application. Deloitte is also involved, planning to work with Oracle and NetSuite on a consulting practice for related SaaS implementations.

 

NetSuite has sought to position its software as ideal for “two-tier” ERP deployments, where NetSuite is used in a new company subsidiary and tied back into an existing core ERP system, whether from Oracle, SAP or another vendor. SAP has taken a similar approach to marketing its own Business ByDesign cloud ERP software.

 

Oracle mentioned the two-tier ERP concept only in passing in its announcement this week. But it wouldn’t be surprising to see NetSuite and Oracle place more focus on jointly marketing such deals over time.

 

One thing is for sure about Ellison: He likes a good fight. But with the hatchet buried between himself and Benioff, Ellison is without a ready foil for his ample reservoir of competitive jabs, jibes and jokes.

 

Moving forward, expect Ellison to ramp up the trash talk on rivals such as SAP and IBM.

 

SAP, for one, seems ready to take off the gloves, and not just against Oracle. “This partnership ends any vestige of Salesforce’s claims of independence from [Oracle],” SAP spokesman James Dever said via email. “All the past squabbling about false clouds and keynotes now appears as sincere as a professional wrestling match. The kid was just rebelling against his parents to appear cool.”

 

 

Oracle, NetSuite team on cloud services for mid-size customers

Oracle and NetSuite are to jointly offer cloud services to mid-size business customers.

 

The alliance announced Wednesday is the third this week around Oracle's technologies. The Redwood Shores, California, company announced earlier this week agreements with Microsoft and cloud computing company Salesforce.com.

 

Oracle's HCM Cloud, its human capital management software, and NetSuite Cloud ERP enterprise resource planning application will be integrated to connect human resources and finance systems for mid-size customers, the companies said. Deloitte will work with clients on the implementation of these systems.

 

Oracle reported last week that its fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of US$10.9 billion was flat year-on-year, reflecting to an extent the competition for its large business applications from cloud-based applications from more nimble operations.

 

The company's CEO Larry Ellison told analysts during an earnings call last week that the company was planning a "startling series" of announcements this week.

 

Oracle said Monday that under a new agreement with Microsoft, customers will be able to deploy Oracle software, such as Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server on Windows Server Hyper-V or in Windows Azure and receive full support from Oracle.

 

By Tuesday, Oracle announced a deal with Salesforce.com that would see the companies integrate their clouds. Salesforce.com's customer relationship management software will be integrated with Oracle's Fusion HCM and Financial Cloud and Salesforce.com will also use Oracle technologies for its infrastructure, according to the agreement. Customers expect application integrations to work right out of-the-box even if the applications are from different vendors, Oracle said.

 

Ellison and Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff on Thursday are due to hold a conference call to provide details of their new nine-year partnership.

 

A pioneer in the SaaS (software as a service) market, NetSuite has Ellison as an investor. Its software has typically run on the Oracle stack including the database. HR has not been a priority area for NetSuite, and the arrangement with Oracle could have some synergies.

 

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Microsoft is the big winner in new Oracle cloud partnership

Microsoft and Oracle are working together? Oh, wait. I guess that should be a statement instead of a question. The two companies have joined forces in a new cloud venture. It seems Larry Ellison has embraced the wisdom of that ancient Arabic proverb “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

The nuts and bolts of the deal are that Microsoft and Oracle are teaming up to deliver Oracle software via Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure. Azure customers will be able to run Java, Oracle Database, Oracle WebLogic Server, and even Oracle Linux on Windows Server Hyper-V or Windows Azure, and Oracle will deliver full certification and support.

Oracle will certify and support its software to work with Windows Azure.

It’s a dramatic reversal for Oracle, to put it mildly. Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison has been on a one-man quest to crush Microsoft for years. It’s always seemed a bit Quixotic, though, because Oracle isn’t in the same league and has never come close to achieving Ellison's goal.

So, why this partnership? Why now? In a nutshell, it just makes sense for both parties. It’s a win-win move that benefits Microsoft and Oracle; one positions both companies to compete more aggressively with their respective rivals.

Rob Enderle, principal analyst with Enderle Group, told me the marriage isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem. “Microsoft really had no issues working with Oracle—or Sun for that matter," said Enderle. "it was the CEOs from both companies that decided they wanted to try to put Microsoft out of business.”

Enderle said that both companies have bigger fish to fry, and that the rank and file at Oracle have already been working closely with Microsoft for some time. Despite Ellison’s goal to destroy Microsoft, the reality is that Oracle can’t deliver for its customers without engaging amicably with Microsoft on some level.

Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, believes Microsoft’s Azure platform and Oracle are both winners in the short term. Over the long term, Microsoft wins and VMware loses as a result of the Microsoft-Oracle partnership. “Microsoft gains additional customers for Azure," said Miller. "Oracle gains customers who use or want to use their technology, but want to do so in the cloud.”

Windows Azure customers stand to benefit from Microsoft's alliance with Oracle.

As much as Ellison might want to best Microsoft, doing so would bite the hand that feeds him. Oracle makes software, and that software needs a platform to run on. Many of Oracle’s customers run Oracle software on Windows Server.

Al Hilwa, an IDC analyst, rationalized, “Since Azure now essentially runs virtual machines and provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service, it is effectively a cloud operating system. It only makes sense to see other popular technologies that need an operating system run on Azure.”

Hilwa added that he hopes this is just the opening salvo from Microsoft and Oracle. Ultimately, Hilwa thinks the two companies should partner at a deeper level and introduce added-value services that reduce the friction of migrating to the cloud and minimize IT costs for customers.

This new relationship between Microsoft and Oracle is good for all. Rivalries aside, many Microsoft customers rely on Oracle software, and many Oracle customers rely on the Windows operating system. Joining forces to ensure everything works smoothly in the cloud is the right thing to do for customers.

Tony is principal analyst with the Bradley Strategy Group, providing analysis and insight on tech trends. He is a prolific writer on a range of technology topics, has authored a number of books, and is a frequent speaker at industry events.
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Oracle 12c database coming 'within two weeks,' middleware launch on deck

Oracle’s long-awaited 12c database has apparently received a firm launch date, with a company executive stating that it will be released “within the next two weeks.”

 

In addition, Oracle plans to release an update to its Fusion Middleware stack during its first fiscal quarter, said Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of product development. Kurian spoke on Tuesday during the company’s fiscal 2014 partner kickoff event, which was webcast.

 

Given that Oracle’s first quarter began June 1, that would place the Fusion Middleware launch between now and the end of August.

 

Kurian’s statements come after a period of confusion over when 12c would finally reach market. Word leaked early this year that beta testing had been completed and a release was imminent, but ultimately one never occurred.

 

Database 12c, wherein the “c” stands for cloud, incorporates a feature Oracle is calling “pluggable databases.” This will allow a single Oracle database instance to hold many other databases, allowing for more efficient use of system resources and easier management.

 

Oracle is also calling pluggable databases a superior way to achieve multitenancy for cloud applications. SaaS (software as a service) vendors have typically used application-level multitenancy, in which multiple customers share a single application instance with their data kept separate. Pushing multitenancy to the database layer provides better security and other benefits, according to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

 

Pluggable databases, despite being what one Oracle executive has called a “fundamental” architectural change for database technology, will be sold as a separate option, and not received as part of customers’ regular annual maintenance fees.

 

Still, Oracle is betting big on 12c not only with respect to end-user companies embracing the technology, but fellow software vendors as well.

 

On Monday, Oracle announced a deal with Microsoft that calls for Oracle’s database and other software to be made available on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

 

Then on Tuesday, Oracle and Salesforce.com announced a nine-year-long technology partnership under which the companies will tie together their technologies and Salesforce.com will make a major investment in Oracle products for its own cloud computing infrastructure.

 

Meanwhile, during the company’s conference call to discuss quarterly results Thursday, Ellison spilled the beans on another upcoming Oracle database release, set for the end of this year, which he described as a “columnar, compressed, high-speed, in-memory database.” This release will apparently serve as Oracle’s most direct response yet to SAP’s HANA in-memory database platform.

 

 

Oracle to charge extra for 12c database's 'fundamental' feature

For the better part of a year, Oracle has touted the “pluggable database” feature in its upcoming 12c database release as a significant architectural shift that will usher in major performance and efficiency improvements and also make cloud-based applications more secure.

But customers who want to take advantage of the pluggable database concept when 12c is released won’t get it in return for their regular maintenance fees. Instead, Oracle plans to offer it as a “separately priced option,” CEO Larry Ellison revealed Thursday on the company’s fourth-quarter and year-end earnings call.

The feature allows multiple databases to run inside of a single 12c database instance and constitutes Oracle’s take on multitenancy, which is a key ingredient of cloud-based applications.

In the past, multitenancy has referred to a practice followed by SaaS (software as a service) vendors such as Salesforce.com, where many customers share the same application instance, but with their data kept separate. Oracle believes that application-level multitenancy is inferior and less secure than 12c’s approach, which pushes multitenancy to the database tier, Ellison said on the conference call.

Pluggable databases in fact represent “a fundamental re-architecture of the [Oracle] database,” Oracle senior vice president Andy Mendelsohn said at last year’s OpenWorld conference when 12c was introduced. “Now if I’m an administrator, I have one database overall to administer.”

But in order to get that experience, customers who upgrade to 12c will need to fork over extra money above and beyond the core license fee for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, which as of Friday remained listed at $47,500 per processor, as it has been for some time.

Mendelsohn’s characterization of pluggable databases as a “fundamental” change to the platform notwithstanding, Ellison’s announcement is not altogether surprising.

Many other previously released features for Enterprise Edition also carry additional fees, such as Real Application Clusters, which cost $23,000 per processor.

While Oracle tends to give customers heavy discounts off list price for software licenses, by breaking out pluggable databases and other options from the main product, it generates additional streams of lucrative annual maintenance revenue.

Therefore, Oracle database customers who have been anticipating 12c and paying for maintenance on the core product will likely be disappointed to discover that they won’t receive pluggable databases as part of a regular upgrade.

That said, it’s possible the cost of using the pluggable database option can be significantly offset by benefits such as easier system maintenance and lower demand for computing resources.

Still, one database industry watcher offered a less-than-glowing assessment of Ellison’s announcement.

“Oracle’s business model depends upon extracting maximum revenue from those enterprises that have chosen to be captive to it,” said analyst Curt Monash of Monash Research.

Oracle has yet to announce an actual launch date for 12c, but it is expected to occur soon.

Meanwhile, Oracle is set next week to announce a number of partnerships with software vendors around 12c that will “reshape the cloud and reshape the perception of Oracle technology in the cloud,” Ellison said.

While Ellison promised the announcements would be “startling,” and are to involve companies such as NetSuite, Salesforce.com and Microsoft, only the last seems especially intriguing.

That’s because both NetSuite and Salesforce.com are longtime users of Oracle’s database technology, although Salesforce.com has made a few moves away from the platform.

But Microsoft has its own widely used SQL Server database, which competes with Oracle’s product and is available on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. And Oracle has its own Azure-like service, through which it also offers its database.

Still, Microsoft and Oracle’s joint press conference Monday is apparently important enough to merit the attendance of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Oracle president Mark Hurd, although Ellison wasn’t expected to appear.

The rumor mill has churned up quite a bit of speculation over the event, with one of the more prominent themes being that Oracle and Microsoft will announce additional support for running Java applications on Windows Azure, said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research.

Another scenario being floated would see Microsoft and Oracle team up on an OpenStack-like hybrid cloud project, Wang said.