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Channels PARTNER NEWS
In This Issue:
Red Hat
Indus
Thor Technologies and Waveset
Plateau Systems
Intel
Oracle Grid Partner Initiative
Oracle Collaborates with Red Hat on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
Oracle's Linux legacy dates back to 1999 with the first commercial Linux database. Today, Oracle is the only database vendor to collaborate with Red Hat and UnitedLinux in testing, tuning, and improving the Linux kernel. In fact, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (RHEL 3), delivered in October 2003, represents a major collaborative effort on the part of Oracle and Red Hat.
"The collaboration has mainly involved defining the requirements needed for optimizing Oracle solutions. Approximately 50 enhancements that are directly in support of Oracle were either developed by Red Hat or back-ported from future code bases for inclusion in RHEL 3," says Brian Stevens, Red Hat's vice president for OS development. "The net result is that when we ship Enterprise Linux releases, we are confident that they work well with the Oracle stacks."
Other areas of collaboration involve joint kernel development for specific areas such as Network Asynchronous I/O, as well as integrating the testing teams and creating communication channels for engineering exchanges. RHEL 3 provides enhanced multithreading, a new virtual memory system, and numerous I/O improvements. And multiple platforms are supported with RHEL 3—X86, Itanium 2, AMD64, PowerPC 32, PowerPC 64, S390, and S390X.
The collaboration between Oracle and Red Hat also extends to support, where Oracle is a single point of contact for Red Hat customers whether the issue is with an Oracle application or with the Linux operating system itself.
"The impact of support has been the tethering of both companies' CRM systems and escalation processes—customers get consistent responses, regardless of whether they contact Oracle or Red Hat directly," says Stevens. "Behind the scenes, engineers and support personnel work together to enable the efficient exchange of data, with a goal of improving overall customer satisfaction."
Indus to Leverage Oracle Application Server 10g Enhancements
Indus International, an Oracle Certified Advantage Partner specializing in the delivery of asset and customer management solutions, is counting on Oracle Application Server 10g to help support the strategic direction of Indus' Oracle-based products. Application Server 10g will allow the company to extend the logic of its products out of the database and into the realm of Web services for a service-oriented, connected, information-sharing architecture. Application Server 10g will offer Indus' customers tangible advantages by enabling them to remotely and quickly access such applications as Indus' Advantage CIS, the leading customer service software solution for the utilities industry.
"This is perfect market timing," says Gary Motts, advisory software engineer at Indus. "The enhancements in Oracle Application Server 10g will put core information in our customers' hands, faster." Motts notes that Oracle has pushed the market in a positive direction as the first vendor to integrate in a single product the tools and technology to deploy e-business portals, transactional applications, and Web services. Eric Roth, Indus senior technical architect, adds, "We are pleased that Oracle has embraced service-oriented architecture. This is an emerging industry standard in line with our architecture strategy for all Indus products. The Oracle Application Server 10g SOA
platform will enable Indus to simplify system integrations, build new modular solutions, and enable enterprise business process workflows." Indus is looking forward to performance enhancements in Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Application Server Portal usability and support for Message-Driven Beans, and full JMS 1.0 compatibility.
"Being an Oracle vendor has been a great advantage for us," explains Mary McDaniel, senior director, Indus Marketing and Communications. "No one questions the industry standing of Oracle, a technology leader that includes all the latest and greatest technology in a single stack. Our customers want to simplify their lives but stay current with technology. With Oracle there is no time and money wasted reengineering to make all the parts fit and work together."
Provisioning Partners Support Oracle Identity Management
With the release of Oracle Identity Management, part of Oracle 10g, numerous third-party vendors are stepping forward to provide additional identity management functions, including provisioning capabilities for enterprise applications. Two such companies are New York, NY-based Thor Technologies, and Austin, Texas-based Waveset.
Enterprise provisioning and identity management solutions, which automate the process of managing user identities, authorizations, and the proper granting of access to enterprise systems and applications, are imperative as organizations manage security risks by making systems and data accessible to outside users.
Thor Technologies provides secure provisioning solutions to Global 2000 companies, including application service providers, financial services, and telecommunications companies. Thor's Xellerate secure enterprise provisioning system enables enterprise customers to quickly implement, automate, and manage user access, improving security and lowering administrative costs without changes to existing IT infrastructure, internal business processes,
or policies. Users can be provisioned for targets such as SAP, Remedy, RACF, and ACF2. In addition, Thor's Adapter Factory technology allows customers to extend Xellerate's standard connectivity to support additional application targets.
Waveset, makers of the Waveset Lighthouse, is another leading provisioning solution supporting Oracle. "We're very much involved in bridging the world between Oracle and non-Oracle," says Michael D'Eath, Waveset's vice president of business and corporate development. "We give you a way to administer identities without having to deal with all the complexities of different administration environments that come from the enterprise application vendors." Lighthouse is different from other provisioning products, D'Eath says, because of its unique architectural approach, which eliminates the need for yet another central repository of all user data. Instead, it works with identity management where it natively resides. (At press time, Sun Microsystems, itself an Oracle Partner, announced a definitive agreement to acquire Waveset.)
Partnering with Oracle Generates
US$1 Million for Plateau Systems
Thanks in part to its ongoing partnership with Oracle, software developer Plateau Systems recently won a key portion of a US$8.9 million contract to supply the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) with an online training system, which is expected to
generate more than US$1 million for the Arlington, Virginia-based company.
The TSA, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, is implementing Plateau 4 Learning Management System (LMS) and Oracle9i technology to manage learning as well as consolidate its national training database for more than 55,000 personnel on a single platform.
In a related development, the Plateau 4 LMS recently completed compatibility testing and has been validated to run on Oracle9i Database and Oracle9i Application Server. Plateau 4 LMS is built using Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology, considered an industry standard for enterprise software. This interoperability will enable government agencies, corporations, and nonprofits alike to consolidate all Web-based, classroom, and on-the-job learning.
"Plateau is very proud of its long relationship with Oracle," says Paul Sparta, Plateau Systems' chairman and CEO. "Both companies rely on industry-standard J2EE technologies to ensure ease of integration, customization, and scalability, creating a solution that meshes with an organization's unique learning needs."
Intel Offers Collaboration Suite Servers
Intel and Oracle have worked together for years to produce products for enterprise computing. Over the past year, the partnership has taken another new and interesting turn with the introduction of Oracle's Collaboration Suite Voicemail and Fax. Oracle Collaboration Suite and the Intel architecture are providing choice and lower cost of ownership to customers.
The convergence of voice and data solutions promises system owners a lower cost of owning solutions and offers users greater efficiency in their day-to-day activities. Collaboration Suite stores e-mail, voice, and fax messages in a single Oracle database, greatly simplifying system management. The user experience is enriched by the ability to receive and manage all messages uniformly through a variety of interfaces, including Microsoft Outlook or Web-based e-mail clients, telephones, and next-generation wireless devices.
Based on standard Intel servers and Intel communications building-block technology, Collaboration Suite Voicemail and Fax helps enterprises reduce costs through server consolidation. While voice mail systems have traditionally been located at each of a company's sites, businesses can consolidate Collaboration Suite Voicemail and Fax servers into the corporate data center, lowering both initial deployment cost and the ongoing cost of maintenance and administration.
"In today's competitive business environment, IT managers must deploy solutions with proven return on investment through lower implementation and ownership costs," says Sandra Rivera, director of marketing for Intel's Network Building Blocks Division. "Next-generation solutions such as Oracle Collaboration Suite, built on Intel servers and communications technology, deliver this ROI through convergence and consolidation of voice and data infrastructure."
Oracle Collaboration Suite Voicemail and Fax servers are available from select Intel Communications Alliance members worldwide.
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Oracle Grid Partner Initiative
Oracle PartnerNetwork 10g Partner Initiative offers independent software vendors, system integrators, resellers, and hardware and infrastructure vendors the tools to enable a phased adoption of grid computing using Oracle Database, Oracle Application Server, and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g.
Hardware and Infrastructure Partners
Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com)
With support for Oracle 10g, the HP Adaptive Enterprise portfolio delivers an infrastructure for running critical business processes and applications.
EMC (www.emc.com)
Leveraging Oracle 10g features, EMC delivers online, disk-based backup and recovery best practices.
Network Appliance (www.network
appliance.com)
NetApp gives Oracle 10g customers a unique, unified storage solution.
System Integration Partners
Accenture (www.accenture.com)
The Oracle-Accenture alliance uses complementary strengths of each organization to deliver business solutions that help clients achieve dramatic results.
BearingPoint (www.bearingpoint.com)
BearingPoint provides business and technology strategy, systems design, architecture, applications implementation, network infrastructure, systems integration, and more.
CGE&Y (www.cgey.com)
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Oracle offer world-class enterprise application integration services and complete end-to-end technology solutions.
SRS2 (www.srs2.com)
SRS2 is in the business of easing the pain of enterprise system migration and consolidation.
ISV Partners
Computer Associates International (www.ca.com)
CA provides a full range of management, security, and implementation solutions for Oracle 10g.
Application Security, Inc. (www.appsecinc.com)
Application Security, Inc., products proactively secure enterprise applications by discovering, assessing, and protecting the database against rapidly changing security threats, and leverages Oracle Database 10g.
Visit oracle.com/partnerships to find a complete listing of Oracle 10g partners. For Oracle Grid Computing and 10g news, information on partner solutions and Oracle 10g, as well as information on joining the Oracle PartnerNetwork, visit partner.oracle.com.
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