Oracle takes the fight to Amazon, Salesforce.com with new cloud services

Oracle is offering a series of new services that position it as a one-stop shop for all things cloud and directly target the likes of Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com.

While Oracle had already offered SaaS (software-as-a-service) applications, database-as-a-service and other products, it announced 10 additional cloud services at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

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They include Compute Cloud and Object Storage Cloud, both of which seem aimed at similar services from AWS. Oracle termed its own offerings as secure, "enterprise-grade" and "fully configurable." The services are currently in preview, according to Oracle's cloud services website.

Oracle also announced a new managed Database Cloud service that gives customers control over a dedicated instance of its database.

"We back it up nightly, we give you point-in-time recovery, we upgrade the software for it and we can also tune it for you if you need us to do so," Executive Vice President of Product Development Thomas Kurian said during a keynote address at OpenWorld on Tuesday.

Oracle is apparently offering the new database service in three tiers: Basic, Managed and Premium Managed. All three options were listed as being in preview stage on Tuesday.

That verbiage suggests Oracle wants to give customers the option of a higher-touch, and likely more expensive experience than they'd get from simply paying as they go for raw database capacity from the likes of AWS and Oracle itself.

Oracle also announced a Java Cloud that delivers clusters of Weblogic Server along with "full administrative control"; a BI (business intelligence) cloud that provides self-service tools for uploading data and generating dashboards; Documents Cloud, for file sharing and collaboration; Mobile Cloud, which includes tools for building secure mobile applications; and a database backup service. The latter three are also in preview mode.

In addition, Oracle announced a Billing and Revenue Management cloud service for companies that depend on subscription billing. This offering will directly compete with the likes of Zuora.

Finally, in a nod to Salesforce.com's AppExchange, Oracle is rolling out Cloud Marketplace, a site where partners can list applications that integrate with Oracle's own and customers can shop around.

Oracle apparently wants to present itself to customers as a company that can meet all of their cloud-related needs.

There's a benefit to this approach, said Senior Vice President of Applications Development Chris Leone, during a presentation earlier in the week.

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Oracle preps NetBeans for a mobile Web future

Although originally built to develop enterprise Java apps, the NetBeans IDE (integrated development environment) is increasingly being rigged to help developers use the lighter weight HTML5 and JavaScript Web languages as well.

With the next edition of NetBeans, version 7.4, Oracle has outfitted the IDE with new tools to help build iOS and Android Web applications that use HTML5 and JavaScript, in addition to updating its core feature set for Java Enterprise Edition development as well.

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NetBeans IDE is Oracle's no-cost open source IDE for primarily designed for Java, though it includes robust support for the PHP and C/C++ languages as well. It is available for the Windows, Apple Macintosh, Oracle Solaris and Linux platforms.

Oracle started building HTML5 support into NetBeans 7.3, and 7.4 continues this work. This version allows developers to build HTML5 functionality directly in their Java and PHP applications, rather than working on the HTML5 code as a separate part of the project.

NetBeans 7.4 also provides emulators that can show developers what their HTML5 applications would look like and how they would operate in iOS and Android-based browsers.

JavaScript support has been improved quite a bit as well. The editor now recognizes the JavaScript AngularJS, Knockout and ExtJS frameworks. JavaScript code completion has been improved, as has the IDE's understanding of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).

Web developers can now also use Sassy CSS and LESS preprocessor files in NetBeans, which saves time in building complex CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for applications.

For the Java developers, NetBeans now recognizes the new Profiles and Lamba functionality that is being built into the upcoming release of Java 8.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

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Oracle preps NetBeans for a mobile Web future

September 21, 2013 10:01 AM ETIDG News Service - Although originally built to develop enterprise Java apps, the NetBeans IDE (integrated development environment) is increasingly being rigged to help developers use the lighter weight HTML5 and JavaScript Web languages as well.

With the next edition of NetBeans, version 7.4, Oracle has outfitted the IDE with new tools to help build iOS and Android Web applications that use HTML5 and JavaScript, in addition to updating its core feature set for Java Enterprise Edition development as well.

NetBeans IDE is Oracle's no-cost open source IDE for primarily designed for Java, though it includes robust support for the PHP and C/C++ languages as well. It is available for the Windows, Apple Macintosh, Oracle Solaris and Linux platforms.

A

Oracle started building HTML5 support into NetBeans 7.3, and 7.4 continues this work. This version allows developers to build HTML5 functionality directly in their Java and PHP applications, rather than working on the HTML5 code as a separate part of the project.

NetBeans 7.4 also provides emulators that can show developers what their HTML5 applications would look like and how they would operate in iOS and Android-based browsers.

JavaScript support has been improved quite a bit as well. The editor now recognizes the JavaScript AngularJS, Knockout and ExtJS frameworks. JavaScript code completion has been improved, as has the IDE's understanding of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).A

Web developers can now also use Sassy CSS and LESS preprocessor files in NetBeans, which saves time in building complex CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for applications.

A A

For the Java developers, NetBeans now recognizes the new Profiles and Lamba functionality that is being built into the upcoming release of Java 8.A

The new Netbeans 7.4 comes with enhanced support for developing mobile applications

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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New SPARC M6 chip runs Oracle software faster

IDG News Service - Oracle's database and high-performance workloads will run faster with the company's latest SPARC M6 chip, which has been tuned specially for the company's applications.

The latest SPARC processor has 12 processor cores, effectively doubling the number of cores than its predecessor, M5, which shipped earlier this year. Each M6 core will be able to run 8 threads simultaneously, giving the chip the ability to run 96 threads simultaneously, said Ali Vahidsafa , senior hardware engineer at Oracle, during a presentation about M6 at the Hot Chips conference in Stanford, California.

SPARC has been around for more than two decades, and the goal with M6 is to push the processor deeper into high-performance and highly parallel systems, Vahidsafa said, adding that the new chip will help expand Oracle's portfolio of high-end servers.

"What runs on these servers is consolidation of virtual workloads, and single-image databases, in particular in-memory databases and application. Both of those can benefit from higher thread count and higher memory footprint," Vahidsafa said.

It is also imperative that the benefits of the new chip be accessible to current workloads and software, Vahidsafa said.

Multithreaded applications will benefit most from the new chip, but single-threaded applications will have access to the specific "Critical Thread" queue thanks to a feature in OS scheduling, which could speed up workloads.

Some other chip features have not changed from the M5, which was the first high-end enterprise SPARC chip variant with a higher cache-to-core ratio. The M6 chip will have 48MB of L3 cache, and support 1TB of memory per socket. Oracle did not reveal the clock speed of the chip.

The chip has been tuned for in-memory databases and applications with four DDR3 schedulers to better organize traffic and visibility of tasks, Vahidsafa said. The memory subsystem has been organized for system designers to balance performance, power and serviceability.

The processors also can be linked to create two-way, four-way or eight-way servers. Using special boxes called Bixby, the chip will also allow for creation of 32-way, 48-way or even 96-way servers, with memory and other resources being shared. The M6 has features to balance out performance in servers to reduce latency and to ensure transactions are quickly processed. The coherency features have been built from the ground up for larger systems, and can be applied to smaller server pools, Vahidsafa said.

The chip also has new RAS (reliability, availability and serviceability) to track down errors in the system, which ensures high server uptime. In conjunction with the Solaris OS, a three-step process identifies errant threads, cores or cache, which are isolated, reported and then cleaned up. It also has ECC memory.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Larry Ellison to talk in-memory database, Oracle PaaS at OpenWorld

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison typically uses his annual OpenWorld conference keynotes to deliver the company's biggest announcements and strategic positioning, and this year they will apparently involve an in-memory database and Oracle's PaaS (platform as a service) offerings.

On Sunday, Sept. 22 Ellison will deliver his first keynote, which is titled "Oracle Database 12c In-Memory Database and M6 Big Memory Machine," according to an announcement released Tuesday.

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The first likely refers to something Ellison mentioned in June during an Oracle earnings call.

While Oracle released an initial version of Database 12c in June, on the call Ellison referred to an upcoming product he described as a "vertical, columnar compressed, high-speed in-memory vertical database" that would be out at the end of this year.

Meanwhile, M6 Big Memory Machine is apparently a high-RAM server based on Oracle's next-generation Sparc M6 chips and will likely be paired with the in-memory 12c product.

All told, Oracle and Ellison clearly plan to take the fight to SAP, Microsoft and IBM with regard to in-memory computing.

Indeed, on the June call Ellison referred to the in-memory 12c product as a reason why he was confident SAP's much-hyped HANA in-memory database "could never compete with Oracle over the long term."

While HANA has been generally available since June 2011, Oracle boasts a much larger installed base for its database platform, especially within SAP's customer base. Meanwhile, SAP has been hoping to convince customers to move their SAP workloads over to HANA. But if Oracle can get a compelling in-memory alternative to market soon, coupled with sales incentives, it could retain customers who are considering a switch.

Microsoft and IBM are also rolling out in-memory database technologies. By putting data for processing in RAM, rather than reading and writing it off of disks, in-memory databases can provide major performance boosts, vendors say.

Ellison's second OpenWorld keynote is titled "The Oracle Cloud Platform: Database as a Service. Java as a Service," and will cover Oracle's entry into PaaS.

While the services have been available for some time, Oracle hasn't spent an overt amount of energy marketing them. This clearly is about to change given that Ellison himself will broach the topic during OpenWorld, and not a lower-level Oracle executive.

Other OpenWorld keynotes will be delivered by Oracle President Mark Hurd, who is scheduled to discuss Oracle's "big data" strategy. Oracle Chief Architect Edward Screven will also speak, discussing the "Internet of Things" and machine-to-machine communication.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com.

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SAP takes the fight to Salesforce.com, Oracle with social intelligence app

Many companies have begun using specialized software to analyze what people are saying about their products and services on social media, and now SAP says it can help them match up individuals' social profiles with customer history data from CRM (customer relationship management) systems.

Dubbed Social Contact Intelligence, the application can help sales and marketing staff find better leads for sales as well as gain more knowledge about their actual customers' likes and dislikes, according to SAP.

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Social Contact Intelligence is built on top of and dependent on HANA, SAP's in-memory database platform. It's part of a broader suite, Customer Engagement Intelligence, that is now in "ramp-up," SAP's term for an initial release with a small set of customers. Currently it's only offered on-premises, but SAP is considering cloud-based deployments for the future, according to a spokeswoman.

Core CRM software is "such a commodity it's almost relegated to a system of record," said Jamie Anderson, vice president of customer solution marketing. Thanks to the rise of social media and resulting changes to the way customers interact with companies and make buying decisions, "we've realized the CRM market is evolving faster than CRM products on their own."

SAP had already been reselling software from Netbase for social media analytics, but now the Contact Intelligence product brings internal customer data to the equation, he said.

The three other elements of SAP's Customer Intelligence Engagement suite include Audience Discovery and Targeting, for running segmented marketing campaigns; Customer Value Intelligence, which gives recommendations on ways to cross and up-sell products to clients; and Account Intelligence, a mobile application for sales representatives.

Tuesday's announcement comes after SAP's unveiling in November of yet another social CRM-themed product set called 360 Customer, which ties together HANA, CRM, social analytics from Netbase and the Jam social network.

Oracle, Salesforce.com and other vendors are also moving quickly to build out social software portfolios, seeing the market as a major opportunity to sell existing customers more software when they have little interest or need to expand their core CRM system.

The competitive climate can put customers at a disadvantage, according to a recent Forrester Research report.

"Decoding and navigating the crowded social technology vendor landscape isn't easy," wrote analysts Nate Elliott and Zach Hofer-Shall. "Most vendors offer a unique range of social technologies, but no single vendor covers the entire value chain. Meanwhile, buzzword-packed marketing materials make it difficult to differentiate the players and find the right fit."

The level of emphasis and investment that companies should place on social software investments depends on their size, according to another recent Forrester report.

Immature companies should start small, analysts Allison Smith and Carlton Doty wrote: "Track down a high-impact use case, find a listening platform partner who can guide you, and experiment. This is an iterative, test-and-learn kind of process."

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SAP takes fight to Salesforce.com, Oracle with social intelligence app

IDG News Service - Many companies have begun using specialized software to analyze what people are saying about their products and services on social media, and now SAP says it can help them match up individuals' social profiles with customer history data from CRM (customer relationship management) systems.

Dubbed Social Contact Intelligence, the application can help sales and marketing staff find better leads for sales as well as gain more knowledge about their actual customers' likes and dislikes, according to SAP.

Social Contact Intelligence is built on top of and dependent on HANA, SAP's in-memory database platform. It's now in "ramp-up," SAP's term for an initial release with a small set of customers, and also part of a broader suite called Customer Engagement Intelligence. Currently it's only offered on-premises, but SAP is considering cloud-based deployments for the future, according to a spokeswoman.

Core CRM software is "such a commodity it's almost relegated to a system of record," said Jamie Anderson, vice president of customer solution marketing. Thanks to the rise of social media and resulting changes to the way customers interact with companies and make buying decisions, "we've realized the CRM market is evolving faster than CRM products on their own."

SAP had already been reselling software from Netbase for social media analytics, but now the Contact Intelligence product brings internal customer data to the equation, he said.

The three other elements of SAP's Customer Intelligence Engagement suite are generally available, Anderson said. They include Audience Discovery and Targeting, for running segmented marketing campaigns; Customer Value Intelligence, which gives recommendations on ways to cross and up-sell products to clients; and Account Intelligence, a mobile application for sales representatives.

Tuesday's announcement comes after SAP's unveiling in November of yet another social CRM-themed product set called 360 Customer, which ties together HANA, CRM, social analytics from Netbase and the Jam social network.

Oracle, Salesforce.com and other vendors are also moving quickly to build out social software portfolios, seeing the market as a major opportunity to sell existing customers more software when they have little interest or need to expand their core CRM system.

The competitive climate can put customers at a disadvantage, according to a recent Forrester Research report.

"Decoding and navigating the crowded social technology vendor landscape isn't easy," wrote analysts Nate Elliott and Zach Hofer-Shall. "Most vendors offer a unique range of social technologies, but no single vendor covers the entire value chain. Meanwhile, buzzword-packed marketing materials make it difficult to differentiate the players and find the right fit."

The level of emphasis and investment that companies should place on social software investments depends on their size, according to another recent Forrester report.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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