Tag: oracle

Salesforce does better than expected

Posted on November 19, 2015 by - News

Salesforce_Logo_2009Salesforce has surprised the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street by raising its full-year revenue forecast for the fourth time after reporting a quarterly adjusted profit above market expectations.

As you might expect, the rise in money has been driven by higher demand for its web-based sales and marketing software.

San Francisco-based Salesforce has been benefiting as more businesses choose cheaper and easier cloud software services. The company provides its services online, with no software directly installed on PCs.

The company’s adjusted operating margin expanded to 13.3 percent in the third quarter ended October 31 from 11.3 percent a year earlier.

Salesforce raised its revenue forecast for the year ending January 2016 to $6.64 billion-$6.65 billion from $6.60 billion-$6.63 billion.

Revenue rose 23.7 percent to $1.71 billion in the third quarter. Analysts on average had expected $1.70 billion.

Salesforce has been slowly killing off Oracle and SAP in the customer relationship management software market.

The company’s net loss narrowed to $25.2 million from $38.9 million a year earlier.

 

Oracle’s cloud deals questioned

Posted on July 13, 2015 by - News

Pic Mike MageeOracle appears to be forcing corporate clients to buy its cloud products using a complex orchestrated legal maneuver in the dark.

Business Insider claims that Oracle is pressuring some of its customers to add cloud to their contracts that they neither want nor plan to use by using a tactic insiders call “the nuclear option”.

After stuffing up its revenue and profits in the quarter that is traditionally its strongest, Oracle is under pressure. However Oracle’s CEO, Safra Catz, said  analysts blew past its own internal expectations for cloud computing sales. Cloud accounted for about $2.3 billion out of $38.2 billion in revenue.

Chairman Larry Ellison said that was great because every $1 million of cloud contract is worth $10 million over the life of the deal, compared to being worth $3 million for a typical software contract.

But Business Insider claims that Oracle is using its software licences to force customers into these lucrative contracts.

Oracle licenses its software under complex legal conditions. Users have to pay for Oracle software using a variety of metrics such as how many are using the software and which features of the software are being used.

Oracle makes it extremely easy for admins to turn on new features or add more users, and then pay for that increased usage later. That system involves an “audit.”

Much of the time, an audit is used as a sales tactic. Instead of simply paying a big bill, the customer agrees to buy more over the long haul.

If Oracle thinks the customer is really abusing the terms, it whips out the “breach notice,” which warns a customer that they are in violation and must stop using all Oracle software in 30 days.

That’s risky, because it allows the customer to walk away from its Oracle contracts.

They can’t really do that because it can take years to change a database and Oracle is giving them a month or forces them to negotiate.

When they do Oracle says they will have to pay an outrageously high out-of-compliance fine or add cloud “credits” to the contract.

Until this year, Oracle didn’t lightly use the “nuclear option” breach notice but now it is using it even more.

Oracle had an especially good quarter selling cloud in the EU were it was used six times so far in 2015. Business Insider said that it is being used more and more and Oracle is becoming more aggressive

Oracle takes on Rimini Street

Posted on July 8, 2015 by - News

oracleOracle has confirmed that its  copyright infringement case against software support services company Rimini Street and the smaller rival’s Chief Executive Seth Ravin will go to trial in September.

Oracle wants more than $200 million in damages and an injunction on Rimini’s current business model.

Oracle had sued Rimini and Ravin in 2010, alleging copyright infringement, computer fraud and related business torts.

A federal judge confirmed the lawsuit for trial on July 1, Oracle said.

The lawsuit alleged that privately held Rimini Street stole copyrighted material using the online access codes of Oracle customers.The US District Court in Las Vegas dismissed in August last year Rimini’s counterclaims against Oracle alleging “defamation and unfair competition.”

Oracle expands cloud offerings

Posted on June 23, 2015 by - News

Tcloudhe troubled Oracle outfit has just told its channel partners that it is extending its cloud offerings in a bid to improve its bottom line and see off competition from Amazon.

Executive Chairman Larry Ellison said in a webcast that he wanted to compete with Amazon.com on price.

This was after announcing that Oracle would offer online storage and capability for customers to run their applications entirely in Oracle’s cloud.

This is all pretty new for Oracle, which is shifting its traditional database and customer relationship management businesses to the cloud.

The only problem is that Amazon Web Services is the market leader, followed by Microsoft’s Azure service and Biggish Blue. Oracle is very late to the party which has gone on without it and reached the stage where people are either too drunk to speak or have coupled off.

Oracle has imaginatively dubbed its cloud platform Oracle Cloud Platform, will provide a cost-effective alternative to Amazon, said Ellison.

“Our new archive storage service goes head-to-head with Amazon Glacier and it’s one-tenth their price,” said Ellison.

Oracle’s cloud business is growing quickly, running at a rate of about $2.3 billion a year in revenue, based on last quarter’s figures. However the rest of the company is not doing so well and reported a surprise fall in profits.

Microsoft bids for Salesforce

Posted on May 6, 2015 by - News

Microsoft campusMicrosoft is looking at buying Salesforce.

The cloud software provider has been approached by another, unknown, buyer, and told Microsoft, which put in a bid of its own.

Salesforce, which has a market value of almost $50 billion, is working with two investment banks to determine a response to approaches, two of the people said.

It has the option of telling any buyer to go forth and multiply or working out a sale.

Microsoft isn’t in talks with Salesforce, and no deal is going to be quick.  Microsoft  has said that it might compete for Salesforce if it was for sale.

Salesforce shares spiked and were immediately halted for volatility on the news

Salesforce offers a leading position in CRM, software, as well as cloud computing — the delivery of business software and services via the Internet.

Microsoft sells its own customer management software, but lags behind Salesforce.

Microsoft last week set a goal of increasing annual revenue from its commercial cloud business to about $20 billion.

Oracle Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz said  an acquisition of Salesforce would create disruption in the software market.

She declined to comment on whether Oracle was interested in buying Salesforce.

Salesforce was involved in strategic-alliance discussions with SAP last year and SAP has confirmed it is not thinking about a Salesforce bid.

Oracle revenue as flat as a pancake

Posted on March 18, 2015 by - News

food-drink_02_temp-1424101497-54e21079-620x348Oracle had a disappointing third quarter with revenue as flat as a Paris supermodel and lower profit as the US dollar strengthened.

To put some shine on the gloom for investors, Oracle raised its quarterly dividend 25 percent to 15 cents a share.

As a result shares of Oracle initially fell but quickly rose 3.3 percent in after-hours trading to $43.20.

The database company reported sales of $9.3 billion, the same as the quarter a year ago. Oracle said revenue for the fiscal third quarter would have risen 6 percent without the impact of unfavorable currency rates.

The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street had expected $9.46 billion.

Oracle has been pressing ahead on its glorious quest to make computers out of clouds.

Oracle said its cloud-computing software and platform service revenue rose 30 percent to $372 million, an area keenly watched by investors as Oracle tries to migrate its business toward a remote, Internet-enabled model.

Analysts say that the plan is turning out OK, and certainly not as bad as they had expected.
Oracle’s net profit fell slightly to $2.49 billion from $2.56 billion in the year-ago quarter.

 

Former HP executive chairman red-faced in dock

Posted on March 3, 2015 by - News

HPFormer senior suit at the maker of expensive printer ink, Ray Lane, has admitted to a sex discrimination trial that he made a mistake in judgment involving the harassment of a female venture capitalist .

Lane, who previously served as executive chairman of HP and president of Oracle told the court, in the case connected to his former employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, he stuffed up completely.

He should have informed others that Trae Vassallo told him about unwanted advances by her colleague, Ajit Nazre, during a 2011 business trip.

“I made a mistake. It was my mistake. I cared more about her feelings than anything else. I thought it should be her choice whether to tell others at the firm and start an investigation, he said.

Eventually, he would have taken action, but at the time, he suggested to Vassallo that she think it over and discuss it with her husband, in part because he “feared somewhat for her safety”.

The firm did start an investigation after Vassallo told more partners.

Vassallo had complained that Nazre tried to enter her hotel room at night, wearing a bathrobe and, Lane said, holding a glass of wine.

Lane told the court he worried Nazre “could have pushed his way in” and the situation “could have gone in a different direction”.

In the suit, Pao alleges she suffered discrimination and retaliation after Nazre pressured her into an affair in 2006 that she soon ended. The discriminatory conduct eventually spread to other partners, leading her to miss out on a key promotion, she alleges.

After Pao told Lane about the affair in 2007, Lane told her to consider marriage to Nazre, she said in her suit. Lane denied telling Pao to marry Nazre.

Lane said Nazre’s bonus was cut that year as punishment for the affair.

Vassallo, who testified in the case last week, said Lane had told her to be “flattered” by Nazre’s advances.

Lane denied saying that, but an independent investigator hired to look into Nazre’s actions testified that Vassallo had told him Lane did say that, but she believed he was joking.

Oracle sues customer for suing

Posted on March 2, 2015 by - News

Oracle-Announces-X5Database outfit Oracle found itself in hot water over Oregon’s failed health exchange website and on the receiving end of a law suit complaining about breach of contract, has counter-sued.

Its case does not focus on the fact Oracle could not get the site working, but five former staff and campaign advisers to the state’s former governor, worked behind the scenes to kill the site for political reasons.

Oracle said it might file similar claims against former Governor John Kitzhaber and his former chief of staff, Mike Bonetto.

The new lawsuit by Oracle seeks about $33 million in damages it says the company lost from the fallout over the Cover Oregon program.

The lawsuit claims Kitzhaber’s staffers and advisers, who did not work for Cover Oregon, “improperly influenced” the decision to shutter the site and then blamed Oracle to defuse the political consequences.

Named in the lawsuit are Kitzhaber’s former campaign manager Patricia McCaig, consultants Kevin Looper and Mark Wiener, former business policy director Scott Nelson and former spokesman Tim Raphael.

Oracle argues the website was ready to go before the state decided to switch to the federal exchange in April.

However it claims that going live with the website and providing a means for all Oregonians to sign up for health insurance coverage didn’t match the former Governor’s re-election strategy to ‘go after’ Oracle,”

Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger said in a statement said that political operatives Patricia McCaig, Kevin Looper, Scott Nelson, Tim Raphael, and Mark Wiener acted in the shadows and took actions to undermine the ability of Oregonians to receive health coverage; create a false narrative blaming Oracle for the state’s failures; and ultimately interfere with Oracle’s business.

It seems that Oracle’s strategy is to say the site worked, when the State said it didn’t, and rely on the fact that Kitzhaber is not exactly popular any more.

Kitzhaber resigned last week after criminal probes into an influence-peddling scandal involving allegations that his fiancée used her position in his office for personal gain.

Oracle claims to still love Sunsparc and Solaris

Posted on February 13, 2015 by - News

oracleOracle has been doing its best to set the record straight after claims that it really no longer loves Sun’s Sunsparc technology.

Reports started to appear  saying that the company was no longer committed to the technology.

However Marshall Choy, senior director of product management for Optimised Solutions at Oracle, insists that is not the case and since Oracle bought Sun it has taken five processors to market in a four-year time frame. That covers the T3 to M6 lines.

“The speed and rate of innovation has increased from the Sun days, not just Sun processor deliveries but the timeliness of those deliveries to market, and meeting and beating the performance forecast,” he told me. Choy said Oracle has doubled performance with each subsequent generation of processor.

Oracle has two processor lines, the T-line and M-line.  They are the same core technology, it’s just they target different size platforms. The T-line process is a 16-core chip with eight threads per core, definitely well beyond Intel’s Xeons, at least for threads. The M-line is a 12-core chip, also with eight threads per core.

Choy acknowledged that Sparc sales are mostly existing Sparc customers replacing ageing hardware, but also insisted that the company “continues to pursue and win competitive takeouts, both from RISC competitors and x86”.

However numbers seem to be falling.  Choy also defended Solaris, saying there have been multiple release with significant updates, particularly Release 11.2, released in April 2014. That version added an integrated hypervisor, an image packaging system for patching and updates, unified archives for rapid provisioning of apps and services, software defined networking and support for OpenStack cloud provisioning in Solaris.

The argument is that Oracle continues to make massive investments in future versions of Sparc and it is not going the way of the dodo. The only problem is that it does not appear to be making them much cash.

 

Microsoft reveals cloud roadmap

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeSoftware company Microsoft said it has introduced a web site that reveals details of its roadmap for its Cloud Platform.
Microsoft has been aiming to move to the cloud as fast as it can and now offers cloud services including Azure, Intone, Visual Studio and server platforms including Windows Server, SQL Server.  It also has covered system appliance offerings including Analytics and Stor System.
Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president of the cloud and enterprise marketing group at Microsoft said the company wanted to be transparent about its cloud strategy.
He said that the web site, which you can find here, is intended to show what technology it’s developing and what’s coming in the next few months.
It also will include products in public preview.
Microsoft isn’t the only company struggling to re-invent itself as a cloud player.  Others in the game include SAP, Oracle and IBM.
Analysts predict that over the next few years the majority of enterprise IT users will use cloud computing and services more and more.

 

Oracle pushes out huge security update

Posted on January 22, 2015 by - News

Sisyphus-Image-01CDatabase outfit Oracle has pushed out a record number of patches in a security update.

Included in the patch are critical fixes for Java SE and the Oracle Sun Systems Products Suite.

All up this means that the update contains nearly 170 new security vulnerability fixes, including 36 for Oracle Fusion Middleware. Twenty-eight of these may be remotely exploitable without authentication and can possibly be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password.

The worst of the bugs are in Java SE, Fujitsu M10-1, M10-4 and M10-4S. In the case of Java SE, a CVSS Base Score of 10.0 was reported for four distinct client-only vulnerabilities.

Writing in the company blog, Oracle said that out of these 19 Java vulnerabilities, 15 affect client-only installations, two affect client and server installations, and two affect JSSE installations.

The blog says that the lower number of Oracle Java SE fixes reflect the results of Oracle’s strategy for addressing security bugs affecting Java clients and improving security development practices in the Java development organization.

While that might be true, the ton of patches in the rest of the software suggests that while Java is being closely watched, other bits are not.

In the case of the Oracle Sun Systems Products Suite, CVE-2013-4784 has a CVSS rating of 10.0 and affects XCP Firmware versions prior to XCP 2232. Overall, there are 29 security fixes for the suite.

The update also includes eight new security fixes for Oracle Database Server, none of which are remotely exploitable without authentication. Oracle MySQL has nine security fixes.

There are also: 10 fixes for Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control; 10 for Oracle E-Business Suite; six for the Oracle Supply Chain Products Suite; seven security fixes for Oracle PeopleSoft products; 17 for Oracle Siebel CRM; one for Oracle JD Edwards Products; two for Oracle iLearning; two for Oracle Communications Applications; one for Oracle Retail Applications; one for Oracle Health Sciences Applications and 11 new security fixes for Oracle Virtualisation.

Oracle unveils X5 with Intel Inside

Posted on January 22, 2015 by - News

Oracle-Announces-X5Oracle chairman and chief technology officer Larry Ellison unveiled X5, its fifth generation of Oracle’s engineered systems, to media and analysts at company headquarters on Wednesday afternoon.

Ellison introduced the company’s X5 as “the future of the datacentre” based on Intel Xeon® E5-2600 v3 processor family (Haswell-EP with up to 32 cores) and support for high bandwidth NVM Express (NVMe) flash drives.

The X5-2, a 1U two socket server, is designed and optimised for running Oracle Database in a clustered configuration. Optional four NVMe drives can be used to accelerate Database performace via Smart Flash Cache. This server is targeted at high-density vitualization environments.

The X5-2L, a 2U platform, is targeted for single-node databases and enterprise storage applications. The supports up to 758GB of memory, and configured for a maximum of 50.4TB of direct attached storage.

Also announced was Oracle’s NVM Express (NVMe) design providing up to 6.4TB of hot-swappable flash providing 2.5X the data rate of older SAS3 SSD interface drives using PCIe Gen3 Small Form Factor NVM SSD drives (12Gb/s vs. 32Gb/s). NVM Express flash technology is optimized to accelerate Oracle Database using a feature called Database Smart Flash Cache. This feature keeps recently accessed data warm in flash storage, reducing the chance that the database needs to fetch the data from slower magnetic media that may be direct attached or resident on a NAS/SAN fabric. In addition to the high-bandwidth interface to the NVM Express SSDs, the flash technology itself has been engineered to be high-endurance and write-optimized for Oracle Database.

Ellison’s new “vision” entails connecting datacentres efficiently and at lowest cost to the cloud – “There has to be some degree of compatibility between the public cloud and your private datacentre”, Ellison said.

Ellison emphasised Oracle’s “new strategy” using Intel processors to compete for the two-socket core business. The new “Virtual Compute Appliance X5” converged infrastructure system, consists of compute servers and software defined networking.

That integration comes in the form of th Virtual Compute Appliance X5 converged infrastructure system, consisting of compute servers, software-defined networking and Oracle designed hardware. Ellison went on to highlight the company’s abilities in software defined configuration of server and storage networks on VCA, supporting infiniband internal networking with external connectivity provided by Ethernet and Fibre Channel to link with existing networks.

Included within the X5 product portfolio are Oracle’s Big Data Appliance for Hadoop and NoSQL big data jobs and Exalogic X5-2 for private clouds.

Ellison described Oracles Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance capable of full data recovery with real-time “redo” transport and fully automated recovery functions, log re-examination with extraction of malicious transactions followed by re-entry of those processes again allows the appliance to be restored to any point in time.

Further the appliance, which can handle thousands of databases with backup connections to on-site datacentre, remote datacenters and cloud. “The big deal is it’s fully automated, so it’s easy to operate, and you never lose data. It’s a no brainer appliance as we have, “Ellison stated.

Ellison reminded the audience that “Oracle manufactures tests and supports all of these products in-house”, naming rivals Cisco, EMC, VMware, Microsoft and Red Hat hinting at more expensive and fragmented support by rivals. Further “One appliance alone can handle thousands of databases with potential backup connections to on-site datacentres, remote datacentres, and the cloud.” he said.

“The big deal is it’s fully automated, so it’s easy to operate, and you never lose data. It’s as a no-brainer appliance as we have,” Ellison remarked.

He further stressed Oracle has manufactured, tested, and support all these pieces in-house, calling out rivals Cisco, EMC, VMware, Microsoft, and Red Hat and hinting at more fragmented (not to mention expensive) deployment options. All X5 machines are available now.

TechEye Take

The rumor of the Intel invasion of Oracle has been circulating since OracleWorld 2012. This is a major shift for Oracle. The company’s management, currently in the midst of a “reinvention period”, includes the fact that Larry Ellison is executing a gradual accession plan as he moves toward retirement.

The X5 release is seen as one aspect of the company’s new strategy – one in which the company protects their private datacentre market base while adjusting to a world increasingly enveloped by the evolution of open hardware, software and the cloud. Ellison is a sharp toothed shark and Oracle is having a problem finding a way to replace his natural instincts – how this evolves is another one of those “only in the valley” stories.

It is looking like a very good year for Intel’s E5000 series though…,

 

Ellison is up to something with Kurian

Posted on January 12, 2015 by - Gossip, News

 Larry EllisonThe appointment of Safra Catz and Mark Hurd as co-CEOs at Oracle made considerable sense to Wall Street, but sources in the database firm were surprised that Thomas Kurian did not come out of it as well as they expected.

This indicates that Chairman Larry Ellision is up to something.

Kurian was appointed president of software development, but that seems to underplay his importance at Oracle.

Reuters points out that Ellison often turns to Kurian for a second opinion and affirmation on product decisions and conversations.

A former executive told Reuters that Ellison always looks back at Thomas and asks him what he thinks.

This has led many to believe that Kurian, not Herd or Catz will end up replacing Ellison when the 70 year old retires.

After Hurd and Catz were promoted, top executives worried about keeping Kurian motivated and happy. He continued to report directly to Ellison, now executive chairman of the board, along with Hurd, Catz and two others.

Ellison seems to be in no hurry to leave and was appointed Oracle’s chief technology officer in September, but he has in recent years spent an increasing amount of time on other interests, including his sailing team, and as he develops the Hawaiian island he largely controls into an eco-tourism destination.

When Ellison does eventually hand over the reins, he will want to entrust Oracle to someone who lives and breathes technology, and Kurian is seen fitting that job description best among the top executives.

However outside Oracle Kurian is an unknown. He is seen as a technologist who understands Oracle’s products inside out, works long hours, executes Ellison’s vision and is pants at small talk.

He is the man behind Oracle’s middleware business developing into a substantial enterprise and  Oracle’s vast and still rapidly evolving suite of products, from business software applications to servers and databases.

Ellison has put him in charge of the company’s move to the cloud and if he manages it, it will be difficult for his detractors to deny him the top spot.

What stands against him is his tendency not to delegate and he likes to get involved in a minutia.

However the same applies to Ellison, and it would appear that he has plans for Kurian, which should worry the Herd of Katz he has placed as joint CEOs.

Oracle and SAP bury the hatchet

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

9545Oracle and SAP have settled their long-running copyright litigation for $356.7 million over improper downloads of Oracle files.

For those who came in late, Oracle sued SAP over its TomorrowNow unit, which the German company bought to provide software support to Oracle customers at lower rates than what Oracle charged, hoping to persuade them to become SAP customers.

In 2007 Oracle noticed thousands of suspicious downloads of its software. A California jury awarded Oracle $1.3 billion in 2010, but that amount was knocked down in subsequent judicial rulings. Earlier this year a federal appeals court said Oracle could either accept $356.7 million, or opt for a retrial against SAP.

Oracle’s general counsel Dorian Daley called the end of the case a “landmark recovery “ and was “extremely gratified that our efforts to protect innovation and our shareholders’ interests are duly rewarded”.

SAP said it was pleased that the courts “ultimately accepted SAP’s arguments to limit Oracle’s excessive damages claims and that Oracle has finally chosen to end this matter.”

SAP conceded that its employees were illegally downloading Oracle files, but it could not agree with Oracle on how much it should pay. The 2010 trial between the two companies was widely watched, as top Oracle executives Larry Ellison and Safra Catz testified.
There was also a criminal probe, which SAP agreed to pay $20 million to make go away.

Amazon Web Services has another bite at Oracle

Posted on November 13, 2014 by - News

giant-spider02Amazon Web Services is having another crack at kicking Oracle in its relational databases.

Aurora is Amazon’s relational database which it claims is just as capable as proprietary database engines and costs 90 percent less.

Aurora is the latest battle in a long war with Oracle which started with Amazon’s RedShift a few years ago.

The database will compete with MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and yes Oracle on the company’s Relational Database Service (RDS) lineup. And it is compatible with MySQL, Amazon said.

Amazon has worked out that people have had a gutsful of Oracle’s cost structure and refusal to budge from older licensing models. The outfit has mostly saved itself because no one wants to dump their database.

To try to encourage the Oracle, Amazon has released a new AWS CodeDeploy, code-named Apollo, which the company said will enable rolling upgrades and ease deployments to multiple instances. It is available now and will work with customers’ existing toolsets.