Oracle

Information Card Foundation launched

A group including Equifax, Google, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, and PayPal, plus nine leaders in the technology community announced on Monday the creation of the Information Card Foundation (ICF) with the goal of increasing awareness of the use of electronic ID cards on the Internet, and encouraging interoperability in business around new standards.

"We need to come together in a neutral body to continue to promote the adoption of this technology," said Paul Trevithick, CEO of Parity and chairman of the ICF.

Information cards are online equivalents of physical ID cards, such as a driver's license. The basic … Read more

United Airlines demonstrates what happens when pricing power gets out of control

I posted last week on Oracle's clever but annoying move of raising prices so they could discount and still maintain margins. Today I saw that United is raising prices AND requiring an overnight stay--the bane of the business traveler. This royal pain will start in October and remind us all how much we hate to fly.

Taking an economic view of the situation, I think we all understand that fuel prices have gone through the roof and that affects United dramatically. But I would think that it makes a great deal more sense to pack the planes full (… Read more

Oracle to acquire Skywire Software

Oracle on Monday announced plans to expand its enterprise insurance applications business with the acquisition of Skywire Software.

Skywire develops software designed to manage insurance policies from their initial creation, rating and oversight by insurance agents and brokers. Skywire's applications will be combined with Oracle's Insurance Global Business Unit and the software giant's pending acquisition of AdminServer.

Oracle's announcement marks its latest effort to bolster its breadth of enterprise software applications in targeted markets, ranging from transaction-processing specialist Tangosol to retail specialist Retek to logistics and transportation management specialist G-Log.

Roughly over 1,000 insurers already … Read more

Oracle increases prices 15 to 20 percent: The joys of pricing power

And you thought Oracle was already pricey...

In a demonstration of what can happen when a company consolidates the industry such that there's far less competitive pressure on it, Oracle has significantly raised its prices. Many of its products saw a 15 to 20 percent price increase.

While the rest of the industry sees price declines through pressure from open source and SaaS, as well as a shift away from license revenue toward maintenance revenue, Oracle is happily raising prices and, presumably, its customers are (un)happily paying. Dave Rosenberg suggests this is a good move since Oracle discounts … Read more

Rumor: Red Hat and Oracle getting busy?

I've heard through the grapevine that Oracle and Red Hat are in the midst of...something. Some suggest acquisition. Others insist partnership. Still others speculate that absolutely nothing is going on at all.

Can anyone substantiate or repudiate the rumors? Ping me via email....

Oracle raises software prices (Verdict: smart, but obnoxious)

Oracle raised the prices for a number of its products this week, by as much as twenty percent in many cases. While on the surface this seems silly in a down economy the truth is that it's actually a very smart move.

First of all, Oracle sets the pricing for the database market (and now possibly the app server market too) and therefore should always be looking for ways to increase their prices. The other important aspect is the fact that Oracle discounts heavily off list price. With a large increase (say 20%) they stand to even their loss … Read more

SaaS and the multiple degrees of multi-tenancy

Phil Wainewright writes astutely today on the many degrees of multi-tenant SaaS architecture, highlighting "true" vs. "everything else." Considering that customers and end-users have little to no idea what's running at SaaS companies it's a bit ironic that the technology powering these companies is interesting--I suppose it's only so to technical people and other vendors.

Salesforce.com: First-degree multi-tenancy. In this model, all customers are served from a single infrastructure in which every component is shared, all the way down to the tables in the database.

Intacct: Second-degree multi-tenancy. Like many SaaS pureplays, … Read more

Oracle sticks a fork in BEA AquaLogic

Word on the street is that Oracle is in process of killing the AquaLogic brand that BEA spent over $300 million to assemble, and probably $100 million more to market. This is a bit of a surprise as BEA had gone to extraordinary lengths to build the brand, which I would argue was much more popular than Oracle's SOA offerings.

The Register has learned from individuals close to the company that BEA's new owner Oracle is merging the AquaLogic and WebLogic professional service teams. Oracle is also splitting the AquaLogic products between "web products" - user … Read more

Silicon Valley: The true tech mecca?

Every so often, I wonder if Silicon Valley is all it's cracked up to be. Sure, the confluence of venture capital, universities, and lawyers make it a veritable petri dish for the formation of technology companies, but there are a lot of other great places for innovation, right?

Well, if you go strictly by market capitalization, and look at the top 10 information technology companies, 6 of them are based in Silicon Valley: Cisco Systems, Google, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Oracle. In fact, if you map these company's headquarters, they'd all be inside a circle with a … Read more