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  • JavaOne pictures and Community Commentary on JCP Awards

    - by heathervc
    We posted some pictures from JCP related events at JavaOne 2012 on the JCP Facebook page today.  The 2012 JCP Program Award winners and some of the nominees responded to the community recognition of their achievements during some of the JCP events last week.     “Our job on the EC is to balance the need of innovation – so we don’t standardize too early, or too late. We try to find that sweet spot that makes innovation and standardization work together, and not against each other.”- Ben Evans, CEO of jClarity and Executive Committee (EC) representative of the London Java Community, 2012 JCP Member/Participant of the Year Winner“SouJava has been evangelizing the Java platform, promoting the Java ecosystem in Brazil, and contributing to JSRs for several years. It’s very gratifying to have our work recognized, on behalf of many developers and Java User Groups around the world. This really is the work of a large group of people, represented by the few that can be here tonight.”- Michael Santos, representative of SouJava, 2012 JCP Member/Participant of the Year Winner "In the last years Credit Suisse has contributed to the development of Java EE specifications through participation in many customer advisory boards, through statements of requirements for extensions to the core Java related products in use, and active participation in JSRs. Winning the JCP Outstanding Spec Lead Award 2012 is very encouraging for our engagement and also demonstrates the level of expertise and commitment to drive the evolution of Java. Victor Grazi is happy and honored to receive this award." - Susanne Cech Previtali, Executive Committee (EC) representative of Credit Suisse, accepting award for 2012 JCP Outstanding Spec Lead Winner "Managing a JSR is difficult. There are so many decisions to be made and so many good and varied opinions, you never really know if you have decided correctly. The key to success is transparency and collaboration. I am truly humbled by receiving this award, there are so many other active JSRs.” Victor added that going forward in the JCP EC, they would like to simplify and open the process of participation – being addressed in the JCP.Next initiative of the JCP EC. "We would also like to encourage the engagement of universities, professors and students – as an important part of the Java community. While innovation is the lifeblood of our community and industry, without strong standards and compatibility requirements, we all end up in a maze of technology where everything is slightly different and doesn’t quite work with everything else." Victo Grazi, Executive Committee (EC) representative of Credit Suisse, 2012 JCP Outstanding Spec Lead Winner“I am very pleased, of course, to accept this award, but the credit really should go to all of those who have participated in the work of the JCP, while pushing for changes in the way it operates.  JCP.Next represents three JSRs. The first two are done, but the final step, JSR 358, is the complicated one, and it will bring in the lawyers. Just to give you an idea of what we’re dealing with, it affects licensing, intellectual property, patents, implementations not based on the Reference Implementation (RI), the role of the RI, compatibility policy, possible changes to the Technical Compatibility Kit (TCK), transparency, where do individuals fit in, open source, and more.”- Patrick Curran, JCP Chair, Spec Lead on JCP.Next JSRs (JSR 348, JSR 355 and JSR 358), 2012 JCP Most Significant JSR Winner“I’m especially glad to see the JCP community recognize JCP.Next for its importance. The governance work it represents is KEY to moving the Java platform forward and the success of the technology.”- John Rizzo, Executive Committee (EC) representative of Aplix Corporation, JSR Expert Group Member “I am deeply honored to be nominated. I had the privilege to receive two awards on behalf of Expert Groups and Spec Leads two years ago. But this time, I am nominated personally, which values my own contribution to the JCP, and of course, participation in JSRs and the EC work. I’m a fan of Agile Principles and Values Working. Being an Agile Coach and Consultant, I use it for some of the biggest EC Member companies and projects. It fuels my ability to help the JCP become more agile, lean and transparent as part of the JCP.Next effort.” - Werner Keil, Individual Executive Committee (EC) Member, a 2012 JCP Member/Participant of the Year Nominee, JSR Expert Group Member“The JCP ever has been some kind of institution for me,” Markus said. “If in technical doubt, I go there, look for the specifications of the implementation I work with at the moment and verify what I had observed. Since the beginning of my Java journey more than 12 years back now, I always had a strong relationship with the JCP. Shaping the future of a technology by joining the JCP – giving feedback and contributing to the road ahead through individual JSRs – that brings you to a whole new level.”Calling himself, “the new kid on the block,” he explained that for years he was afraid to join the JCP and contribute. But in reality, “Every single one of the big names I meet from the different Expert Groups is a nice person. People you can actually work with,” he says. “And nobody blames you for things you don't know. As long as you are committed and bring what is worth the most: passion, experiences and the desire to make a difference.” - Markus Eisele, a 2012 JCP Member of the Year Nominee, JSR Expert Group MemberCongratulations again to all of the nominees and winners of the JCP Program Awards.  Next year, we will add another award for the group of JUG members (not an entire JUG) that makes the best contribution to the Adopt-a-JSR program.  Let us know if you have other suggestions or improvements.

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  • HDFC Bank's Journey to Oracle Private Database Cloud

    - by Nilesh Agrawal
    One of the key takeaways from a recent post by Sushil Kumar is the importance of business initiative that drives the transformational journey from legacy IT to enterprise private cloud. The journey that leads to a agile, self-service and efficient infrastructure with reduced complexity and enables IT to deliver services more closely aligned with business requirements. Nilanjay Bhattacharjee, AVP, IT of HDFC Bank presented a real-world case study based on one such initiative in his Oracle OpenWorld session titled "HDFC BANK Journey into Oracle Database Cloud with EM 12c DBaaS". The case study highlighted in this session is from HDFC Bank’s Lending Business Segment, which comprises roughly 50% of Bank’s top line. Bank’s Lending Business is always under pressure to launch “New Schemes” to compete and stay ahead in this segment and IT has to keep up with this challenging business requirement. Lending related applications are highly dynamic and go through constant changes and every single and minor change in each related application is required to be thoroughly UAT tested certified before they are certified for production rollout. This leads to a constant pressure in IT for rapid provisioning of UAT databases on an ongoing basis to enable faster time to market. Nilanjay joined Sushil Kumar, VP, Product Strategy, Oracle, during the Enterprise Manager general session at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Let's watch what Nilanjay had to say about their recent Database cloud deployment. “Agility” in launching new business schemes became the key business driver for private database cloud adoption in the Bank. Nilanjay spent an hour discussing it during his session. Let's look at why Database-as-a-Service(DBaaS) model was need of the hour in this case  - Average 3 days to provision UAT Database for Loan Management Application Silo’ed UAT environment with Average 30% utilization Compliance requirement consume UAT testing resources DBA activities leads to $$ paid to SI for provisioning databases manually Overhead in managing configuration drift between production and test environments Rollout impact/delay on new business initiatives The private database cloud implementation progressed through 4 fundamental phases - Standardization, Consolidation, Automation, Optimization of UAT infrastructure. Project scoping was carried out and end users and stakeholders were engaged early on right from planning phase and including all phases of implementation. Standardization and Consolidation phase involved multiple iterations of planning to first standardize on infrastructure, db versions, patch levels, configuration, IT processes etc and with database level consolidation project onto Exadata platform. It was also decided to have existing AIX UAT DB landscape covered and EM 12c DBaaS solution being platform agnostic supported this model well. Automation and Optimization phase provided the necessary Agility, Self-Service and efficiency and this was made possible via EM 12c DBaaS. EM 12c DBaaS Self-Service/SSA Portal was setup with required zones, quotas, service templates, charge plan defined. There were 2 zones implemented - Exadata zone  primarily for UAT and benchmark testing for databases running on Exadata platform and second zone was for AIX setup to cover other databases those running on AIX. Metering and Chargeback/Showback capabilities provided business and IT the framework for cloud optimization and also visibility into cloud usage. More details on UAT cloud implementation, related building blocks and EM 12c DBaaS solution are covered in Nilanjay's OpenWorld session here. Some of the key Benefits achieved from UAT cloud initiative are - New business initiatives can be easily launched due to rapid provisioning of UAT Databases [ ~3 hours ] Drastically cut down $$ on SI for DBA Activities due to Self-Service Effective usage of infrastructure leading to  better ROI Empowering  consumers to provision database using Self-Service Control on project schedule with DB end date aligned to project plan submitted during provisioning Databases provisioned through Self-Service are monitored in EM and auto configured for Alerts and KPI Regulatory requirement of database does not impact existing project in queue This table below shows typical list of activities and tasks involved when a end user requests for a UAT database. EM 12c DBaaS solution helped reduce UAT database provisioning time from roughly 3 days down to 3 hours and this timing also includes provisioning time for database with production scale data (ranging from 250 G to 2 TB of data) - And it's not just about time to provision,  this initiative has enabled an agile, efficient and transparent UAT environment where end users are empowered with real control of cloud resources and IT's role is shifted as enabler of strategic services instead of being administrator of all user requests. The strong collaboration between IT and business community right from planning to implementation to go-live has played the key role in achieving this common goal of enterprise private cloud. Finally, real cloud is here and this cloud is accompanied with rain (business benefits) as well ! For more information, please go to Oracle Enterprise Manager  web page or  follow us at :  Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | Newsletter

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  • Pella Increases Online Appointment Scheduling and Rapidly Personalizes and Updates Marketing Initiatives

    - by Michael Snow
    Originally posted on Oracle Customers page.Oracle Customer: Pella CorporationLocation:  Pella, IowaIndustry: Industrial Manufacturing Employees:  7,100 Pella Corporation is an innovative leader in creating a better view for homes and businesses by designing, testing, manufacturing, and installing quality windows and doors for new construction, remodeling, and replacement applications. A family-owned company, Pella has an 88-year history of innovation and, today, is the second-largest manufacturer in the country of windows and doors, including patio, entry, and storm doors. The company has 10 manufacturing facilities in United States and window and door showrooms across the United States and Canada. In-home consultations are an important part of Pella’s sales process. Several years ago, the company launched an online appointment scheduling tool to improve customer convenience. While the functionality worked well, the company wanted to increase online conversion rates and decrease the number of incomplete, online appointment schedules. It also wanted to give its business analysts and other line-of-business personnel the ability to update the scheduling tool and interface quickly, without needing IT team intervention and recoding, to better capitalize on opportunities and personalize the interface for specific markets. Pella also looked to reduce IT complexity by selecting a system that integrated easily with its Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 enterprise applications.Pella, which has a large Oracle footprint, selected Oracle WebCenter Sites as the foundation for its new, real-time appointment scheduling application. It used the solution to re-engineer the scheduling process and the information required to set up an appointment. Just a few months after launch, it is seeing improvement in the number of appointments booked online and experiencing fewer abandoned appointments during the scheduling process. As important, Pella can now quickly and easily make changes to images, video, and content displayed on the scheduling tool interface, delivering greater business agility. Previously, such changes required a developer and weeks of coding and testing. Today, a member of Pella’s business analyst team can complete the changes in hours. This capability enables Pella to personalize the Web experience for customers. For example, it can display different products or images for clients in different regions.The solution is also highly scalable. Pella is using Oracle WebCenter Sites for appointment scheduling now and plans to migrate Pella.com, its configurator tool, and dealer microsites onto the platform. Further, Pella plans to leverage the solution to optimize mobile devices. “Moving ahead, we expect to extensively leverage Oracle WebCenter Sites to gain greater flexibility in updating the Web experience, thanks to the ability to make updates quickly without developer resources. Segmentation and targeting capabilities will allow us to create a more personalized experience across both traditional and mobile platforms,” said Teri Lancaster, IT manager, customer experience applications, Pella Corporation. A word from Pella Corporation "Oracle WebCenter Sites?from the start?delivered important benefits. We’ve redesigned the online scheduling process and are seeing more potential customers completing consultation bookings online. More important, the solution opens a world of other possibilities as we plan to migrate Pella.com and our dealer microsites to the platform, and leverage it to optimize the Web experience for our mobile devices.” – Teri Lancaster, IT Manager, Customer Experience Applications, Pella Corporation Oracle Product and Services Oracle WebCenter Sites Why Oracle Pella has a long-standing relationship with Oracle. “We look to Oracle first for a solution. Our Oracle account team came to us with several solutions, and Oracle WebCenter Sites delivered the scalability, ease-of-use, flexibility, and scalability that we required for the appointment scheduling initiative and other Web projects on the horizon, including migrating Pella.com and optimizing our site for mobile platforms,”said Teri Lancaster, IT manager, customer experience applications, Pella Corporation. Implementation Process The Pella implementation team, working with Oracle partner Element Solutions, LLC, integrated the appointment setting application with Pella.com as well as the company’s Oracle E-Business Suite customer relationship management applications. Using Oracle WebCenter Site’s development tools and subversion capabilities to develop the application, the Element Solutions and Pella teams could work remotely and collaboratively, accelerating deployment. Pella went live with the new scheduling tool in just six months. Partner Oracle PartnerElement Solutions, LLC Element Solutions was instrumental at every major stage of the project, including design creation and approval, development, training, and rollout. “Element Solutions was a vital partner for our Oracle WebCenter Sites initiative. The team provided guidance, and more important, critical knowledge transfer at every stage?which equipped us to get the most out of this powerful and versatile solution. We were definitely collaboration partners,” Lancaster said. Resources Pella Corporation Upgrades Enterprise Applications to Continue to Improve Manufacturing Efficiency Thousands of Customers Successfully and Smoothly Upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 for New Functionality, Lower Operating Costs and Improved Shared Operations Managing the Virtual World

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  • 2012 Oracle Fusion Innovation Awards - Part 2

    - by Michelle Kimihira
    Author: Moazzam Chaudry Continuing from Friday's blog on 2012 Oracle Fusion Innovation Awards, this blog (Part 2) will provide more details around the customers. It was a tremendous honor to be in single room of winners. We only wish we could have had more time to share stories from all the winners.  We received great insight from all the innovative solutions that our customers deploy and would like to share them broadly, so that others can benefit from best practices. There was a customer panel session joined by Ingersoll Rand, Nike and Motability and here is what was discussed: Barry Bonar, Enterprise Architect from Ingersoll Rand shared details around their solution, comprised of Oracle Exalogic, Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle SOA Suite. This combined solutoin enabled their business transformation to increase decision-making, speed and efficiency, resulting in 40% reduced IT spend, 41X Faster response time and huge cost savings. Ashok Balakrishnan, Architect from Nike shared how they leveraged Oracle Coherence to analyze their digital "footprint" of activities. This helps them compete, collaborate and compare athletic data over time. Lastly, Ashley Doodly, Head of IT from Motability shared details around their solution compromised of Oracle SOA Suite, Service Bus, ADF, Coherence, BO and E-Business Suite. This solution helped Motability achieve 100% ROI within the first few months, performance in seconds vs. 10's of minutes and tremendous improvement in throughput that increased up to 50%.  This year's winners by category are: Oracle Exalogic Customer Results using Fusion Middleware Netshoes ATG on Exalogic: 6X Reduced H/W foot print, 6.2X increased throughput and 3 weeks time to market Claro Part of America Movil, running mission critical Java Application on Exalogic with 35X Faster Java response time, 5X Throughput Underwriters Laboratories Exalogic as an Apps Consolidation platform to power tremendous growth Ingersoll Rand EBS on Exalogic: Up to 40% Reduction in overall IT budget, 3x reduced foot print Oracle Cloud Application Foundation Customer Results using Fusion Middleware  Mazda Motor Corporation Tuxedo ART Batch runtime environment to migrate their batch apps on new open environment and reduce main frame cost. HOTELBEDS Technology Open Source to WebLogic transformation Globalia Corporation Introduced Oracle Coherence to fully reengineer DTH system and provide multiple business and technical benefits Nike Nike+, digital sports platform, has 8M users and is expecting an 5X increase in users, many of who will carry multiple devices that frequently sync data with the Digital Sport platform Comcast Corporation The solution is expected to increase availability, continuity, performance, and simplify and make the code at the application layer more flexible. Oracle SOA and Oracle BPM Customer Results using Fusion Middleware NTT Docomo Network traffic solution based on Oracle event processing and coherence - massive in scale: 12M users (50M in future) - 800,000 events/sec. Schneider National, Inc. SOA/B2B/ADF/Data Integration to orchestrate key order processes across Siebel, OTM & EBS.  Platform runs 60M trans/day and  50 million composite SOA instances per day across 10G and 11G Amadeus Oracle BPM solution: Business Rules and processes vary across local (80), regional (~10) and corporate approval process. Up to 10 levels of approval. Plans to deploy across 20+ markets Navitar SOA solution integrates a fully non-Oracle legacy application/ERP environment using Oracle’s SOA Suite and Oracle AIA Foundation Pack. Motability Uses SOA Suite to synchronize data across the systems and to manage the vehicle remarketing process Oracle WebCenter Customer Results using Fusion Middleware  News Limited Single platform running websites for 50% of Australia's newspapers University of Louisville “Facebook for Medicine”: Oracle Webcenter platform and Oracle BIEE to analyze patient test data and uncover potential health issues. Expecting annualized ROI of 277% China Mobile Jiangsu Company portal (25k users) to drive collaboration & productivity Life Technologies Portal for remotely monitoring & repairing biotech instruments LA Dept. of Water & Power Oracle WebCenter Portal to power ladwp.com on desktop and mobile for 1.6million users Oracle Identity Management Customer Results using Fusion Middleware Education Testing Service Identity Management platform for provisioning & SSO of 6 million GRE, GMAT, TOEFL customers Avea Oracle Identity Manager allowing call center personnel to quickly change Identity Profile to handle varying call loads based on a user self service interface. Decreased Admin Cost by 30% Oracle Data Integration Customer Results using Fusion Middleware Raymond James Near real-time integration for improved systems (throughput & performance) and enhanced operational flexibility in a 24 X 7 environment Wm Morrison Supermarkets Electronic Point of Sale integration handling over 80 million transactions a day in near real time (15 min intervals) Oracle Application Development Framework and Oracle Fusion Development Customer Results using Fusion Middleware Qualcomm Incorporated Solution providing  immediate business value enabling a self-service model necessary for growing the new customer base, an increase in customer satisfaction, reduced “time-to-deliver” Micros Systems, Inc. ADF, SOA Suite, WebCenter  enables services that include managing distribution of hotel rooms availability and rates to channels such as Hotel Web-site, Expedia, etc. Marfin Egnatia Bank A new web 2.0 UI provides a much richer experience through the ADF solution with the end result being one of boosting end-user productivity    Business Analytics (Oracle BI, Oracle EPM, Oracle Exalytics) Customer Results using Fusion Middleware INC Research Self-service customer portal delivering 5–10% of the overall revenue - expected to grow fast with the BI solution Experian Reduction in Time to Complete the Financial Close Process Hologic Inc Solution, saving months of decision-making uncertainty! We look forward to seeing many more innovative nominations. The nominatation process for 2013 begins in April 2013.    Additional Information: Blog: Oracle WebCenter Award Winners Blog: Oracle Identity Management Winners Blog: Oracle Exalogic Winners Blog: SOA, BPM and Data Integration will be will feature award winners in its respective areas this week Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter Follow us on Twitter and Facebook

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  • Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp - Reading (UK) - October 1-12, 2012

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    REGISTER NOW: Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp Reading, UK, October 1-12, 2012! OPN invites you to join us for a 10-day implementation bootcamp on Oracle ATG Web Commerce in Reading, UK from October 1-12, 2012.This 10-day boot camp is designed to provide partners with hands-on experience and technical training to successfully build and deploy Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Applications. This particular boot camp is focused on helping partners develop the essential skills needed to implement every aspect of an ATG Commerce Application from scratch, (not CRS-based), with a specific goal of enabling experienced Java/J2EE developers with a path towards becoming functional, effective, and contributing members of an ATG implementation team. Built for both new and experienced ATG developers alike, the collaborative nature of this program and its exercises, have proven to be highly effective and extremely valuable in learning the best practices for implementing ATG solutions. Though not required, this bootcamp provides a structured path to earning a Certified Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Specialization! What Is Covered: This boot camp is for Application Developers and Software Architects wanting to gain valuable insight into ATG application development best practices, as well as relevant and applicable implementation experience on projects modeled after four of the most common types of applications built on the ATG platform. The following learning objectives are all critical, and are of equal priority in enabling this role to succeed. This learning boot camp will help with: Building a basic functional transaction-ready ATG Web Commerce 10 Application. Utilizing ATG’s platform features such as scenarios, slots, targeters, user profiles and segments, to create a personalized user experience. Building Nucleus components to support and/or extend application functionality. Understanding the intricacies of ATG order checkout and fulfillment. Specifying, designing and implementing new commerce features in ATG 10. Building a functional commerce application modeled after four of the most common types of applications built on the ATG platform, within an agile-based project team environment and under simulated real-world project conditions. Duration: The Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp is an instructor-led workshop spanning 10 days. Audience: Application Developers Software Architects Prerequisite Training and Environment Requirements: Programming and Markup Experience with Java J2EE, JavaScript, XML, HTML and CSS Completion of Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Specialist Development Guided Learning Path modules Participants will be required to bring their own laptop that meets the minimum specifications:   64-bit PC and OS (e.g. Windows 7 64-bit) 4GB RAM or more 40GB Hard Disk Space Laptops will require access to the Internet through Remote Desktop via Windows. Agenda Topics: Week 1 – Day 1 through 5 Build a Basic Commerce Application In week one of the boot camp training, we will apply knowledge learned from the ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Guided Learning Path modules, towards building a basic transaction-ready commerce application. There will be little to no lectures delivered in this boot camp, as developers will be fully engaged in ATG Application Development activities and best practices. Developers will work independently on the following lab assignments from day's 1 through 5: Lab Assignments  1 Environment Setup 2 Build a dynamic Home Page 3 Site Authentication 4 Build Customer Registration 5 Display Top Level Categories 6 Display Product Sub-Categories 7 Display Product List Page 8 Display Product Detail Page 9 ATG Inventory 10 Build “Add to Cart” Functionality 11 Build Shopping Cart 12 Build Checkout Page  13 Build Checkout Review Page 14 Create an Order and Build Order Confirmation Page 15 Implement Slots and Targeters for Personalization 16 Implement Pricing and Promotions 17 Order Fulfillment Back to top Week 2 – Day 6 through 10 Team-based Case Project In the second week of the boot camp training, participants will be asked to join a project team that will select a case project for the team to implement. Teams will be able to choose from four of the most common application types developed and deployed on the ATG platform. They are as follows: Hard goods with physical fulfillment, Soft goods with electronic fulfillment, a Service or subscription case example, a Course/Event registration case example. Team projects will have approximately 160 hours of use cases/stories for each team to build (40 hours per developer). Each day's Use Cases/Stories will build upon the prior day's work, and therefore must be fully completed at the end of each day. Please note that this boot camp intends to simulate real-world project conditions, and as such will likely require the need for project teams to possibly work beyond normal business hours. To promote further collaboration and group learning, each team will be asked to present their work and share the methodologies and solutions that they've applied to their cases at the end of each day. Location: Oracle Reading CVC TPC510 Room: Wraysbury Reading, UK 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM  Registration Fee (10 Days): US $3,375 Please click on the following link to REGISTER or  visit the Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp page for more information. Questions: Patrick Ty Partner Enablement, Oracle Commerce Phone: 310.343.7687 Mobile: 310.633.1013 Email: [email protected]

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  • Profit's COLLABORATE 10 Session Selections

    - by Aaron Lazenby
    COLLABORATE 2010 is a mere 11 days away (thanks for the reminder @ocp_advisor). Every year I publish my a list of the sessions I think reflect some of the more interesting people/trends in enterprise IT. I should be at all of these sessions, so drop by for a chat--I'll be the guy tapping out emails on my iPad... Monday, April 19 9:15 a.m. - Keynote: Transforming Customer Value, Delivering Highest Customer Service Location: Keynote Hall I never miss Charles Phillips when he speaks--it's one of the best opportunities to get an update on Oracle product developments and strategy. And there's certainly occasion for an update: this will be Phillips' first big presentation since the Oracle + Sun Strategy Update in late January. Phillips is appearing with Oracle Executive Vice President of Development Thomas Kurian which means there should be some excellent information about how customers are using Oracle's complete software and hardware stack to address enterprise IT challenges. The session should provide some excellent context for the rest of the week's session...don't miss it. 10:45 a.m. - Oracle Fusion Applications: Functional Overview Location: South Seas FI met Basheer Khan at COLLABORATE 08 in Denver and have followed his work ever since. He's a former member of the OAUG Board of Directors, an Oracle ACE, and a charismatic enterprise IT expert. Having worked with the Oracle Usability Advisory Board, Basheer should have some fascinating insights to share about the features and interface of Oracle's Fusine Applications. This session, along with Nadia Bendjedou's "10 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for the Next Generation Applications" (on Tuesday, April 20 8:00 a.m. in room 3662) should give attendees the update they need about Oracle's next-generation applications.   1:15p.m. - E-Business Suite in the Amazon Cloud Location: South Seas HI did my first full-fledged cloud computing coverage at last year's COLLABORATE show (check out my interview with Oracle's Bill Hodak), where I first learned about Amazon's EC2 offering. I've since talked with several people who have provisioned server space on Amazon's cloud with great results. So I'm looking forward to watching the audience configure an instance of the Oracle E-Business Suite release 12 on the cloud while Chuck Edwards from Blue Gecko drives. This session should take some of the mist and vapor out of the cloud conversation.2:30 p.m. - "Zero Sign-on" to EBS - Enabling 96000 Users to Login to EBS Without User Maintenance Location: South Seas HI'll be sitting tight in South Seas H for the next session on Monday where Doug Pepka, a ten-year veteran of communications giant Comcast, will be walking attendees through a massive single sign-on (SSO) project across the enterprise. I'm working on a story about SSO for the August issue of Profit, so this session has real practical value to me. Plus the proliferation of user account logins--both personal and professional--makes this a critical usability/change management issue for IT leaders planning for successful long-term IT implementations.   Tuesday 8:00 am  - Information Architecture for Men in Kilts Location: SURF AGetting to a 8:00 a.m. presentation is a tall order in Las Vegas, but presenter Billy Cripe will make it worth your effort. Not only is the title of this session great, but the content should appeal to any IT strategist looking to push the limits of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise. Cripe is a product management director of Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise Content Management at Oracle, author of Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0, and a prolific blogger--he knows how information architecture is critical to and enterprise 2.0 implementation.    10:30a.m. - Oracle Virtualization: From Desktop to Data Center Location: REEF FData center virtualization is still one of the best ways to reduce the cost of running enterprise IT. With the addition of Sun products, Oracle has the industry's most comprehensive virtualization portfolio. I must admit, I'm no expert in this subject. So I'm looking forward to Monica Kumar's presentation so I can get up to speed.   Wednesday 8:00 a.m. - The Art of the Steal Location: Mandalay Bay Ballroom JMany will know Frank Abagnale from Steven Spielberg's 2002 film "Catch Me if You Can." The one-time con man and international fugitive who swindled $2.5 million in forged checks went on to help U.S. federal officials investigate fraud cases. Now the CEO of Abagnale and Associates, he has become an invaluable source to the business world on the subject of fraud and fraud protection. With identity theft and digital fraud still on the rise, this session should be an entertaining, and sobering, education on the threats facing businesses and customers around the world. A great way to start Wednesday.1:00 p.m. - Google Wave: Will it replace e-mail as we know it today? Location: SURF EBy many assessments (my own included), Google Wave is a bit of an open collaboration failure. It may seem like an odd reason for me to be excited about this session, but I'm looking forward to the chance to revisit the technology. Also, this is a great case study in connecting free, available Internet tools to existing enterprise computing environments--an issue that IT strategists must contend with as workers spreads out and choose their own productivity tools.  

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  • User Experience Fundamentals

    - by ultan o'broin
    Understanding what user experience means in the modern work environment is central to building great-looking usable applications on the desktop or mobile devices. What better place to start a series of blog posts on such Applications User Experience team enablement for customers and partners than by sharing what the term really means, writes team member Karen Scipi. Applications UX have gained valuable insights into developing a user experience that reflects the experience of today’s worker. We have observed real workers performing real tasks in real work environments, and we have developed a set of new standards of application design that have been scientifically proven to be beneficial to enable today’s workers. We share such expertise to enable our customers and partners to benefit from our insights and to further their return on investment when building Oracle applications. So, What is User Experience? ?The user interface (UI) is about the on-screen user context provided by the layout of widgets (such as icons, fields, and buttons and more) and the visual impact of colors, typographic choices, and so on. The UI comprises the “look and feel” of the application that users interact with, and reflects, in essence, the most immediate aspects of usability we can now all relate to.  User experience, on the other hand, is about understanding the whole context of the world of work, how workers go about completing tasks, crossing all sorts of boundaries along the way. It is a study of how business processes and workers goals coincide, how users work with technology or other tools to get their jobs done, their interactions with other users, and their response to the technical, physical, and cultural environment around them. User experience is all about how users work—their work environments, office layouts, desk tools, types of devices, their working day, and more. Even their job aids, such as sticky notes, offer insight for UX innovation. User experience matters because businesses needs to be efficient, work must be productive, and users now demand to be satisfied by the applications they work with. In simple terms, tasks finished quickly and accurately for a business evokes organization and worker satisfaction, which in turn makes workers feel good and more than willing to use the application again tomorrow. Design Principles for the Enterprise Worker The consumerization of information technology has raised the bar for enterprise applications. Applications must be consistent, simple, intuitive, but above all contextual, reflecting how and when workers work, in the office or on the go. For example, the Google search experience with its type-ahead keyword-prompting feature is how workers expect to be able to discover enterprise information, too. Type-ahead in PeopleSoft 9.1 To build software that enables workers to be productive, our design principles meet modern work requirements about consistency, with well-organized, context-driven information, geared for a working world of discovery and collaboration. Our applications must also behave in a simple, web-like way just like Amazon, Google, and Apple products that workers use at home or on the go. Our user experience must also reflect workers’ needs for flexibility and well-loved enterprise practices such as using popular desktop tools like Microsoft Excel or Outlook as required. Building User Experience Productively The building blocks of Oracle Fusion Applications are the user experience design patterns. Based on the Oracle Fusion Middleware technology used to build Oracle Fusion Applications, the patterns are reusable solutions to common usability challenges that ADF developers typically face as they build applications, extensions, and integrations. Developers use the patterns as part of their Oracle toolkits to realize great usability consistently and in a productive way. Our design pattern creation process is informed by user experience research and science, an understanding of our technology’s capabilities, the demands for simplification and intuitiveness from users, and the best of Oracle’s acquisitions strategy (an injection of smart people and smart innovation). The patterns are supported by usage guidelines and are tested in our labs and assembled into a library of proven resources we used to build own Oracle Fusion Applications and other Oracle applications user experiences. The design patterns library is now available to the ADF community and to our partners and customers, for free. Developers with ADF skills and other technology skills can now offer more than just coding and functionality and still use the best in enterprise methodologies to ensure that a great user experience is easily applied, scaled, and maintained, whether it be for SaaS or on-premise deployments for Oracle Fusion Applications, for applications coexistence, or for partner integrations scenarios.  Oracle partners and customers already using our design patterns to build solutions and win business in smart and productive ways are now sharing their experiences and insights on pattern use to benefit your entire business. Applications UX is going global with the message and the means. Our hands-on user experience enablement through ADF  is expanding. So, stay tuned to Misha Vaughan's Voice of User Experience (VOX) blog and follow along on Twitter at @usableapps for news of outreach events and other learning opportunities. Interested in Learning More? Oracle Fusion Applications User Experience Patterns and Guidelines Library Shout-outs for Oracle UX Design Patterns Oracle Fusion Applications User Experience Design Patterns: Productivity Realized

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  • Calling All Agile Customers-Share Your Stories at the Upcoming PLM Summit

    - by Terri Hiskey
    Now that we've closed the door on another Oracle OpenWorld, planning is in full swing for the next PLM Summit, taking place February 4-6, 2013 in San Francisco, in conjunction with the Oracle Value Chain Summit. This event is a must-attend for all Agile PLM customers. We will be holding five tracks with over forty Agile PLM-focused sessions covering a range of topics and industries. If you'd like to be notified once registration is live for this event, be sure to sign up at www.oracle.com/goto/vcs. CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS: We are looking for some fresh, new customer stories to share with attendees. Read below for descriptions of the five tracks, and the suggested topics that we'd like to hear from customers. If you are interested in presenting at the PLM Summit (and getting a FREE pass to attend if your presentation is accepted!) send me an email at terri.hiskey-AT-oracle.com with: Your proposed session title and the track your session fits into 3-5 bullets of takeaways that attendees will get from your presentation Your complete contact information including name, title, company, telephone number and email The deadline for this call for presentations is Thursday, November 15, so get your submission in soon! PLM Track #1:  Product Insights and Best Practices This track will provide executive attendees and line of business managers with an overview of how Agile PLM has been deployed and used at customers to enable and manage critical product-related business processes including enterprise quality and supplier management, compliance, product cost management, portfolio management, commercialization and software lifecycle management. These sessions will also provide details around how to manage the development and rollout of the solutions and how to achieve and track value. Possible session topics: Software Lifecycle Management Enterprise Quality Management New Product Development Integrated Business Planning ECO effectivity planning Rapid Commercialization             Manage the Design to Release Process for Complex Configured Products PLM for Life Sciences Companies I (Compliant Data Set) PLM for Life Sciences Companies II (eMDR, UDI) Discrete CPG – Private Label Mgmt Cost Management and Strategic Sourcing IP Mgmt in the Semiconductor Industry Implementing the Enterprise Training Record using Agile PLM PLM Track #2: Product Deep Dives & Demos This track is aimed at line of business  and IT managers who would like to understand the benefits of expanding their PLM footprint. The sessions in this track will provide attendees with an up-close and in-depth look Agile PLM’s newer and exciting applications, including analytics and innovation management, and will detail features and functionality that are available in the latest version of Agile PLM Possible session topics: Oracle Product Lifecycle Analytics Integrating PLM with Engineering and Supply Chain Systems Streamline PLM Design to Manufacturing Processes with AutoVue Visualization Solutions         Achieve Environmental Compliance (REACH and ROHS) with Agile Product Governance & Compliance PIM Deep Dive Achieving Integrated Change Control with Agile PLM and E-Business Suite Deploying PLM at Small and Midsize Enterprises Enhancing Oracle PQM w/APQP and 8D functionality Advanced Roles and Privileges – Enabling ITAR Model Unit Effectivity Implementing REACH with 9.3.2 Deploying Job Functions, Functional Teams in 9.3.2 to Improve Your Approval Matrix PLM Track #3: Administration & Integrations This track will provide sessions for Agile administrators, managers and daily Agile PLM users who are preparing to upgrade or looking to extend the use of their current PLM implementation through AIA and process extensions. It will include deeper conversation about Agile PLM features and best practices on managing an Agile PLM infrastructure. Possible session topics: Expand the Value of your Agile Investment with Innovative Process Extension Ideas Ensuring Implementation & Upgrade Success Ensure the Integrity and Accuracy of Product Data Across the Enterprise              Maximize the Benefits of an Integrated Architecture with AIA Integrating your PLM Implementation with ERP               Infrastructure Optimization Expanding Your PLM Implementation PLM Administrator Open Forum Q&A/Discussion FDA Validation Best Practices Best Practices for Managing a large Agile Deployment: Clustering, Load Balancing and Firewalls PLM Track #4: Agile PLM for Process This track is aimed at attendees interested in or currently using Agile PLM for Process. The sessions in this track will go over new features and functionality available in the newest version of PLM for Process and will give attendees an overview on how PLM for Process is being used to manage critical business processes such as formulation, recipe and specification management Possible session topics: PLM for Process Strategy, Roadmap and Update New Product Development and Introduction Effective Product Supplier Collaboration             Leverage Agile Formulation and Compliance to Manage Cost, Compliance, Quality, Labeling and Nutrition Menu Management Innovation Data Management Food Safety/ Introduction of P4P Quality Mgmt PLM Track #5: Agile PLM and Innovation Management This track consists of five sessions, and is for attendees interested in learning more about Oracle’s Agile Innovation Management, an exciting new addition to the Agile PLM application family that redefines the industry’s scope of product lifecycle management. Oracle’s innovation solutions enable companies to collaborate in a focused way among various functional groups (marketing, sales, operations, engineering/R&D and sourcing), combining insights of customer needs/requirements, competition, available technologies, alternate design scenarios and portfolio constraints to deliver what customers truly value. The results are better products, higher margins, greater efficiencies, more satisfied customers and the increased ability to continuously innovate. Possible session topics: Product Innovation Management Solution Overview Product Requirements & Ideation Management Concept Design Management Product Lifecycle Portfolio Management Innovation as a Competitive Differentiator

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  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #006

    - by pinaldave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2006 This was my very first year of blogging so I was every day learning something new. As I have said many times, that blogging was never an intention. I had really not understood what exactly I am working on or beginning when I was beginning blogging in 2006. I had never knew that my life was going to change forever, once I started blogging. When I look back all of this year, I am happy that we are here together. 2007 IT Outsourcing to India – Top 10 Reasons Companies Outsource Outsourcing is about trust, collaboration and success. Helping other countries in need has been always the course of mankind, outsourcing is nothing different then that. With information technology and process improvements increasing the complexity, costs and skills required to accomplish routine tasks as well as challenging complex tasks, companies are outsourcing such tasks to providers who have the expertise to perform them at lower costs , with greater value and quality outcome. UDF – Remove Duplicate Chars From String This was a very interesting function I wrote in my early career. I am still using this function when I have to remove duplicate chars from strings. I have yet to come across a scenario where it does not work so I keep on using it till today. Please leave a comment if there is any better solution to this problem. FIX : Error : 3702 Cannot drop database because it is currently in use This is a very generic error when DROP Database is command is executed and the database is not dropped. The common mistake user is kept the connection open with this database and trying to drop the database. The database cannot be dropped if there is any other connection open along with it. It is always a good idea to take database in single user mode before dropping it. Here is the quick tutorial regarding how to bring the database in single user mode: Using T-SQL | Using SSMS. 2008 Install SQL Server 2008 – How to Upgrade to SQL Server 2008 – Installation Tutorial This was indeed one of the most popular articles in SQL Server 2008. Lots of people wanted to learn how to install SQL SErver 2008 but they were facing various issues while installation. I build this tutorial which becomes reference points for many. Default Collation of SQL Server 2008 What is the collation of SQL Server 2008 default installations? I often see this question confusing many experienced developers as well. Well the answer is in following image. Ahmedabad SQL Server User Group Meeting – November 2008 User group meetings are fun, now a days I am going to User Group meetings every week but there was a case when I have been just a beginner on this subject. The bug of the community was caught on me years ago when I started to present in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar SQ LServer User Groups. 2009 Validate an XML document in TSQL using XSD My friend Jacob Sebastian wrote an excellent article on the subject XML and XSD. Because of the ‘eXtensible’ nature of XML (eXtensible Markup Language), often there is a requirement to restrict and validate the content of an XML document to a pre-defined structure and values. XSD (XML Schema Definition Language) is the W3C recommended language for describing and validating XML documents. SQL Server implements XSD as XML Schema Collections. Star Join Query Optimization At present, when queries are sent to very large databases, millions of rows are returned. Also the users have to go through extended query response times when joining multiple tables are involved with such queries. ‘Star Join Query Optimization’ is a new feature of SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. This mechanism uses bitmap filtering for improving the performance of some types of queries by the effective retrieval of rows from fact tables. 2010 These puzzles are very interesting and intriguing – there was lots of interest on this subject. If you have free time this weekend. You may want to try them out. SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Usage of FAST Hint (Solution)  SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Challenge – Error While Converting Money to Decimal (Solution)  SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Why does RIGHT JOIN Exists (Open)  Additionally, I had great fun presenting SQL Server Performance Tuning seminar at fantastic locations in Hyderabad. Installing AdventeWorks Database This has been the most popular request I have received on my blog. Here is the quick video about how one can install AdventureWorks. 2011 Effect of SET NOCOUNT on @@ROWCOUNT There was an interesting incident once while I was presenting a session. I wrote a code and suddenly 10 hands went up in the air.  This was a bit surprise to me as I do not know why they all got alerted. I assumed that there should be something wrong with either project, screen or my display. However the real reason was very interesting – I suggest you read the complete blog post to understand this interesting scenario. Error: Deleting Offline Database and Creating the Same Name This is very interesting because once a user deletes the offline database the MDF and LDF file still exists and if the user attempts to create a new database with the same name it will give error. I found this very interesting and the blog explains the concept very quickly. Have you ever faced a similar situation? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Reference Data Management and Master Data: Are Relation ?

    - by Mala Narasimharajan
    Submitted By:  Rahul Kamath  Oracle Data Relationship Management (DRM) has always been extremely powerful as an Enterprise Master Data Management (MDM) solution that can help manage changes to master data in a way that influences enterprise structure, whether it be mastering chart of accounts to enable financial transformation, or revamping organization structures to drive business transformation and operational efficiencies, or restructuring sales territories to enable equitable distribution of leads to sales teams following the acquisition of new products, or adding additional cost centers to enable fine grain control over expenses. Increasingly, DRM is also being utilized by Oracle customers for reference data management, an emerging solution space that deserves some explanation. What is reference data? How does it relate to Master Data? Reference data is a close cousin of master data. While master data is challenged with problems of unique identification, may be more rapidly changing, requires consensus building across stakeholders and lends structure to business transactions, reference data is simpler, more slowly changing, but has semantic content that is used to categorize or group other information assets – including master data – and gives them contextual value. In fact, the creation of a new master data element may require new reference data to be created. For example, when a European company acquires a US business, chances are that they will now need to adapt their product line taxonomy to include a new category to describe the newly acquired US product line. Further, the cross-border transaction will also result in a revised geo hierarchy. The addition of new products represents changes to master data while changes to product categories and geo hierarchy are examples of reference data changes.1 The following table contains an illustrative list of examples of reference data by type. Reference data types may include types and codes, business taxonomies, complex relationships & cross-domain mappings or standards. Types & Codes Taxonomies Relationships / Mappings Standards Transaction Codes Industry Classification Categories and Codes, e.g., North America Industry Classification System (NAICS) Product / Segment; Product / Geo Calendars (e.g., Gregorian, Fiscal, Manufacturing, Retail, ISO8601) Lookup Tables (e.g., Gender, Marital Status, etc.) Product Categories City à State à Postal Codes Currency Codes (e.g., ISO) Status Codes Sales Territories (e.g., Geo, Industry Verticals, Named Accounts, Federal/State/Local/Defense) Customer / Market Segment; Business Unit / Channel Country Codes (e.g., ISO 3166, UN) Role Codes Market Segments Country Codes / Currency Codes / Financial Accounts Date/Time, Time Zones (e.g., ISO 8601) Domain Values Universal Standard Products and Services Classification (UNSPSC), eCl@ss International Classification of Diseases (ICD) e.g., ICD9 à IC10 mappings Tax Rates Why manage reference data? Reference data carries contextual value and meaning and therefore its use can drive business logic that helps execute a business process, create a desired application behavior or provide meaningful segmentation to analyze transaction data. Further, mapping reference data often requires human judgment. Sample Use Cases of Reference Data Management Healthcare: Diagnostic Codes The reference data challenges in the healthcare industry offer a case in point. Part of being HIPAA compliant requires medical practitioners to transition diagnosis codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10, a medical coding scheme used to classify diseases, signs and symptoms, causes, etc. The transition to ICD-10 has a significant impact on business processes, procedures, contracts, and IT systems. Since both code sets ICD-9 and ICD-10 offer diagnosis codes of very different levels of granularity, human judgment is required to map ICD-9 codes to ICD-10. The process requires collaboration and consensus building among stakeholders much in the same way as does master data management. Moreover, to build reports to understand utilization, frequency and quality of diagnoses, medical practitioners may need to “cross-walk” mappings -- either forward to ICD-10 or backwards to ICD-9 depending upon the reporting time horizon. Spend Management: Product, Service & Supplier Codes Similarly, as an enterprise looks to rationalize suppliers and leverage their spend, conforming supplier codes, as well as product and service codes requires supporting multiple classification schemes that may include industry standards (e.g., UNSPSC, eCl@ss) or enterprise taxonomies. Aberdeen Group estimates that 90% of companies rely on spreadsheets and manual reviews to aggregate, classify and analyze spend data, and that data management activities account for 12-15% of the sourcing cycle and consume 30-50% of a commodity manager’s time. Creating a common map across the extended enterprise to rationalize codes across procurement, accounts payable, general ledger, credit card, procurement card (P-card) as well as ACH and bank systems can cut sourcing costs, improve compliance, lower inventory stock, and free up talent to focus on value added tasks. Change Management: Point of Sales Transaction Codes and Product Codes In the specialty finance industry, enterprises are confronted with usury laws – governed at the state and local level – that regulate financial product innovation as it relates to consumer loans, check cashing and pawn lending. To comply, it is important to demonstrate that transactions booked at the point of sale are posted against valid product codes that were on offer at the time of booking the sale. Since new products are being released at a steady stream, it is important to ensure timely and accurate mapping of point-of-sale transaction codes with the appropriate product and GL codes to comply with the changing regulations. Multi-National Companies: Industry Classification Schemes As companies grow and expand across geographies, a typical challenge they encounter with reference data represents reconciling various versions of industry classification schemes in use across nations. While the United States, Mexico and Canada conform to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) standard, European Union countries choose different variants of the NACE industry classification scheme. Multi-national companies must manage the individual national NACE schemes and reconcile the differences across countries. Enterprises must invest in a reference data change management application to address the challenge of distributing reference data changes to downstream applications and assess which applications were impacted by a given change. References 1 Master Data versus Reference Data, Malcolm Chisholm, April 1, 2006.

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  • Announcing Solaris Technical Track at NLUUG Spring Conference on Operating Systems

    - by user9135656
    The Netherlands Unix Users Group (NLUUG) is hosting a full-day technical Solaris track during its spring 2012 conference. The official announcement page, including registration information can be found at the conference page.This year, the NLUUG spring conference focuses on the base of every computing platform; the Operating System. Hot topics like Cloud Computing and Virtualization; the massive adoption of mobile devices that have their special needs in the OS they run but that at the same time put the challenge of massive scalability onto the internet; the upspring of multi-core and multi-threaded chips..., all these developments cause the Operating System to still be a very interesting area where all kinds of innovations have taken and are taking place.The conference will focus specifically on: Linux, BSD Unix, AIX, Windows and Solaris. The keynote speech will be delivered by John 'maddog' Hall, infamous promotor and supporter of UNIX-based Operating Systems. He will talk the audience through several decades of Operating Systems developments, and share many stories untold so far. To make the conference even more interesting, a variety of talks is offered in 5 parallel tracks, covering new developments in and  also collaboration  between Linux, the BSD's, AIX, Solaris and Windows. The full-day Solaris technical track covers all innovations that have been delivered in Oracle Solaris 11. Deeply technically-skilled presenters will talk on a variety of topics. Each topic will first be introduced at a basic level, enabling visitors to attend to the presentations individually. Attending to the full day will give the audience a comprehensive overview as well as more in-depth understanding of the most important new features in Solaris 11.NLUUG Spring Conference details:* Date and time:        When : April 11 2012        Start: 09:15 (doors open: 8:30)        End  : 17:00, (drinks and snacks served afterwards)* Venue:        Nieuwegein Business Center        Blokhoeve 1             3438 LC Nieuwegein              The Nederlands          Tel     : +31 (0)30 - 602 69 00        Fax     : +31 (0)30 - 602 69 01        Email   : [email protected]        Route   : description - (PDF, Dutch only)* Conference abstracts and speaker info can be found here.* Agenda for the Solaris track: Note: talks will be in English unless marked with 'NL'.1.      Insights to Solaris 11         Joerg Moellenkamp - Solaris Technical Specialist         Oracle Germany2.      Lifecycle management with Oracle Solaris 11         Detlef Drewanz - Solaris Technical Specialist         Oracle Germany3.      Solaris 11 Networking - Crossbow Project        Andrew Gabriel - Solaris Technical Specialist        Oracle UK4.      ZFS: Data Integrity and Security         Darren Moffat - Senior Principal Engineer, Solaris Engineering         Oracle UK5.      Solaris 11 Zones and Immutable Zones (NL)         Casper Dik - Senior Staff Engineer, Software Platforms         Oracle NL6.      Experiencing Solaris 11 (NL)         Patrick Ale - UNIX Technical Specialist         UPC Broadband, NLTalks are 45 minutes each.There will be a "Solaris Meeting point" during the conference where people can meet-up, chat with the speakers and with fellow Solaris enthousiasts, and where live demos or other hands-on experiences can be shared.The official announcement page, including registration information can be found at the conference page on the NLUUG website. This site also has a complete list of all abstracts for all talks.Please register on the NLUUG website.

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  • Unexpected advantage of Engineered Systems

    - by user12244672
    It's not surprising that Engineered Systems accelerate the debugging and resolution of customer issues. But what has surprised me is just how much faster issue resolution is with Engineered Systems such as SPARC SuperCluster. These are powerful, complex, systems used by customers wanting extreme database performance, app performance, and cost saving server consolidation. A SPARC SuperCluster consists or 2 or 4 powerful T4-4 compute nodes, 3 or 6 extreme performance Exadata Storage Cells, a ZFS Storage Appliance 7320 for general purpose storage, and ultra fast Infiniband switches.  Each with its own firmware. It runs Solaris 11, Solaris 10, 11gR2, LDoms virtualization, and Zones virtualization on the T4-4 compute nodes, a modified version of Solaris 11 in the ZFS Storage Appliance, a modified and highly tuned version of Oracle Linux running Exadata software on the Storage Cells, another Linux derivative in the Infiniband switches, etc. It has an Infiniband data network between the components, a 10Gb data network to the outside world, and a 1Gb management network. And customers can run whatever middleware and apps they want on it, clustered in whatever way they want. In one word, powerful.  In another, complex. The system is highly Engineered.  But it's designed to run general purpose applications. That is, the physical components, configuration, cabling, virtualization technologies, switches, firmware, Operating System versions, network protocols, tunables, etc. are all preset for optimum performance and robustness. That improves the customer experience as what the customer runs leverages our technical know-how and best practices and is what we've tested intensely within Oracle. It should also make debugging easier by fixing a large number of variables which would otherwise be in play if a customer or Systems Integrator had assembled such a complex system themselves from the constituent components.  For example, there's myriad network protocols which could be used with Infiniband.  Myriad ways the components could be interconnected, myriad tunable settings, etc. But what has really surprised me - and I've been working in this area for 15 years now - is just how much easier and faster Engineered Systems have made debugging and issue resolution. All those error opportunities for sub-optimal cabling, unusual network protocols, sub-optimal deployment of virtualization technologies, issues with 3rd party storage, issues with 3rd party multi-pathing products, etc., are simply taken out of the equation. All those error opportunities for making an issue unique to a particular set-up, the "why aren't we seeing this on any other system ?" type questions, the doubts, just go away when we or a customer discover an issue on an Engineered System. It enables a really honed response, getting to the root cause much, much faster than would otherwise be the case. Here's a couple of examples from the last month, one found in-house by my team, one found by a customer: Example 1: We found a node eviction issue running 11gR2 with Solaris 11 SRU 12 under extreme load on what we call our ExaLego test system (mimics an Exadata / SuperCluster 11gR2 Exadata Storage Cell set-up).  We quickly established that an enhancement in SRU12 enabled an 11gR2 process to query Infiniband's Subnet Manager, replacing a fallback mechanism it had used previously.  Under abnormally heavy load, the query could return results which were misinterpreted resulting in node eviction.  In several daily joint debugging sessions between the Solaris, Infiniband, and 11gR2 teams, the issue was fully root caused, evaluated, and a fix agreed upon.  That fix went back into all Solaris releases the following Monday.  From initial issue discovery to the fix being put back into all Solaris releases was just 10 days. Example 2: A customer reported sporadic performance degradation.  The reasons were unclear and the information sparse.  The SPARC SuperCluster Engineered Systems support teams which comprises both SPARC/Solaris and Database/Exadata experts worked to root cause the issue.  A number of contributing factors were discovered, including tunable parameters.  An intense collaborative investigation between the engineering teams identified the root cause to a CPU bound networking thread which was being starved of CPU cycles under extreme load.  Workarounds were identified.  Modifications have been put back into 11gR2 to alleviate the issue and a development project already underway within Solaris has been sped up to provide the final resolution on the Solaris side.  The fixed SPARC SuperCluster configuration greatly aided issue reproduction and dramatically sped up root cause analysis, allowing the correct workarounds and fixes to be identified, prioritized, and implemented.  The customer is now extremely happy with performance and robustness.  Since the configuration is common to other customers, the lessons learned are being proactively rolled out to other customers and incorporated into the installation procedures for future customers.  This effectively acts as a turbo-boost to performance and reliability for all SPARC SuperCluster customers.  If this had occurred in a "home grown" system of this complexity, I expect it would have taken at least 6 months to get to the bottom of the issue.  But because it was an Engineered System, known, understood, and qualified by both the Solaris and Database teams, we were able to collaborate closely to identify cause and effect and expedite a solution for the customer.  That is a key advantage of Engineered Systems which should not be underestimated.  Indeed, the initial issue mitigation on the Database side followed by final fix on the Solaris side, highlights the high degree of collaboration and excellent teamwork between the Oracle engineering teams.  It's a compelling advantage of the integrated Oracle Red Stack in general and Engineered Systems in particular.

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  • Pace Layering Comes Alive

    - by Tanu Sood
    v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Rick Beers is Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware. Prior to joining Oracle, Rick held a variety of executive operational positions at Corning, Inc. and Bausch & Lomb. With a professional background that includes senior management positions in manufacturing, supply chain and information technology, Rick brings a unique set of experiences to cover the impact that technology can have on business models, processes and organizations. Rick hosts the IT Leaders Editorial on a monthly basis. By now, readers of this column are quite familiar with Oracle AppAdvantage, a unified framework of middleware technologies, infrastructure and applications utilizing a pace layered approach to enterprise systems platforms. 1. Standardize and Consolidate core Enterprise Applications by removing invasive customizations, costly workarounds and the complexity that multiple instances creates. 2. Move business specific processes and applications to the Differentiate Layer, thus creating greater business agility with process extensions and best of breed applications managed by cross- application process orchestration. 3. The Innovate Layer contains all the business capabilities required for engagement, collaboration and intuitive decision making. This is the layer where innovation will occur, as people engage one another in a secure yet open and informed way. 4. Simplify IT by minimizing complexity, improving performance and lowering cost with secure, reliable and managed systems across the entire Enterprise. But what hasn’t been discussed is the pace layered architecture that Oracle AppAdvantage adopts. What is it, what are its origins and why is it relevant to enterprise scale applications and technologies? It’s actually a fascinating tale that spans the past 20 years and a basic understanding of it provides a wonderful context to what is evolving as the future of enterprise systems platforms. It all begins in 1994 with a book by noted architect Stewart Brand, of ’Whole Earth Catalog’ fame. In his 1994 book How Buildings Learn, Brand popularized the term ‘Shearing Layers’, arguing that any building is actually a hierarchy of pieces, each of which inherently changes at different rates. In 1997 he produced a 6 part BBC Series adapted from the book, in which Part 6 focuses on Shearing Layers. In this segment Brand begins to introduce the concept of ‘pace’. Brand further refined this idea in his subsequent book, The Clock of the Long Now, which began to link the concept of Shearing Layers to computing and introduced the term ‘pace layering’, where he proposes that: “An imperative emerges: an adaptive [system] has to allow slippage between the differently-paced systems … otherwise the slow systems block the flow of the quick ones and the quick ones tear up the slow ones with their constant change. Embedding the systems together may look efficient at first but over time it is the opposite and destructive as well.” In 2000, IBM architects Ian Simmonds and David Ing published a paper entitled A Shearing Layers Approach to Information Systems Development, which applied the concept of Shearing Layers to systems design and development. It argued that at the time systems were still too rigid; that they constrained organizations by their inability to adapt to changes. The findings in the Conclusions section are particularly striking: “Our starting motivation was that enterprises need to become more adaptive, and that an aspect of doing that is having adaptable computer systems. The challenge is then to optimize information systems development for change (high maintenance) rather than stability (low maintenance). Our response is to make it explicit within software engineering the notion of shearing layers, and explore it as the principle that systems should be built to be adaptable in response to the qualitatively different rates of change to which they will be subjected. This allows us to separate functions that should legitimately change relatively slowly and at significant cost from that which should be changeable often, quickly and cheaply.” The problem at the time of course was that this vision of adaptable systems was simply not possible within the confines of 1st generation ERP, which were conceived, designed and developed for standardization and compliance. It wasn’t until the maturity of open, standards based integration, and the middleware innovation that followed, that pace layering became an achievable goal. And Oracle is leading the way. Oracle’s AppAdvantage framework makes pace layering come alive by taking a strategic vision 20 years in the making and transforming it to a reality. It allows enterprises to retain and even optimize their existing ERP systems, while wrapping around those ERP systems three layers of capabilities that inherently adapt as needed, at a pace that’s optimal for the enterprise.

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  • Drive Online Engagement with Intuitive Portals and Websites

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    As more and more business is being conducted via online channels, engaging users and making them more productive and efficient though these online channels is becoming critical. These users could be customers, partners or employees and while the respective channels through which they interact might be different, these users do increasingly interact with your business through the Web, or mobile devices or now through various social mediums.  Businesses need a user engagement strategy and solution that allows them to deliver targeted and personalized content and applications to users through the various online mediums and touch points.  The customer experience today is made up of an ongoing set of interactions with organizations across many channels, online and offline.  The Direct channel (including sales reps, email and mail) is an important point of contact, as is the Contact Center.  Contact Centers rely on the phone as a means of interacting with customers, and also more now than ever, the Web as well.  However, the online organization is often managed separately from the Contact Center organization within a business. In-store is an important channel for retailers, offering Point-of-Service for human interactions, and Kiosks which enable self-service. Kiosks are a Web-enabled touch point but in-store kiosks are often managed by the head of retail operations, rather than the online organization.  And of course, the online channel, including customer interactions with an organization via digital means -- on the website, mobile websites, and social networking sites, has risen to paramount importance in recent years in the customer experience. Historically all of these channels have been managed separately. The result of all of this fragmentation is that the customer touch points with an organization are siloed.  Their interactions online are not known and respected in their dealings in-store.  Their calls to the contact center are not taken as input into what the website offers them when they arrive. Think of how many times you’ve fallen victim to this. Your experience with the company call center is different than the experience in-store. Your experience with the company website on your desktop computer is different than your experience on your iPad. I think you get the point. But the customer isn’t the only one we need to look at here, as employees and the IT organization have challenges as well when it comes to online engagement. There are many common tools and technologies that organizations have been using to try and engage users, whether it’s customers, employees or partners. Some have adopted different blog and wiki technologies (some hosted, some open source, sometimes embedded in platforms), to things like tagging, file sharing and content management, or composite applications for self-service applications and activity streams. Basically, there are so many different tools & technologies that each address different aspects of user engagement. Now, one of the challenges with this, is that if we look at each individual tool, typically just implementing for example a file sharing and basic collaboration solution, may meet the needs of the business user for one aspect of user engagement, but it may not be the best solution to engage with customers and partners, or it may not fit with IT standards such as integrating with their single sign on tools or their corporate website. Often, the scenario is that businesses are having to acquire multiple pieces and parts as well as build custom applications to meet their needs. Leaving customers and partners with a more fragmented way of interacting with the company. Every organization has some sort of enterprise balancing act between the needs of the business user and the needs and restrictions enforced by enterprise IT groups. As we’ve been discussing, we all know that the expectations for online engagement have changed since the days of the static, one-size fits all website. With these changes have come some very difficult organizational challenges as well. Today, as a business user, you want to engage with your customers, and your customers expect you to know who they are. They expect you to recall the details they’ve provided to you on your website, to your CSRs and to your sales people. They expect you to remember their purchases, their preferences and their problems. And they expect you to know who they are, equally well, across channels, including your web presence. This creates a host of challenges for today’s business users. Delivering targeted, relevant content online is now essential for converting prospects into customers and for engendering long term loyalty. Business users need the ability to leverage customer data from different sources to fuel their segmentation and targeting strategies and to easily set-up, manage and optimize online campaigns. Also critical, they need the ability to accomplish these things on-the-fly, at the speed of the marketplace, while making iterative improvements.  These changing expectations put a host of demands on the IT organization as well. The web presence must be able to scale to support the delivery of personalized and targeted content to thousands of site visitors without sacrificing performance. And integration between systems becomes more important as well, as organizations strive to obtain one view of the customer culled from WCM data, CRM data and more. So then, how do you solve these challenges and meet the growing demands of your users?  You need a solution that: Unifies every customer interaction across all channels Personalizes the products and content that interest the customer and to the device Delivers targeted promotions to the right customer Engages and improve employee productivity Provides self-service access to applications Includes embedded in-context social   So how then do you achieve this level of online engagement, complete customer experience and engage your employees? The answer: Oracle WebCenter. If you want to learn how to get there, we encourage you to attend this webcast on Thursday Drive Online Engagement with Intuitive Portals and Websites, where we'll talk about how you are able to transform your portal experience and optimize online engagement -- making your portals more interactive and more engaging across multiple channels. Register today!

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  • Educause Top-Ten IT Issues - the most change in a decade or more

    - by user739873
    The Education IT Issue Panel has released the 2012 top-ten issues facing higher education IT leadership, and instead of the customary reshuffling of the same deck, the issues reflect much of the tumult and dynamism facing higher education generally.  I find it interesting (and encouraging) that at the top of this year's list is "Updating IT Professionals' Skills and Roles to Accommodate Emerging Technologies and Changing IT Management and Service Delivery Models."  This reflects, in my view, the realization that higher education IT must change in order to fully realize the potential for transforming the institution, and therefore it's people must learn new skills, understand and accept new ways of solving problems, and not be tied down by past practices or institutional inertia. What follows in the remaining 9 top issues all speak, in some form or fashion, to the need for dramatic change, but not just in the areas of "funding IT" (code for cost containment or reduction), but rather the need to increase effectiveness and efficiency of the institution through the use of technology—leveraging the wave of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to the institution's advantage, rather than viewing it as a threat and a problem to be contained. Although it's #10 of 10, IT Governance (and establishment and implementation of the governance model throughout the institution) is key to effectively acting upon many of the preceding issues in this year's list.  In the majority of cases, technology exists to meet the needs and requirements to effectively address many of the challenges outlined in top-ten issues list. Which brings me to my next point. Although I try not to sound too much like an Oracle commercial in these (all too infrequent) blog posts, I can't help but point out how much confluence there is between several of the top issues this year and what my colleagues and I have been evangelizing for some time. Starting from the bottom of the list up: 1) I'm gratified that research and the IT challenges it presents has made the cut.  Big Data (or Large Data as it's phased in the report) is rapidly going to overwhelm much of what exists today even at our most prepared and well-equipped research universities.  Combine large data with the significantly more stringent requirements around data preservation, archiving, sharing, curation, etc. coming from granting agencies like NSF, and you have the brewing storm that could result in a lot of "one-off" solutions to a problem that could very well be addressed collectively and "at scale."   2) Transformative effects of IT – while I see more and more examples of this, there is still much more that can be achieved. My experience tells me that culture (as the report indicates or at least poses the question) gets in the way more than technology not being up to task.  We spend too much time on "context" and not "core," and get lost in the weeds on the journey to truly transforming the institution with technology. 3) Analytics as a key element in improving various institutional outcomes.  In our work around Student Success, we see predictive "academic" analytics as essential to getting in front of the Student Success issue, regardless of how an institution or collections of institutions defines success.  Analytics must be part of the fabric of the key academic enterprise applications, not a bolt-on.  We will spend a significant amount of time on this topic during our semi-annual Education Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington, D.C. later this month. 4) Cloud strategy for the broad range of applications in the academic enterprise.  Some of the recent work by Casey Green at the Campus Computing Survey would seem to indicate that there is movement in this area but mostly in what has been termed "below the campus" application areas such as collaboration tools, recruiting, and alumni relations.  It's time to get serious about sourcing elements of mature applications like student information systems, HR, Finance, etc. leveraging a model other than traditional on-campus custom. I've only selected a few areas of the list to highlight, but the unifying theme here (and this is where I run the risk of sounding like an Oracle commercial) is that these lofty goals cry out for partners that can bring economies of scale to bear on the problems married with a deep understanding of the nuances unique to higher education.  In a recent piece in Educause Review on Student Information Systems, the author points out that "best of breed is back". Unfortunately I am compelled to point out that best of breed is a large part of the reason we have made as little progress as we have as an industry in advancing some of the causes outlined above.  Don't confuse "integrated" and "full stack" for vendor lock-in.  The best-of-breed market forces that Ron points to ensure that solutions have to be "integratable" or they don't survive in the marketplace. However, by leveraging the efficiencies afforded by adopting solutions that are pre-integrated (and possibly metered out as a service) allows us to shed unnecessary costs – as difficult as these decisions are to make and to drive throughout the organization. Cole

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  • Mark Hurd on the Customer Revolution: Oracle's Top 10 Insights

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    Reprint of an article from Forbes Businesses that fail to focus on customer experience will hear a giant sucking sound from their vanishing profitability. Because in today’s dynamic global marketplace, consumers now hold the power in the buyer-seller equation, and sellers need to revamp their strategy for this new world order. The ability to relentlessly deliver connected, personalized and rewarding customer experiences is rapidly becoming one of the primary sources of competitive advantage in today’s dynamic global marketplace. And the inability or unwillingness to realize that the customer is a company’s most important asset will lead, inevitably, to decline and failure. Welcome to the lifecycle of customer experience, in which consumers explore, engage, shop, buy, ask, compare, complain, socialize, exchange, and more across multiple channels with the unconditional expectation that each of those interactions will be completed in an efficient and personalized manner however, wherever, and whenever the customer wants. While many niche companies are offering point solutions within that sprawling and complex spectrum of needs and requirements, businesses looking to deliver superb customer experiences are still left having to do multiple product evaluations, multiple contract negotiations, multiple test projects, multiple deployments, and–perhaps most annoying of all–multiple and never-ending integration projects to string together all those niche products from all those niche vendors. With its new suite of customer-experience solutions, Oracle believes it can help companies unravel these challenges and move at the speed of their customers, anticipating their needs and desires and creating enduring and profitable relationships. Those solutions span the full range of marketing, selling, commerce, service, listening/insights, and social and collaboration tools for employees. When Oracle launched its suite of Customer Experience solutions at a recent event in New York City, president Mark Hurd analyzed the customer experience revolution taking place and presented Oracle’s strategy for empowering companies to capitalize on this important market shift. From Hurd’s presentation and related materials, I’ve extracted a list of Hurd’s Top 10 Insights into the Customer Revolution. 1. Please Don’t Feed the Competitor’s Pipeline!After enduring a poor experience, 89% of consumers say they would immediately take their business to your competitor. (Except where noted, the source for these findings is the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report including a survey commissioned by RightNow (acquired by Oracle in March 2012) and conducted by Harris Interactive.) 2. The Addressable Market Is Massive. Only 1% of consumers say their expectations were always met by their actual experiences. 3. They’re Willing to Pay More! In return for a great experience, 86% of consumers say they’ll pay up to 25% more. 4. The Social Media Microphone Is Always Live. After suffering through a poor experience, more than 25% of consumers said they posted a negative comment on Twitter or Facebook or other social media sites. Conversely, of those consumers who got a response after complaining, 22% posted positive comments about the company. 5.  The New Deal Is Never Done: Embrace the Entire Customer Lifecycle. An appropriately active and engaged relationship, says Hurd, extends across every step of the entire processs: need, research, select, purchase, receive, use, maintain, and recommend. 6. The 360-Degree Commitment. Customers want to do business with companies that actively and openly demonstrate the desire to establish strong and seamless connections across employees, the company, and the customer, says research firm Temkin Group in its report called “The CX Competencies.” 7. Understand the Emotional Drivers Behind Brand Love. What makes consumers fall in love with a brand? Among the top factors are friendly employees and customer reps (73%), easy access to information and support (55%), and personalized experiences, such as when companies know precisely what products or services customers have purchased in the past and what issues those customers have raised (36%). 8.  The Importance of Immediate Action. You’ve got one week to respond–and then the opportunity’s lost. If your company needs more than a week to answer a prospect’s question or request, most of those prospects will terminate the relationship. 9.  Want More Revenue, Less Churn, and More Referrals? Then improve the overall customer experience: Forrester’s research says that approach put an extra $900 million in the pockets of wireless service providers, $800 million for hotels, and $400 million for airlines. 10. The Formula for CX Success.  Hurd says it includes three elegantly interlaced factors: Connected Engagement, to personalize the experience; Actionable Insight, to maximize the engagement; and Optimized Execution, to deliver on the promise of value. RECOMMENDED READING: The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013 Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay: Who’s the Speed King of Retail? Career Suicide and the CIO: 4 Deadly New Threats Memo to Marc Benioff: Social Is a Tool, Not an App

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  • Remote Workers...We're Not That Bad!

    - by user12601034
    I work from home a lot – my team is located in different cities and countries, my manager is in a different city, and most of our work is done via conference calls, email and collaboration through Oracle Social Network. We’ve figured out how to be effective and involve team members, regardless of where we are all located. When I mention that I work from home, a lot of my friends will laugh, roll their eyes or use their fingers to make quotation marks around “work from home.” Their belief is that I’m sitting at home, eating bon-bons and watching television. The attempts at humor only multiply when they know that my husband also mostly works from home. So, it was with great joy that I read the Lifehacker article Why Remote Workers Are More (Yes, More) Engaged. I’m not going to re-write the article for you, but four highlights from the article include: Proximity breeds complacency –because communicating with employees sitting next to you is so easy, you may not do it well. Absence makes people try harder to connect – because you have to make an effort to connect to your team, you tend to pay better attention when you do connect Leaders of virtual team make better use of tools – when working remotely, you will use technology (many different forms of it) to connect with your team. This daily use of the tools makes you more proficient with those tools Leaders of far-flung teams maximize the time spent together – getting together takes effort, time and money, so leaders tend to filter out distractions when teams do get together. These points made me happy because I’ve seen the same things play out in my team located around the world. And I’m not saying that a virtual team is more effective than a co-located team – but my virtual team doesn’t have the option of filing into a conference room for a face-to-face meeting whenever we want. Instead, we have to figure out how to work effectively without meeting face-to-face. Am I more engaged as a remote worker? I’d like to think that I am. I’ve been on calls with colleagues at 3am – this would never happen if my only option was to be in the office. I can leave my “office” to pick up my kids from school…and I’m willingly back online after kids are in bed to finish up anything I need to. Oracle Social Network lets me use my iPad to engage with my teammates when I’m waiting at music lessons, the doctor’s office or any place else with a network connection. I feel like I’m more connected with my team, and I feel like I’m more connected with my family life. So yes, I am a remote worker, and I am engaged. If you lead a virtual team, I challenge you to increase the ways that you communicate to effectively engage your team. If you are on a virtual team, I challenge you to think about how you might interact with team members to keep both them and yourself engaged in your work. And if you have some great ideas on how to make virtual teams (and workers) effective and engaged, please share those ideas in the comments! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get a bon-bon...   :) Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • Impressions and Reactions from Alliance 2012

    - by user739873
    Alliance 2012 has come to a conclusion.  What strikes me about every Alliance conference is the amazing amount of collaboration and cooperation I see across higher education in the sharing of best practices around the entire Oracle PeopleSoft software suite, not just the student information system (Oracle’s PeopleSoft Campus Solutions).  In addition to the vibrant U.S. organization, it's gratifying to see the growth in the international attendance again this year, with an EMEA HEUG organizing to complement the existing groups in the Netherlands, South Africa, and the U.K.  Their first meeting is planned for London in October, and I suspect they'll be surprised at the amount of interest and attendance. In my discussions with higher education IT and functional leadership at Alliance there were a number of instances where concern was expressed about Oracle's commitment to higher education as an industry, primarily because of a lack of perceived innovation in the applications that Oracle develops for this market. Here I think perception and reality are far apart, and I'd like to explain why I believe this to be true. First let me start with what I think drives this perception. Predominately it's in two areas. The first area is the user interface, both for students and faculty that interact with the system as "customers", and for those employees of the institution (faculty, staff, and sometimes students as well) that use the system in some kind of administrative role. Because the UI hasn't changed all that much from the PeopleSoft days, individuals perceive this as a dead product with little innovation and therefore Oracle isn't investing. The second area is around the integration of the higher education suite of applications (PeopleSoft Campus Solutions) and the rest of the Oracle software assets. Whether grown organically or acquired, there is an impressive array of middleware and other software products that could be leveraged much more significantly by the higher education applications than is currently the case today. This is also perceived as lack of investment. Let me address these two points.  First the UI.  More is being done here than ever before, and the PAG and other groups where this was discussed at Alliance 2012 were more numerous than I've seen in any past meeting. Whether it's Oracle development leveraging web services or some extremely early but very promising work leveraging the recent Endeca acquisition (see some cool examples here) there are a lot of resources aimed at this issue.  There are also some amazing prototypes being developed by our UX (user experience team) that will eventually make their way into the higher education applications realm - they had an impressive setup at Alliance.  Hopefully many of you that attended found this group. If not, the senior leader for that team Jeremy Ashley will be a significant contributor of content to our summer Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington in June. In the area of integration with other elements of the Oracle stack, this is also an area of focus for the company and my team.  We're making this a priority especially in the areas of identity management and security, leveraging WebCenter more effectively for content, imaging, and mobility, and driving towards the ultimate objective of WebLogic Suite as our platform for SOA, links to learning management systems (SAIP), and content. There is also much work around business intelligence centering on OBI applications. But at the end of the day we get enormous value from the HEUG (higher education user group) and the various subgroups formed as a part of this community that help us align and prioritize our investments, whether it's around better integration with other Oracle products or integration with partner offerings.  It's one of the healthiest, mutually beneficial relationships between customers and an Education IT concern that exists on the globe. And I can't avoid mentioning that this kind of relationship between higher education and the corporate IT community that can truly address the problems of efficiency and effectiveness, institutional excellence (which starts with IT) and student success.  It's not (in my opinion) going to be solved through community source - cost and complexity only increase in that model and in the end higher education doesn't ultimately focus on core competencies: educating, developing, and researching.  While I agree with some of what Michael A. McRobbie wrote in his EDUCAUSE Review article (Information Technology: A View from Both Sides of the President’s Desk), I take strong issue with his assertion that the "the IT marketplace is just the opposite of long-term stability...."  Sure there has been healthy, creative destruction in the past 2-3 decades, but this has had the effect of, in the aggregate, benefiting education with greater efficiency, more innovation and increased stability as larger, more financially secure firms acquire and develop integrated solutions. Cole

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  • CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, Please recommendation for further education of the former performing art manager seeking career in IT industries? [on hold]

    - by Baek Seungjoo
    IT specialists there J Thank you very much for your collective efforts here, and I got huge help reading your professional comments and advices on each questions I have searched so far! This time, I would like to ask for your practical advices or recommendation on what I am struggling on at this moment. I am currently seeking higher education for my career transition from performing art manager and director to “IT software and/or service development and management specialist”. However, as this field is quite new to me, and there are lots of different work positions, I have no idea which grad major I better pursue in order to get qualification. Of course I know this question could sounds wired as it is kind of personal choice. But my lack of understanding on how IT software companies work in general, your practical and experience-based advice will be great help to me, who spent more than two months of self-research on net. OK. Before my question, here is my plan and history, which are quite different from those currently in IT industry I think… 1) Target Firstly, get career transition into IT service or products companies and get experiences. Eventually, pursue IT entrepreneurship in combination with my arts and cultural production and business expertise. 2) Background Career: performing arts director and manager in theatre-based scale opera and musical Art education in youth BA in literature and Chinese studies (Art & Humanities) MA in Cultural & Creative Industries (Art & Humanities) – dissertation with focus on digital prosumption and the lived experience of the prosumer. (a qualitative research on the agents in the digital world) 2) Personally Huge interest in IT hardware and software, and their trend. Skills to build up, repair, tune PCs -of course this is no more than personal hobby, but shows my interests in this field. 4) Problem Encounter a question “So, what do you think you can contribute practically in this position”. This question turn me down everytime I go through job interviews, and I decided more education in the relevant area. Here are my questions. 1) In terms of work positions in IT software companies, I wonder if I can put the comparison of what “Artists” is to “Arts Manager or Director” is what “Developer” is to “Product Manager”. (Of course, this stereotypical division of Artist-Art Manager is out of sense because the domain overlaps to some extent, and is blurring at least in my field, and they are in different contexts, but just speaking easily.) Normally, artist comes with special arts educations, and they live in their own world of artistic inspiration and creation, and they feel alive in practice and on stages. Meanwhile, from the point of staging and managing productions, the role of art manager is critical as well. Our role cares how the production appeals to the audience in effective way, how to make profit and future sustainable management through that, how to set up future strategy in consideration of the external conditions such as political and social circumstances, audience trend and level, other production trends from on-going and historical perspectives, how and what the production make voice to the society from political, economic, humanitarian stances. So, we need keen eyes on economic, political, and societal environment, have to understand human-being and their desires, must know how to make presentation and attract investors, must have sense in managing and fighting over the limited financial resource, how to extend networking and so on. It is common that the two agents create productions in collaboration (normally not in that ideal way but in conflict and fight though J ). So, we need to know each other’s expertise to some extent, for better production. What are the work positions in IT software industries equivalent to the role of “art manager” in performing arts? From my view, considering developers come with special education in the world of computer science, software engineering, or others (self-education sometimes), and they express themselves with the arts of coding, computer languages on the black screen, and make sort of their artistic production online to the audience, I guess there might be someone who collaborate with developers in creating, managing, and launching IT services or products. 2) Which education among CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, is needed for those seeking such work position? Especially for person like me. (At this moment, Information Science has the highest possibility to get in, since I lack Calculus and Math in undergrad educaiton. But please let me know irrespective of this concern, I think there are ways to back it up if CS or SE education needed in my case) 3) Which field between Information Science and HCI can be more practical background regarding job hungting? And which of them have more demands in job market? AS I checked, HCI is more close to CS than IS in its focus of study area. Thank you very much for your patience reading such a long inquiry, and I appreciate to your efforts in advance. Have a nice day in this beautiful summer.

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  • How to merge a "branch" that isn't really a branch (wasn't created by an svn copy)

    - by MatrixFrog
    I'm working on a team with lots of people who are pretty unfamiliar with the concepts of version control systems, and are just kind of doing whatever seems to work, by trial and error. Someone created a "branch" from the trunk that is not ancestrally related to the trunk. My guess is it went something like this: They created a folder in branches. They checked out all the code from the trunk to somewhere on their desktop. They added all that code to the newly created folder as though it was a bunch of brand new files. So the repository isn't aware that all that code is actually just a copy of the trunk. When I look at the history of that branch in TortoiseSVN, and uncheck the "Stop on copy/rename" box, there is no revision that has the trunk (or any other path) under the "Copy from path" column. Then they made lots of changes on their "branch". Meanwhile, others were making lots of changes on the trunk. We tried to do a merge and of course it doesn't work. Because, the trunk and the fake branch are not ancestrally related. I can see only two ways to resolve this: Go through the logs on the "branch", look at every change that was made, and manually apply each change to the trunk. Go through the logs on the trunk, look at every change that was made between revision 540 (when the "branch" was created) and HEAD, and manually apply each change to the "branch". This involves 7 revisions one way or 11 revisions the other way, so neither one is really that terrible. But is there any way to cause the repository to "realize" that the branch really IS ancestrally related even though it was created incorrectly, so that we can take advantage of the built-in merging functionality in Eclipse/TortoiseSVN? (You may be wondering: Why did your company hire these people and allow them to access the SVN repository without making sure they knew how to use it properly first?! We didn't -- this is a school assignment, which is a collaboration between two different classes -- the ones in the lower class were given a very quick hand-wavey "overview" of SVN which didn't really teach them anything. I've asked everyone in the group to please PLEASE read the svn book, and I'll make sure we (the slightly more experienced half of the team) keep a close eye on the repository to ensure this doesn't happen again.)

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  • How to merge an improperly created "branch" that isn't really a branch (wasn't created by an svn cop

    - by MatrixFrog
    I'm working on a team with lots of people who are pretty unfamiliar with the concepts of version control systems, and are just kind of doing whatever seems to work, by trial and error. Someone created a "branch" from the trunk that is not ancestrally related to the trunk. My guess is it went something like this: They created a folder in branches. They checked out all the code from the trunk to somewhere on their desktop. They added all that code to the newly created folder as though it was a bunch of brand new files. So the repository isn't aware that all that code is actually just a copy of the trunk. When I look at the history of that branch in TortoiseSVN, and uncheck the "Stop on copy/rename" box, there is no revision that has the trunk (or any other path) under the "Copy from path" column. Then they made lots of changes on their "branch". Meanwhile, others were making lots of changes on the trunk. We tried to do a merge and of course it doesn't work. Because, the trunk and the fake branch are not ancestrally related. I can see only two ways to resolve this: Go through the logs on the "branch", look at every change that was made, and manually apply each change to the trunk. Go through the logs on the trunk, look at every change that was made between revision 540 (when the "branch" was created) and HEAD, and manually apply each change to the "branch". This involves 7 revisions one way or 11 revisions the other way, so neither one is really that terrible. But is there any way to cause the repository to "realize" that the branch really IS ancestrally related even though it was created incorrectly, so that we can take advantage of the built-in merging functionality in Eclipse/TortoiseSVN? (You may be wondering: Why did your company hire these people and allow them to access the SVN repository without making sure they knew how to use it properly first?! We didn't -- this is a school assignment, which is a collaboration between two different classes -- the ones in the lower class were given a very quick hand-wavey "overview" of SVN which didn't really teach them anything. I've asked everyone in the group to please PLEASE read the svn book, and I'll make sure we (the slightly more experienced half of the team) keep a close eye on the repository to ensure this doesn't happen again.)

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  • What facets have I missed for creating a 3 person guerilla dev team?

    - by Penguinix
    Sorry for the Windows developers out there, this solution is for Macs only. This set of applications accounts for: Usability Testing, Screen Capture (Video and Still), Version Control, Task Lists, Bug Tracking, a Developer IDE, a Web Server, A Blog, Shared Doc Editing on the Web, Team and individual Chat, Email, Databases and Continuous Integration. This does assume your team members provide their own machines, and one person has a spare old computer to be the Source Repository and Web Server. All for under $200 bucks. Usability Silverback Licenses = 3 x $49.95 "Spontaneous, unobtrusive usability testing software for designers and developers." Source Control Server and Clients (multiple options) Subversion = Free Subversion is an open source version control system. Versions (Currently in Beta) = Free Versions provides a pleasant work with Subversion on your Mac. Diffly = Free "Diffly is a tool for exploring Subversion working copies. It shows all files with changes and, clicking on a file, shows a highlighted view of the changes for that file. When you are ready to commit Diffly makes it easy to select the files you want to check-in and assemble a useful commit message." Bug/Feature/Defect Tracking (multiple options) Bugzilla = Free Bugzilla is a "Defect Tracking System" or "Bug-Tracking System". Defect Tracking Systems allow individual or groups of developers to keep track of outstanding bugs in their product effectively. Most commercial defect-tracking software vendors charge enormous licensing fees. Trac = Free Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. Database Server & Clients MySQL = Free CocoaMySQL = Free Web Server Apache = Free Development and Build Tools XCode = Free CruiseControl = Free CruiseControl is a framework for a continuous build process. It includes, but is not limited to, plugins for email notification, Ant, and various source control tools. A web interface is provided to view the details of the current and previous builds. Collaboration Tools Writeboard = Free Ta-da List = Free Campfire Chat for 4 users = Free WordPress = Free "WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time." Gmail = Free "Gmail is a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful." Screen Capture (Video / Still) Jing = Free "The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere." Lots of great responses: TeamCity [Yo|||] Skype [Eric DeLabar] FogBugz [chakrit] IChatAV and Screen Sharing (built-in to OS) [amrox] Google Docs [amrox]

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  • I'm searching for a messaging platform (like XMPP) that allows tight integration with a web applicat

    - by loxs
    Hi, At the company I work for, we are building a cluster of web applications for collaboration. Things like accounting, billing, CRM etc. We are using a RESTfull technique: For database we use CouchDB Different applications communicate with one another and with the database via http. Besides, we have a single sign on solution, so that when you login in one application, you are automatically logged to the other. For all apps we use Python (Pylons). Now we need to add instant messaging to the stack. We need to support both web and desktop clients. But just being able to chat is not enough. We need to be able to achieve all of the following (and more similar things). When somebody gets assigned to a task, they must receive a message. I guess this is possible with some system daemon. There must be an option to automatically group people in groups by lots of different properties. For example, there must be groups divided both by geographical location, by company division, by job type (all the programers from different cities and different company divisions must form a group), so that one can send mass messages to a group of choice. Rooms should be automatically created and destroyed. For example when several people visit the same invoice, a room for them must be automatically created (and they must auto-join). And when all leave the invoice, the room must be destroyed. Authentication and authorization from our applications. I can implement this using custom solutions like hookbox http://hookbox.org/docs/intro.html but then I'll have lots of problems in supporting desktop clients. I have no former experience with instant messaging. I've been reading about this lately. I've been looking mostly at things like ejabberd. But it has been a hard time and I can't find whether what I want is possible at all. So I'd be happy if people with experience in this field could help me with some advice, articles, tales of what is possible etc.

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  • Week in Geek: USDA Chooses Microsoft for Cloud Services Edition

    - by Asian Angel
    This week we learned how to create geeky LED holiday lights with old bottles, dig deeper in Windows Defrag via the command prompt, use Google Chrome’s drag/drop feature to upload files easier, find great gift recommendations by looking through the How-To Geek holiday gift guide, and have fun adding Merry Christmas fonts to our computers. Photo by ntr23. Random Geek Links It has been a busy week, so we have extra news link goodness with information that is good for you to know. USDA making the move to Microsoft The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that it has chosen Microsoft to host things like e-mail, instant messaging, and collaboration through the software giant’s Business Productivity Online Suite. Google says it was cut off from USDA project bid Google is claiming that it was not given a chance to bid on a cloud-computing project for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for which the contract was awarded to rival Microsoft. Apache is being forced into a Java Fork When Oracle rolled over Apache and Google’s objections to its Java plans in December, the scene was set for Apache to leave and, eventually, force a Java code fork. Tumblr explains daylong outage After experiencing an outage that started on Sunday afternoon and stretched through most of the day yesterday, Tumblr has explained what happened. Google demos Chrome OS, launches pilot program During a press briefing this week in San Francisco, Google launched the Chrome application store and demonstrated Chrome OS, its browser-centric netbook operating system. Don’t expect Spotify in U.S. this holiday season As of last week, Spotify had yet to sign a single licensing deal with a major label, after spending more than a year negotiating, multiple music sources told CNET. December 2010 Patch Tuesday will come with most bulletins ever According to the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft will issue 17 Security Bulletins addressing 40 vulnerabilities on Tuesday, December 14. It will also host a webcast to address customer questions the following day. Hacker plants back door in Symbian firmware Indian hacker Atul Alex has had a look at the firmware for Symbian S60 smartphones and come up with a back door for it. PC quarantines raise tough complexities The concept of quarantining PCs to prevent widespread infection is “interesting, but difficult to implement, with far too many problems”, said security experts. Symantec: DDoS attacks hard to defend It has surfaced that the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on Visa and MasterCard Web sites on Wednesday were carried out by a toolkit known as low orbit ion cannon (LOIC). Web Sockets and the risks of unfinished standards Enthusiasm for a promising new standard called Web Sockets has quickly cooled in some quarters as a potential security problem led some browser makers to hastily postpone support. Internet Explorer 9 to get tracking protection Microsoft is making changes to Internet Explorer 9’s security features that will better enable users to keep sites from tracking their activity across browsing sessions. NASA sold PCs with sensitive data NASA failed to remove sensitive data from computers that it sold, according to an audit report released this week. Cybercrooks create fake Amazon receipts The bad guys have created yet another online scam, this one involving fake Amazon receipts. World of Warcraft character move fees waived Until December 22, Blizzard will allow free realm transfers from 25 highly populated servers to alleviate log-in queues or performance issues. (The free transfers are one-way and one-time only.) SpaceX Dragon reaches orbit atop a Falcon with a fiery tail The Space Exploration Technologies corporation has become the first nongovernmental entity to put a vehicle into low Earth orbit. Geek Video of the Week If birds have wings, then why are the Angry Birds using slingshots? Photo by Dorkly Bits. Wait… Birds have Wings, Why are the Angry Ones Using Slingshots? Sysadmin Geek Tips How To Setup Email Alerts on Linux Using Gmail or SMTP Linux machines may require administrative intervention in countless ways, but without manually logging into them how would you know about it? Here’s how to setup emails to get notified when your machines want some tender love and attention. Random TinyHacker Links Red Panda Webcam Support Firefox and the Knoxville Zoo’s Red Panda program. Christmas Icons (Icons we like) Superb set of holiday icons by lgp85 at deviantArt. Download the .zip and use as .png or convert to .ico at Convertico.com or with tiny app Imagicon. Super User Questions Enjoy reading the great answers to this week’s popular questions from Super User Useful USB boot disks? DVD/CD burning .zip: is it more reliable, faster, longer lasting to burn a zip of files rather than the files as a folder? What are other ways to backup my files if I do not have an external drive? Anti virus what is the difference between these all? How can I block all Facebook elements/content? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Have you had a busy week between work and preparing for the holidays? Get caught up on your HTG reading with our hottest articles of the week. 20 Windows Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? How to Use and Customize Google Chrome Web Apps One Year Ago on How-To Geek This week’s batch of retro geeky goodness is all about customizing Windows 7. ClassicShell Adds Classic Start Menu and Explorer Features to Windows 7 Get an Aero-Styled Classic Start Menu in Windows 7 Customize the Windows 7 Logon Screen Get the Classic Style Network Activity Indicator Back in Windows 7 How To Enable Check Boxes for Items In Windows 7 The Geek Note We would like you to join us in welcoming Jason Fitzpatrick to the writing staff here at How-To Geek. He started with us this past week, so take some time to read through his articles about the Wii, Kindle, & PlayStation 2 Peripherals and leave a friendly comment to say “Hi”! Got a great tip to share? Make sure to send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by real00. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek Settle into Orbit with the Voyage Theme for Chrome and Iron Awesome Safari Compass Icons Set Escape from the Exploding Planet Wallpaper Move Your Tumblr Blog to WordPress Pytask is an Easy to Use To-Do List Manager for Your Ubuntu System Snowy Christmas House Personas Theme for Firefox

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  • Oracle Enhances Oracle Social Cloud with Next-Generation User Experience

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Today’s enterprise must meet the technology standards of today’s consumer. According to a recent IDG Enterprise report, enterprises that invest in consumerized, easy-to-use technologies experience a 56 percent increase in employee productivity and a 46 percent increase in customer satisfaction. In order to deliver that simple and intuitive experience across even the most advanced social management capabilities, Oracle today introduced Social Station, an innovative new workspace within Oracle Social Cloud’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform. With Social Station, users benefit from a personalized and intuitive user experience that helps increase both the productivity and performance of social business practices. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} News Facts Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle today introduced Social Station, an innovative new workspace within Oracle Social Cloud’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform that helps organizations socially enable the way they do business. With an advanced yet intuitive user interface, Social Station delivers a compelling user experience that improves productivity and helps users more easily deliver on social objectives. To help users quickly and easily build out and configure their social workspaces, Social Station provides drag-and-drop capabilities that allow users to personalize their workspace with different social modules. With a new Custom Analytics module that mixes and matches more than 120 metrics with thousands of customizable reporting options, users can customize their view of social data and access constantly refreshed updates that support real-time understanding. One-click sharing capabilities and annotation functionality within the new Custom Analytics module also drives productivity by improving sharing and collaboration across teams, departments, and executives. Multiview layout capabilities further allows visibility into social insights by offering users the flexibility to monitor conversations by network, stream, metric, graph type, date range, and relative time period. Social Station also includes an Enhanced Calendar module that provides a clear visual representation of content, posts, networks, and views, helping users easily and efficiently understand information and toggle between various functions and views. To support different user personas and social business needs, Oracle plans to continue building out Social Station with additional modules, including content curation, influencer engagement, and command center creation. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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