Oracle and SAP news for 21st May 08.
Oracle has stated that it will spend a whopping $285 million for building what it terms a “Global Information Technology facility”. It will be located in West Jordan, in Utah. The facility should generate around a 100 new jobs in the area. And get this; the wages will be more than 200% of the Salt Lake County average!! The Utah government has done its bit by offering a $ 15 million tax incentive package to Oracle. Ostensibly, the center will focus on supporting Oracle’s on-demand segment. Oracle has not come out very clearly on what exactly the facility is about. Maybe, it’s just a huge data center. The facility, expected to go live in 2010, will cover around 200,000 sq. ft.
In India, Oracle has been selected by the Punjab State Co-operative Bank (PSCB) and 19 District central co-operative banks that will deploy FLEXCUBE, which is powered by Oracle Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters. The deployment will be overseen by Flexcel International, formerly i-flex.
Still in Asia, AwalNet which is one of the biggest ISPs in Saudi Arabia has selected Oracle® Applications to improve customer service and reduce operational costs.
An interesting alliance between Luciad, a Belgian company that provides geospatial information software, and Oracle. The LuciadMap Version 8.0 makes use of the Oracle Spatial 11g which gives it support for vector data and GeoRaster objects.
Yesterday, Oracle introduced the Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing 2.2. The product offers customer lifecycle management and covers service connection, meter management, complex billing, and payment processing and debt collection. It also offers contact center management.
Welcome relief for Oracle, it has one lawsuit less to worry about. I guess lawsuits are occupational hazards for giants like Oracle. The appeal in question is one raised by Mangosoft Inc for patent infringement claims. Mangosoft is also pursuing similar claims against eBay and Skype as well. The U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Mangosoft’s claims against Oracle on May 14.
Oracle is looking to strengthen its position in the insurance industry by purchasing AdminServer, which provides insurance policy administration software. Oracle’s existing insurance industry related products include Oracle Billing, Siebel Claims and Siebel CRM for Insurance.
An exhaustive article here on how Oracle is successfully helping its channel partners through its Oracle Partner Network (OPN). Membership fee is $ 1995 per annum and it allows network members to access Oracle’s premier products, education, technical services, marketing, and sales support. Oracle has over 19,500 companies using its software for developing solutions. The OPN is a great place to learn and pick up survival information for doing well in the global business arena.
Across the pond, Mortgage and savings specialist Bradford & Bingley, which has more than 3,000 staff spread all over the United Kingdom, has implemented an Oracle staff management system to streamline HR processes.
Moving on to SAP, the company has stated that it is looking to boost revenues from government deals. SAP AG is trying for a 20% increase from government contracts. The major clients for Business Objects SA are from the public sector and the company hopes to send out positive signals to its buyers who may just be feeling a little jittery about SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects.
A little more distress for SAP. The company found itself fending off awkward questions regarding its commitment to SaaS and dodged potshots from Salesforce.com. SAP reiterated that it is not going to reduce its investments in its existing SaaS endeavors. SAP will continue with its plans of rolling out Business ByDesign in the following six nations - Germany, the UK, France, the US, China and India.
Again, a matter of concern for the company. Apparently, the company feels that there is a shortage of as many as 40,000 skilled people in order to implement SAP solutions globally. SAP is looking to fill the gap with university- and third-party alliances.
A positive development for SAP. Wipro Technologies has agreed to initiate a new Solutions Lab in order to promote industry best practices and templates on SAP’s business process platforms.
Again, a matter of concern for the company. Apparently, the company feels that there is a shortage of as many as 40,000 skilled people in order to implement SAP solutions globally. SAP is looking to fill the gap with university- and third-party alliances.
Although SAP has been left behind in the SaaS race and its Business ByDesign rollout has been delayed by more than a year; the company is undeterred and has announced new CRM functionality in its Business All-in-One solution targeted at the SMB segment. The solution is however on-premise built on SAP NetWeaver.
SAP’s iPhone project has stalled because SAP is not very happy with what it terms the “culture of secrecy” at Apple. The project was announced earlier this year and involved development of business software by SAP for the iPhone. SAP has an issue with the iPhone security features and its enterprise email infrastructure capability. A nice piece on Macworld about how RIM president Lazaridis views the iPhone.
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May 25th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
[...] ambitious Business ByDesign venture has run into another roadblock. The ERP and CRM suite touted by SAP to be the mother of all SaaS offerings has been pushed back by [...]