Welcome to 5 Minute Briefing: Oracle an information resource prepared by Database Trends and Applications Magazine and published in cooperation with the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG). To subscribe, click here.

Oracle Unveils Next-Generation Release of EPM System

Oracle has announced the Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System, an integrated suite of EPM solutions. A component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle EPM System supports strategic, financial and operational management processes across a common foundation.

The EPM System addresses a need that exists at many companies, John O'Rourke, senior director of product marketing, Oracle, told 5 Minute Briefing. While these organizations have implemented ERP systems to automate their operational processes, “when we look at the management processes in a company, they are often not well-automated and often not well-integrated like their ERP and operational processes.”

Management processes such as the budgeting and planning process, reporting process and some of the business intelligence processes, are often handled with a combination of spreadsheets and disparate tools. “In many cases, companies haven't brought these processes and systems together the way that they could be brought together to help them achieve what we call management intelligence,” said O'Rourke. “Oracle's EPM is a single system that really brings those management systems together and helps to address the strategic as well as financial and operational management processes.”

A key enhancement to the Oracle EPM System is a new profitability and cost management application that helps organizations gain insight into costs and profitability across different lines of business. The Oracle Hyperion Profitablity and Cost Management is expected to help organizations that often rely on spreadsheets and manual processes for producing allocations and calculating profitablity information, which can result in disparate data that is difficult to analyze and difficult to act on quickly.

The EPM system also includes enhanced integration with the Oracle E-Business Suite, allowing for drill-through from EPM applications directly into transactional systems for faster analysis; and integration with Oracle Fusion Middleware, including Oracle's data integration, business process management, and identity management technologies, enabling customers to leverage existing IT investments and lower cost of ownership.

Additionally, Essbase Studio, a new wizard-driven design environment for Oracle Essbase, simplifies the creation and management of multidimensional analytical cubes and applications; and a new common Calculation Manager enables customers to graphically design, validate and administer business rules across planning and financial consolidation applications.

Built on service-oriented architecture (SOA) standards, the Oracle EPM System is hot-pluggable and integrates with non-Oracle data sources and platforms such as SAP. Oracle EPM System deployment options include Oracle On Demand or on-premise models. For more on Oracle Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence, go here.

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Quest Software Releases Predictive Technology for Oracle Databases

Quest Software has added predictive diagnostics to its Spotlight on Oracle product, which is used to find and fix database performance bottlenecks in real time. With the new capability, Spotlight on Oracle analyzes SQL performance to determine which statements will have the most performance degradation given trends in execution rates and overall database load. Spotlight reports the anticipated growth in resource consumption and the percentage of the total load a particular statement will consume. By finding problematic SQL statements before performance is impacted, corrective actions can be taken without disrupting end-users and organizations can more effectively meet end-user service level agreements.   
 
“The motivation in my mind is business continuity above all other things,” Guy Harrison, Oracle expert at Quest Software, told 5 Minute Briefing. Getting advance notice of problems, and dealing with them while they are still manageable and before they have had a business impact is the goal. Whatever the mechanism of dealing with a problem, “the business impact gets greater the longer you leave the problem” and if an organization waits until the problem is critical, then there is little choice about about when to incur the business impact of fixing it, Harrison explained. Typically, he added, “SQL nightmares” tend to appear in peak processing, “so everything points to being motivated to detect the trend early and rectify it before it becomes a serious problem.”
 
Spotlight on Oracle also has expanded diagnostic capabilities for Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) environments. Increasingly, organizations running RAC use services to define and control how workload is distributed across the cluster. With new RAC service diagnostics in Spotlight, DBAs can clearly see how each service is distributed across the cluster’s nodes and what resources are being consumed on each node by the various services. For more information about Spotlight on Oracle, including a technical brief and white paper on predictive diagnostics, go here.

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TUSC Announces Acquisition Of WhittmanHart Consulting

Rolta TUSC, a wholly own subsidiary of Rolta, a leading IT company in India, has announced an agreement to acquire WhittmanHart Consulting (WHC), the consulting division of WhittmanHart, a Chicago-based company providing solutions in digital communications, process improvement, and enabling technologies, for over 20 years. WHC is a provider of consulting services in the business intelligence arena, particularly focused on the Hyperion software technology acquired by Oracle in 2007. WhittmanHart will retain and continue to operate WhittmanHart Interactive, its interactive agency, in a standalone capacity.

Rolta said WHC fills an important need for Rolta, bringing strength and track record in Oracle’s Hyperion products and a major focus on enterprise performance management (EPM). WHC addresses end-to-end solutions for the needs of business C-level executives to solve EPM issues through the use of WHC’s tools and methodologies. WHC has developed proprietary financial templates, driver-based planning models, and BI scorecards and acceleration tools.

WHC’s partners include Oracle, Business Objects, Cognos, CA and HP. WHC has been an Oracle/Hyperion Certified Advantage Partner for over 10 years and recently received Oracle’s System Integration Partner of the year award for Oracle EPM. WHC is also an active member of Oracle’s Partner Advisory Council, one of 20 partners worldwide.

The acquisition will enable Rolta to offer a more complete range of business solutions and consulting services, such as EPM and risk management, especially to its GIS/geospatial and engineering clients. At the same time, Rolta can also leverage the WHC customer base by offering its complementary solution suite. “The move to add business intelligence solutions to our portfolio is further validation of our commitment to growth through the delivery of higher value to our clients,” K. K. Singh, chairman and CEO, Rolta, in making the announcement. “This acquisition is in keeping with our declared strategy of acquiring technologies and skills that help our clients get greater returns from their investments in enterprise solutions and services from Rolta.” For more on WhittmanHart Consulting, go here. For more on Rolta, go here.

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Oracle Launches Oracle Access Management Suite

Oracle has unveiled Oracle Access Management Suite, a comprehensive offering for access management. The Oracle Access Management Suite enables risk-based authentication, proactive online fraud prevention, and fine-grained authorization, as well as functionality such as Web access management and identity federation.

Organizations are struggling to cope with the increasing sophistication of threats, the business and regulatory demands for stronger security controls, and the need to demonstrate compliance across enterprise systems, according to Amit Jasuja, vice president, Oracle Identity Management. Oracle Access Management Suite is intended to help businesses adapt to evolving attacks, strengthen controls by eliminating access management silos, and demonstrate compliance.

The company also announced general availability of the new Oracle Entitlements Server, a fine-grained authorization solution and a key component of the suite. Oracle Entitlements Server (previously BEA AquaLogic Enterprise Security) enables application developers to externalize and centralize authorization policies that would previously have been embedded within applications.

The Oracle Access Management Suite is certified to work with Oracle Applications - Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle's PeopleSoft, Oracle's JD Edwards, Oracle's Siebel and Oracle's Industry Applications - and a range of non-Oracle applications. According to Oracle, Oracle Access Management Suite is the first of a number of products that combines technology from Oracle Fusion Middleware and BEA Systems.

In addition to integration with Oracle Fusion Middleware, the Oracle Access Management Suite offers native integration and support for a broad range of middleware from other vendors. Key components of the Oracle Access Management Suite include Oracle Entitlements Server; Oracle Adaptive Access Manager; Oracle Access Manager; Oracle Identity Federation. To learn more, go here.

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Imperva Extends Packaged Security, Audit and Compliance Modules to PeopleSoft Applications

Imperva, a leader in application data security, has extended its Imperva ADC Insights product line with PeopleSoft Insights, which monitors and protects PeopleSoft applications and data. Imperva ADC Insight Services enable organizations to streamline the compliance process and meet regulatory requirements on their application infrastructure without in-depth knowledge of the applications or mandates.

ADC Insights instantly configure SecureSphere to monitor and protect leading enterprise applications including SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, and now PeopleSoft. ADC Insights provide continuously updated configuration packages that tailor SecureSphere for the compliance, audit, and security needs of these specific business applications and regulations. Multiple ADC Insights can be applied at the same time to achieve extremely focused application security and compliance.

“Insights lets you get speed to value for the Imperva SecureSphere deployment,” Mark Kraynak, senior director of strategic marketing for Imperva, told 5 Minute Briefing. “PeopleSoft is pretty well-understood; it is a known quantity. One deployment isn't exactly the same as another but there is a lot of commonality in terms of where the data lives in the database and what kind of audit and security rules there should be. Our research team, the application defense team basically looks at PeopleSoft and delivers that out of the box so you don't have to spend time as an administrator of SecureSphere undersanding the PeopleSoft structure” The other advantage PeopleSoft Insights offers users, noted Kraynak, “is a little more guarantee that you are doing the right thing - because we do it all the time.”

Imperva PeopleSoft Insights enhance SecureSphere's existing monitoring and protection capabilities with application-specific assessments, security and audit policies, monitoring, reporting and alerting. PeopleSoft Insights include data structure knowledge, including pre-packaged definitions, information on where data is stored, which data is sensitive, and what constitutes normal usage; automatic assessments for applications, databases, and operating system specific vulnerabilities and configuration problems provide security assurance. PeopleSoft Insights can provide privacy rules for sensitive healthcare data in PeopleSoft HRMS that may be regulated by HIPAA, or credit card data in PeopleSoft CRM governed by the PCI DSS, and pre-built reports to clearly identify risks and measure compliance against regulations and/or security policies. For more information, go here.

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Interested in making an impact on the educational oppportunities offered at COLLABORATE 09 - IOUG Forum, May 3-7, 2009 in Orlando, FL? Volunteer for the COLLABORATE 09 - IOUG Forum Conference Committee.

IOUG is currently looking for Track Managers and Reviewers to facilitate tracks within the education program of the IOUG Forum. To learn more about these positions and to submit an application to become a volunteer, click here. All applications are due Monday, August 18.

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BIWA Summit 2008 Speakers Announced

Register today for BIWA Summit 2008, the only international conference devoted exclusively to Oracle-based Business Intelligence, Warehousing and Analytics, taking place December 2-3 in Redwood Shores, CA. Don’t miss your chance to hear keynotes from these recently-announced speakers:

• Jeanne Harris, Executive Research Fellow and Director of Research, Accenture Institute for High Performance Business
  
• Juan Loaiza, Vice President of Systems Technology Group, Oracle
  
• Ray Roccaforte, Vice President of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Platform, Oracle

Register by September 15 to save $200 off the onsite rate. And, don’t forget to submit a presentation proposal!

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Register for UTOUG Fall Conference 2008 and IOUG University Seminar

Registration is now open for UTOUG Fall Conference 2008, taking place October 28 in Salt Lake City, UT. Here are five reasons why you can’t afford to miss this event:

1.Mark Sunday, Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President, Oracle will be a keynote at this event.
2.Numerous educational seminars will be offered.
3.There will be an Exhibit Hall with the latest products for you to view.
4.You’ll have the chance to network with more than 600 UTOUG members.
5.UTOUG members who register by September 26 receive FREE registration.

And, don’t forget to register by September 26 for the IOUG University Seminar, Oracle Database 10g Streams: Data Replication, taking place prior to the conference on October 27 to save $100!

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Access Podcasts from COLLABORATE 08

Do you have an IOUG Forum educational session that you would like to re-visit? Was there a session that you missed, but wish you could have attended? Now you can hear what you missed by downloading the podcasts from sessions that were recorded at COLLABORATE.

Please note that you must be an IOUG member to access these podcasts. Click here to join.

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Attend IOUG Sessions at Oracle OpenWorld

The IOUG is excited to announce the stellar lineup of sessions it will be presenting at Oracle OpenWorld, taking place September 21-25 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. Don't miss your chance to attend sessions like:

IOUG SIG Day, taking place Sunday

More than 45 technical sessions in valuable focus areas will be presented by the SIGs, including:

• Storage - A New Paradigm for Databases, Ari Kaplan, Former IOUG President
  10 Things Your Mother Didn't Teach You About Oracle's Middleware and Fusion Strategy, Steve Lemme, CA
  
• IOUG and ODTUG: BEA AquaLogic vs. Fusion Middleware Shoot Out, Lonneke Dikmans and Ronald von Luttikhuizen, Approach Alliance
  
• 2009: A BI Odyssey, Matthew Vranciar, PIOCON Technologies
  
• Exposing Collaboration through WCM: Now that’s an Intranet!, Val O'Reilly

Additional Sessions, taking place Monday – Thursday

• Offloading Work to Your Standby Database in 11g,Tim Quinlan, TLQ Consulting
  
• System Administration 101 - Tips for DBAs and Developers, Brent Bigonger, Sony Online Entertainment
  
• RAC Best Practices and Tuning in 11g, Tom Canty, ServerCare
  
• The 11g Data Warehouse Toolkit, Scott Rappoport, SAR Consulting
  
• Enhanced Partitioning in Oracle Database 11g, Kent Hinckley, Systems Plus

Keep visiting www.ioug.org, as more sessions will be announced shortly.

Register today! Make sure you indicate you’re an IOUG member when registering.

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Deadline for 2008 Oracle Excellence Award Nominations is Friday

Submit your nomination for the 2008 Oracle Excellence Award by this Friday, August 8. If you or someone you know is creatively using Oracle Fusion Middleware or BEA with Oracle Applications, such as Oracle’s E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards and vertical industry applications, nominate him/her for this award.

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View the Regional Events Calendar to See What’s Happening Near You
IOUG is co-hosting numerous regional education events this fall. View the regional events calendar at www.ioug.org to see what educational opportunities are taking place near you, including:

• October 27, 2008 in partnership with Utah Oracle Users Group in Salt Lake City, UT
  
• November 6, 2008 in partnership with National Capitol Oracle Users Group in Reston, VA
  
• November 7, 2008 in partnership with Ohio Oracle Users Group in Dublin, OH
  
• November 14, 2008 in partnership with Dallas Oracle Users Group in Plano, TX
  
• December 2-3, 2008 IOUG's BIWA SIG presents BIWA Summit 2008 in Redwood Shores, CA
  
• December 2, 2008: IOUG Technology Forum presented in partnership with Quest in advance of the Quest Midwest Conference in Schaumburg, IL
  
• March 2009 in partnership with Northern California Oracle Users Group

Keep checking back, as more information will be available soon.

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Upgrade to One of IOUG’s New Corporate Membership Options

Recognizing your unique business and employee needs, the IOUG has created new corporate membership options so that your company gets the highest return on your investment:

IOUG Corporate Standard Membership

• Up to 5 delegates allowed
• All delegates receive full IOUG member benefits
• One- or two-year renewal option ($495 and $895 respectively)

Savings starting at $200

IOUG Corporate Enterprise Membership – best value!

• Unlimited delegates allowed
  
• 10 priority delegates receive full IOUG member benefits
  
• Unlimited ‘Online Delegates’ receive online member benefits and the conference discount price
  
• Priority delegates
  
• One- or two-year renewal option ($795 and $1,395 respectively)
• Add Extra Priority Delegates ($60 per person per year)

Savings starting at $700

How to Renew or Upgrade Your Membership

Current Corporate Members: Your Corporate Membership will remain as is until your membership expires. At that time, a renewal notice detailing the new Corporate Membership Options will be sent to you for consideration.

Individual Members: If either of the above Corporate Member options suits your company’s business needs, visit www.ioug.org/about/join.cfm to join as a Corporate Member.

If you have questions about the new Corporate Membership options, contact the IOUG at ioug@ioug.org or 1.312.245.1579.

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Oracle ‘Virtual Trade Show’ supports EPM launch

On July 16, 2008, the concept of ‘Management Excellence’ and the new version of the Oracle EPM solution were launched. There is an EPM ‘Virtual Trade Show’ which enables webcast replay and the downloading of relevant documents and podcasts. Click here to visit.

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Founded in 1993, the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) (formerly International Oracle Users Group) is a user-driven membership organization for Oracle technology and database professionals serving more than 15,000 database administrators, developers, architects, technical managers and other Oracle professionals throughout North America and worldwide. The IOUG empowers its members and the broader Oracle community through their technical publication, SELECT Journal, Web site resources including more than 3000 papers, tips and articles and networking with other users through online discussion forums, Special Interest Groups and a network of regional Oracle user groups. For more information about the IOUG, please visit the IOUG Web site.

Database Trends and Applications, published by Unisphere Media, a division of Information Today, Inc., provides timely coverage of the technology and intelligence needed to conceptualize, plan, initiate, implement and manage large-scale integrated information projects. Unisphere Media also publishes 5 Minute Briefing: Data Integration, a summary of news, trends, and insights addressing crucial data integration challenges and 5 Minute Briefing: MultiValue, a review of news, technical tips and insights for the MultiValue database community. Visit our Web site here.

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