Oracle Buys mValent

Extends Oracle Enterprise Manager with Rich Application Configuration Management Capabilities

Oracle has agreed to acquire mValent, a leading provider of application configuration management solutions.

mValent is expected to enhance Oracle Enterprise Manager with extensive capabilities for managing application configurations across IT environments.

Customers are expected to benefit from increased operational productivity through automation, enhanced audit and governance, and improved application uptime.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close the first half of 2009.

Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

“Effective application configuration management is increasingly important as businesses look to improve operating efficiencies,” said Richard Sarwal, senior vice president, Oracle Applications and Systems Management. “With the addition of mValent, Oracle expects to be able to address this need by providing customers with the ability to collect, compare and reconcile deep configuration information of complex systems. This acquisition is consistent with Oracle’s strategy for delivering cost-effective solutions for managing applications that enable customers to adopt new, innovative technology with reduced risk.”

For more information or to read the press link, click here !

Oracle Beehive - A New Product Built for the New Ways You Work

Profit Online - February 2009

Oracle has announced Oracle Beehive, a new product that allows users to access collaborative information through familiar client tools such as Microsoft Outlook, Zimbra, or Microsoft Windows Explorer. It enables IT to consolidate collaborative infrastructure and implement people-centric applications with a secure, compliant, and centrally managed environment. Profit spoke with Terry Olkin, chief architect and senior vice president, collaboration technologies, Oracle.

Profit: How would you introduce Oracle Beehive to a business user?

Olkin: Oracle Beehive makes available all of the collaborative functionality that people need in a business. For example, it provides immediate accessibility for meeting scheduling, task assignments, and document sharing, and of course e-mail, voice mail, and real-time communications such as instant messaging and Web conferencing. Oracle is putting all those together on an enterprise-class server—enterprise-class not only in terms of scalability and availability but particularly in terms of security and compliance. That’s a new approach, and it’s the reason we built the product from the ground up, to really emphasize security and compliance.

Profit: What are the unique security and compliance features of the product?

Olkin: Oracle Beehive is the first comprehensive collaborative platform that lets us specify and enforce compliance rules across different ways of communicating. So, for example, I can set up rules about what to do with e-mails after they’ve been read—how long they stay around, whether they should be archived, when they should be deleted. Oracle Beehive uniquely allows you to specify those policies in one place and enforce them uniformly for all types of communications, whether it’s instant messaging, voice transcripts, document manipulation, and so on. This is important for businesses that are dealing with compliance.

Oracle Beehive also provides strong security in terms of traditional access control, authentication, authorization, and auditing. Unlike with most collaborative tools, these features aren’t add-ons. They’re built into Oracle Beehive from the start. Customers can really get control, from a security and compliance perspective, of all their collaborative data and communications. Oracle Beehive uses Oracle Information Rights Management to provide security for documents and communications regardless of where they are located. I don’t know of another company out there that has this level of security and compliance built into communications or llbtidtOlireally the leader in this area.

Profit: Tell us more about information rights management.

Olkin: Yes, people also call this digital rights management. It’s basically the idea that I can take a piece of content, whether it’s a document, an e-mail, or even a piece of music or a video, and protect it no matter where it is. I can, for example, protect a document so that it can only be read but not printed, or it can’t be copied or cut and pasted, or even that it should cease to exist after a certain period of time.

Profit: How else can businesses benefit from Oracle Beehive?

Olkin: From an IT perspective, Oracle Beehive provides a uniform and unified platform for collaboration. Now you can replace—with a single product—what would normally take you two, three, even four products. It is easier to administer and install, and it’s going to use less power in the data center because it uses fewer servers. That all lowers your total cost of ownership. From a modernization perspective, Oracle Beehive was designed from the ground up to focus on current security and compliance needs and to take into account the explosion of new ways in which people are collaborating. Oracle Beehive doesn’t demand a specific user interface. Oracle built the product to be flexible and to give people the choice to use their familiar client products.

Profit: Is it only for large enterprises?

Olkin: Oracle Beehive is an enterprise-class product, but we made sure that it would scale down. It doesn’t require a lot of hardware, and we worked hard to simplify the maintenance aspects of the interface ithOlDtbthtllbusinesses can run this product without needing a lot of expertise in database administration.

For More Information

Oracle Beehive Oracle’s AutoVue Enterprise Visualization Solutions

Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Introduce New Capabilities for Public Sector Agencies to Help Optimize Funds Management and Budget Execution

Enhancements to Oracle Financial Analytics Deliver Pre-built Integration with the Oracle E-Business Suite, Dashboards and Reports for Rapid Deployment

The release of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications 7.9.5.1 (Oracle BI Applications) introduces new capabilities that allow public sector agencies with fact-based and timely insight into their operational budgets and funds management, Oracle announced today.

These new capabilities have been incorporated into the Oracle Financial Analytics application.

Now generally available, the new release of Oracle Financial Analytics helps public sector agencies to:

• Gain insight into operational details that contribute to the proper funds management and spending controls;

• Detect exceptions in a timely manner by monitoring budget spending effectively; and,

• Provide senior executives and program managers with real-time information to support trend analysis and critical decision-making on important issues.

To help agencies deploy the software and achieve a rapid return on investment, Oracle Financial Analytics for public sector agencies features:

• Pre-built integration with the Oracle Financials module of the Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.10;

• Extensions to the Oracle BI Applications data warehouse schema and metadata layer to support public sector content;

• Extraction Transformation and Load (ETL) maps to pull data from the Oracle Financials module of the Oracle E-Business Suite; and,

• Pre-built dashboards and reports for public sector agencies designed to provide key data pertaining to budget authority and execution, including Appropriations, Apportionments, Allotments, Commitments, Obligations, Expenditures, and Available Authority.

Oracle Financial Analytics for public sector agencies delivers intuitive, role-based intelligence across an organization from front line employees to senior management including CFO, Budget Manager, and Budget Analyst.

Oracle BI Applications are comprehensive, pre-built solutions that enable customers to achieve fast time to value by reducing deployment time and help lower overall total cost of ownership.

Oracle BI Applications are available for Sales, Service, Marketing, Supply Chain and Order Management, Procurement and Spend, Financials, Human Resources, and a range of specialized industry analytics.

Built on Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus , Oracle BI Applications take advantage of the software’s hot-pluggable design enabling organizations to extend BI capabilities to existing Oracle and non-Oracle data sources and applications.

“Maximizing budget and payment performance is a priority for all organizations, including public sector agencies,” said Paul Rodwick, vice president of Product Management, Oracle Business Intelligence. “To help these agencies gain a tighter grasp over their budgets and payments, Oracle Financial Analytics allows for timely insight into financial performance, enables strict management of timely payments, and supports financial accountability and best practices. Featuring integration with the Oracle E-Business Suite, support for third-party data sources, pre-built ETL maps as well as financial dashboards and reports, Oracle BI Applications can be deployed quickly to enable public sector agencies to achieve rapid return on investment.”

Leading Analyst Firm Positions Oracle in Leaders Quadrant for Web Access Management

“Magic Quadrant for Web Access Management” (1) positions Oracle in the Leaders Quadrant.

Magic Quadrants position vendors within a particular market segment based on their completeness of vision and their ability to execute on that vision.

Access Manager , a key component in Oracle Access Management Suite, provides hot-pluggable single sign-on software, enables organizations to provide secure access to heterogeneous applications and IT systems. With Oracle Access Manager, end users can log in once and gain secure access to broad range of IT resources.

Access Manager is available as a standalone product or as part of the Oracle Identity & Access Management Suite .

"Protecting against security threats and meeting compliance requirements continue to be essential elements of comprehensive security strategies,” said Amit Jasuja, vice president, Oracle Identity Management. “We believe that our customers are fidtiOl’iifidentity management as well as our ability to successfully execute on this vision.”

For the press release, click here !

Oracle Enterprise Manager Selected by Staples to Enhance Business Efficiency and Regulatory Compliance and Help Reduce Costs

Leading Office Products Company Turns to Oracle to Ease Adoption of ITIL and Automate IT Compliance Controls for PCI and SOX

Staples, the world's largest office product company, has selected Oracle® Enterprise Manager 's Configuration Management Pack to assist it in implementing change controls for achieving new and evolving compliance requirements, including Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards.

A key component of Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Configuration Management Pack , provides breakthrough capabilities to manage IT configurations through real-time change detection as well as validation and reporting of authorized and unauthorized configuration changes across Oracle and non-Oracle environments.

With the Configuration Management Pack's new Configuration Change Console, Staples can automatically monitor changes across a broad range of platforms and controls within its IT ifttdlthithits existing Change Management System (CMS).

Deepening Compliance Capabilities and Increasing Visibility

Staples’ overall compliance initiative spans numerous business processes and applications running on heterogeneous platforms.

Staples is implementing Configuration Change Console to further automate the detection of unauthorized activities and changes.

Staples is implementing Configuration Change Console to further automate the detection of unauthorized activities and changes.

The Configuration Change Console will assist Staples in monitoring infrastructure changes, compare them to approved change requests in its CMS, and trigger notifications and escalations regarding unauthorized activity. This "change audit" will provide Staples with even greater visibility than it has today and a closed-loop process while helping to reduce IT staff workload.

In addition to its compliance benefits, Configuration Change Console will help Staples deepen its ability to validate and enforce change policies, simplify troubleshooting and decrease downtime, resulting in reduced IT risk and enhanced service management.

"Oracle Enterprise Manager will help Staples even more efficiently address governance and regulatory requirements. Specifically, the Configuration Change Console's real-time change detection and reporting capabilities will simplify and automate processes, enabling us to further reduce costs and risk and improve overall efficiencies," said Kevin Milliken, vice president of information technology, Staples.

“We consider Staples’ selection of Oracle Enterprise Manager validation of the comprehensive capabilities Oracle provides customers to help address rigorous industry and regulatory compliance requirements," said Richard Sarwal, Oracle senior vice president Product Development. "Through its top-down approach, Oracle Enterprise Manager delivers a highly integrated and automated environment to help businesses achieve the highest quality of service and lowest IT operations costs.”

To read the full press release, click here !

Oracle Announces New Release of Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance

Component of Oracle Fusion Middleware Enables Improved Predictive Modeling and Reduced Forecasting Time

Further extending its leadership in enterprise performance management (EPM) and business planning, Oracle today announced availability of Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance Fusion Edition R11 , a financial modeling application that lets executives understand the full financial impact of alternative corporate strategies.

The new release features integration with Oracle Crystal Ball , a spreadsheet-based application for predictive modeling, forecasting, Monte Carlo simulation and optimization. The combination of Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance and Oracle Crystal Ball helps organizations manage risk and uncertainty in capital investment and financing decisions.

The release also features new integration with Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management . This allows for automated data sourcing from systems like general ledgers, budgeting and consolidations systems. Users will hthbilittdillbktthsource system, providing an audit trail and more confidence in the data.

Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance is part of Oracle’s EPM system, which helps organizations achieve management excellence by uniting category-leading performance management applications , pre-built business intelligence (BI) applications and BI tools , into a complete and integrated system for managing and optimizing performance across business functions.

The latest release of Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance helps partners and customers extend the value of their current investments in Oracle financial planning and modeling applications with new risk and uncertainty management capabilities as well as automated data integration.

The release delivers a number of key benefits including the ability to:

• Improve forecast accuracy by quantifying probability and risk in critical financial and operational decisions.

• Enhance data integration and drill-back capabilities;

• Reduce risk by identifying key risk drivers in forecasts and simulating alternatives to optimize results;

• Communicate risks through graphs, charts and reports that support decisions and can be shared across the enterprise;

• Reduce forecasting time by utilizing easy to use simulation tools that can be run within minutes;

• Extend EPM investment by leveraging existing spreadsheet and EPM technologies;

• Making informed management decisions by quickly seeing the effects of plan changes throughout the model; and,

• Link strategic plans to budgets and analysis by automatically sharing financial models with Oracle Essbase and Oracle Hyperion Planning .

"In today’s highly uncertain economic environment, businesses are looking for ways to better manage risk and improve the accuracy of their forecasts,” said Bill Guilmart, vice president of EPM Product Management, Oracle. “Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance R11 allows analysts to improve their forecasts by using Crystal Ball’s simulation capabilities in their financial models and better understand the risk factors impacting their business.”

“Our clients are interested in integrating Oracle Crystal Ball with Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance in order to simulate the effects of key drivers on their critical performance metrics and to report the results”, said Brad Malis, Director at Bluestone International, LLC. “The ability of Crystal Ball to manage input distributions and reports, combined with the modeling capabilities of Hyperion Strategic Finance, will allow users to generate powerful scenario analysis, more accurate forecasts and high quality output.”

Use These Five Strategies to Save Money During the Recession

Procurement plays an important role in reducing costs and maintaining profit margins in all economic climates. But during extended economic downturns, procurement can drive savings needed to offset revenue declines to maintain financial performance. Here are five tactics procurement professionals can deploy to help their companies weather the recession:

• Adopt strategic sourcing applications. The right mix of strategic sourcing technologies and policies power online negotiations that are faster and more effective than traditional manual processes. Savings can range from 5 to 50 percent price reductions compared with tactical buying approaches, according to industry estimates. For organizations not using them, adopting technologies for strategic sourcing should be a top priority.

• Eliminate paper invoices. By replacing paper invoices, organizations can more easily reap early-payment discounts, which can total 2 percent or more of purchase price. But how? While EDI networks facilitate electronic transactions with close trading partners, organizations aren’t sure which technologies facilitate electronic transactions with small or infrequently used suppliers. The answer is to combine the use of networks with Web-based supplier self-service portals. These portals provide electronic ordering, shipping, and invoicing capabilities that can eliminate paper. In the Oracle family of applications Oracle E-Business Suite’s iSupplier Portal and Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Portal/eSupplier Connection support these functions.

• Float cash wisely. The flipside of taking early discounts is knowing when to extend payments to maintain optimum cash position to accrue interest-related benefits. Procurement executives should work with finance managers to determine a practical definition of “on time” payments based on differences in each supplier’s relative cost of capital and their ability to enforce early payment discounts. For more details see The Value of Cash and Procurement white paper .

• Focus on cutting SGA expense. There are often untapped cost-reduction opportunities in sales and general and administrative (SGA) expenses. Adding a self-service electronic requisition tool can help reduce unnecessary purchases and off-contract buying. Likewise, broadening the use of existing requisitioning tools into less traditional spend categories can create new savings. Expanding employee self-service to expense management can uncover savings opportunities in T&E that reduce costs while improving quality. In addition, streamlining manual, paper-intensive procure-to-pay processes can mean headcount reductions or staff reassignments to more strategic areas.

• Liquidate ill-utilized assets. Distressed inventory and assets strain an organization’s finances by tying up precious capital in unproductive areas. Purchasing organizations can take the lead by helping organizations identify sources of and markets for underutilized assets like old equipment, inventory, or finished goods. One source of hidden assets that should be targeted is accounts payable (AP) records. Analysis of AP data often reveals overpayments and duplicate payments to suppliers. Organizations can get their money back with help from asset recovery firms that specialize in detecting and recouping overpayments. Complex service categories, like telecommunications spend, are a great place to start looking for overpayments.

A Better View - How the University of Pennsylvania Health System cut budgeting and planning time by a quarter

Profit Online - by Monica Mehta, February 2009

With healthcare costs skyrocketing, healthcare providers are working harder than ever to develop rigorous budgeting processes that are transparent, flexible, and responsive. Those that reduce the time it takes to react to market changes, align financial and operational planning, and improve business predictability can retain their competitive edge while others decline. Investing in a best-in-class budgeting and forecasting solution can help meet these objectives and strengthen a provider’s ability to withstand the turbulence of today’s healthcare environment.

When the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) set out to find such a solution, it faced several challenges. How could it fix inefficient budgeting processes that had been in place for years? How could it manage several different businesses, US$3 billion in operating revenues, and more than 15,000 employees? And operationally, how could it determine the financial impact of buying equipment that cost millions of dollars?

Diagnosis: Change

UPHS is made up of three hospitals, two outpatient medical centers, and two suburban patient care centers. Its employees deliver medical, administrative, and support services through UPHS’s clinical, home care, and corporate practices and its large primary care network. Annual budgets are prepared by all seven business units, each with its own employment base, revenue, ancillary expenses, and capital projects.

The health system needed to control costs, optimize staffing, project accurate revenues, and oversee capital expansion. The challenge was how to manage a vast and complex budgeting process while maintaining the flexibility required for each organization to be nimble in a changing marketplace.

UPHS’s budgeting process was being done manually and in silos, making it difficult to do comprehensive financial analysis and planning. UPHS partially solved this issue in 1995 by implementing Hyperion Pillar, an early Microsoft Windows-based Hyperion product, to report expenses, and Microsoft Access to report revenues. In 2002, it also implemented Oracle Essbase and Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting for management reporting. But the process was not Web-based, and management felt that it could have been more integrated.

“With an integrated budgeting system, we felt that it would be much easier for us to get an accurate read of our revenues and expenses,” says John Kilroy, director of operational budget, planning, and capital at UPHS. “As our number of patient admissions, inpatient days in the hospital, and outpatient visits changed, we wanted our budget to update automatically on both the revenue and expense side.”

UPHS also needed a solution that would enable it to manage and analyze its labor dollars in a more detailed and automated fashion. Finally, UPHS was doing all of its capital budgeting and reporting through Microsoft Excel, making it difficult to analyze and prioritize projects across multiple entities. UPHS needed an integrated, automated, and Web-based capital planning solution.

Prescription for Success

In mid-2005, UPHS chose Oracle Hyperion Planning to integrate its financial and operational planning processes. “We saw the opportunity to leverage the investment we had already made in Hyperion Essbase and take that to the next level,” says Kilroy. “We had a good experience with Hyperion Pillar, and we knew that Oracle Hyperion Planning was a good product.”

To help implement the solution, UPHS called on its longtime technology services partner ISA Consulting, which specializes in performance management, data integration, and advisory services.

UPHS and ISA implemented Oracle Hyperion Planning between August 2005 and January 2006. ISA worked with the design team, helping UPHS configure the solution to integrate all system processes into a single Oracle Hyperion Planning tool. The result enables 500 users throughout UPHS to perform sophisticated analysis of business operations without switching to different tools.

Using a single interface, they could now create accurate forecasts and plans and access interactive analytics and richly formatted financial reports. Oracle Hyperion Planning also helps UPHS track more than 30 different key statistical indicators, such as admissions, patient days, outpatient visits, and procedures such as MRIs and chemotherapy treatments.

Kilroy says the new system has cut by 25 percent the amount of time UPHS spends on budgeting, planning, and reporting processes. “Previously, when we did reports in Excel, the reporting process would take us more than a day,” he says. “Now, it’s just a matter of a couple of hours.”

Revenue and expense is one of the major areas where Oracle Hyperion Planning has helped UPHS improve its budget and planning processes. “In healthcare, it’s important to link revenue and expense with patient volume, because many types of revenue and expense line items will vary based on the number of patients and the extent of healthcare services they receive within the institution,” says Ernie DiSandro, vice president for performance management at ISA.

Because UPHS uses Oracle Hyperion Planning to drive revenue and expense numbers based on departments’ own projected patient volume, managers now rely on the system to predict revenue by service line along with expected variable expense line items. For example, by entering the number of expected orthopedic admissions for the hospitals, users can more accurately predict how many prosthetics will be needed the following year and can calculate how that number affects projected revenue and expense totals. As the year unfolds, departments can update volumes, drill into variances, and adjust accordingly. “Clinical chairs or department managers would also talk to us about how many physicians they were going to hire or what new service lines they were going to start offering,” adds DiSandro, “and those numbers end up driving some of the departmental-level calculations.”

To help UPHS understand the bottom-line impact of patient volume changes projected by both the finance team and department managers, Oracle Hyperion Planning integrates and tracks net patient revenue by payer. “The big benefit here is that we can now use the same assumptions for both revenues and expenses,” says UPHS’s Kilroy. “We’re able to put data in once and have it flow through both the revenue and expense sides. This makes our volume-sensitive accounts much easier to budget and gives us increased reporting and analysis capabilities.”

The second area where Oracle Hyperion Planning has had a big impact for UPHS is staffing. Accurate labor planning is essential in the healthcare industry, especially in a system with more than 15,000 employees. UPHS and ISA built Oracle Hyperion Planning to calculate variable labor costs—notably nursing, which makes up a significant percentage of the payroll—based on drivers such as patient days, skill mix, and direct-care hours per patient day. Now, department managers can compare actual performance to the budget, drill down to investigate variances, and take corrective action before the impact is too great.

To simplify things, UPHS went from employee-based to position-based budgeting. Employee-based budgeting added a line to the database for every one of its employees within the health system; position-based budgeting added only one line for each position, reducing the amount of information the system processed. “Employee-bdbdtilddthsystem, especially during peak periods, and users who interacted with the system complained about it,” says Kilroy. “Position-based budgeting made labor planning a more streamlined process.”

The third area affected by Oracle Hyperion Planning is capital planning, which underwent perhaps the most significant budgeting improvement. With a capital budget of more than US$300 million, prudent management of multiyear projects is essential. In the past, capital planning and budgeting was done manually on disconnected spreadsheets; the planning process was inefficient and the results unreliable. Now, the entire process is integrated and automated. If, for instance, the radiology department requests a new MRI machine, Finance can see how that capital investment will translate into revenue and expense, understand the rate of return, and make the decision to invest based on its real, bottom-line impact. Managers can track ongoing projects across fiscal years, identifying off-schedule projects in time to take corrective action and avoid further overruns.

Kilroy also praises the system’s ability to do mission-based reporting. UPHS has three missions—education, teaching, and research. Budgets are now broken down into each of these areas. “We can run these figures on demand during the budget process, and they also tie into a process that determines how dollars are allocated based on productivity,” says Kilroy. “It was a big win for us to be able to do that.” Users have reacted so favorably to the system that UPHS plans to implement the next release of Oracle Hyperion Planning in the summer of 2009.

Prognosis: Positive

“The Oracle Hyperion products have enabled UPHS to use the most-current information to inform the budget process, enhance management reporting, and put timely and accurate information into the hands of key decision-makers,” says Keith Kasper, UPHS’s chief financial officer and senior vice president.

“We can anticipate staffing requirements and react more quickly to changes in volumes that affect revenue and variable expenses,” says Kilroy. “We are much better equipped to manage inventories, control rising costs, and maintain our focus on quality care. We have more information available to us and are able to get it out much faster, which has improved decision-making and has had a positive effect on our bottom line.”

For More Information

Oracle Hyperion Performance Management Oracle Health Sciences Applications

Oracle Introduces PeopleSoft Enterprise Workforce Communications to Provide HR Program and Survey Functionality

Gives HR Organizations Ability to Conduct Two-Way Dialogue and Focus on Strategic Initiatives to Cut Costs and Maximize Success

HR organizations are under increasing pressure to produce better results at a time when budget, personnel and other critical resources are limited. Success in this environment requires organizations to focus resources on thtttiiititithtprovide the greatest value to the organization and align to organizational goals and objectives.

Oracle introduced PeopleSoft Enterprise Workforce Communications, a comprehensive solution for planning and delivering HR programs and surveys to the workforce that can help HR organizations address the challenges facing them today.

Oracle’s PeopleSoft Workforce Communications is the first fully-integrated bundled solution that allows HR organizations to deliver the right message to the right audience, capture workforce feedback and take action, gain program insight and quantify success.

Benefits enabled by PeopleSoft Workforce Communications for HR organizations include:

• A reduced risk of non-compliance

• The opportunity to improve productivity through increased employee engagement

• An increased ability to identify over/under performing areas

• An increased ability to identify workforce segments requiring additional training or development

• Reductions in program costs by understanding needs

• Increased ability to make the right decisions even in tough times

PeopleSoft Enterprise Workforce Communications enables HR organizations to communicate relevant, targeted and personalized messages to specific workforce populations via a variety of online and off-line channels using rich, hilttAset of related programs can be managed collaboratively from start to finish by people at all organizational levels.

Using PeopleSoft Workforce Communications, HR organizations can build and roll out personalized surveys to targeted groups of individuals, then score survey results for easy measurement and comparison. Surveys can also be submitted anonymously in order to preserve recipient confidentiality but still provide HR organizations with direct lines of communication and feedback from the workforce.

Reporting and analytics functions place decision-support tools in the hands of the decision makers, allowing them to make informed recommendations and take appropriate action. Analysts and managers at all levels can review, analyze and therefore quantify their HR initiatives.

Integration with PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management allows numerous HR attributes to be used for specifying target workforce populations, personalizing surveys and other communication, and for analyzing program results by different worker criteria.

Role and data level security features within PeopleSoft Enterprise Workforce Communications prevent illegal access to HR programs and surveys.

Oracle validated this solution with over 15 customers, including the City and County of Denver.

“Organizations that are able to successfully combine HR programs and workforce survey data would surely create the potential to improve employee engagement. Being able to measure and understand the data from these programs and surveys has traditionally been very hard to capture in an integrated or related manner,” said Jim Holincheck, Managing Vice President, Gartner Research.

“The ability to engage in two-way dialogue with employees is an important characteristic of any HR organization,” said Linda S. Misegadis, CPP, Director, Payroll and HR Administration, Office of the Controller, City and County of Denver. “The capabilities of Oracle’s PeopleSoft Workforce Communications should make it easier to establish that dialogue, receive valuable input from our employees, and help us determine what might be the most effective programs to institute.”

“Oracle’s new PeopleSoft Workforce Communications solution is a very innovative and first of its kind offering, combining HR programs functionality with the ability to survey the workforce, all in a secure environment integrated with HR workforce data,” said John Webb, Vice President, Product Management for Oracle. “PeopleSoft Enterprise Workforce Communications has the potential to offer great value to organizations through improved employee engagement and the ability to understand where your organization is being successful and where you need to apply more attention or refocus efforts.”

Seattle City Light and Bermuda Electric Light Company Use Oracle Utilities Network Management System to Accelerate Outage Response and RestorationandImprove Customer Satisfaction

Oracle announced that several customers have implemented or selected Oracle Utilities Network Management System to improve outage restoration time and efficiency, as well as to reduce the cost and risk associated with energy distribution operations. Oracle Utilities Network Management System is an integrated suite of real-time operations technology applications designed to improve network reliability, maximize asset utilization, reduce outage durations and increase customer satisfaction.

Seattle City Light , the ninth largest publicly-owned U. S. electric utility created by the citizens of Seattle in 1902, selected Oracle Utilities Network Management System and Oracle Utilities Mobile Workforce Management to replace an existing legacy system with a more technologically robust system. The new system will help the utility respond more quickly to outages and to reporting estimated time of power restoration to its customers. Seattle City Light expects that the integration between the Oracle applications will allow dispatchers to rapidly alert repair crews in the event of a power outage and more accurately direct them to failed equipment – reducing outage durations and increasing information available to customers. In addition, Seattle City Light has selected Oracle Utilities Work and Asset Management to help the utility manage its power grid equipment inventory. The utility also selected Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle WebLogic Suite to manage data and power the Oracle Utilities applications. The utility is an existing Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management customer.

Bermuda Electric Light Company Limited (BELCO) is located in Hamilton, Bermuda and operates a generation plant and transmission and distribution systems throughout the island for 34,043 metered customers. The utility upgraded to Oracle Utilities Network Management System to capture and manage outage data more effectively. The utility can now provide a consistent, single view of data across the organization – from executives to service representatives, and from dispatchers to crews in the field. With this improved visibility, BELCO can better pinpoint specific pieces of equipment causing a disproportionate share of outages, and subsequently accelerate maintenance. The network management system also integrates with the service trucks’ GPS devices, which provides dispatchers with real-time location data to better coordinate truck deployments and help improve outage response times. The utility is also using Oracle Database to power the network management system and other applications.

“We are pleased that Bermuda Electric Light Company Limited and Seattle City Light chose Oracle Utilities Network Management System to provide rapid and cohesive responses during power outages. Oracle Utilities Network Management System will help both utilities accelerate service issue resolution and provide the visibility to optimize infrastructure, customer support and field response teams,” said Quentin Grady, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Utilities.

“We were looking for a pre-integrated solution that would help us reduce our costs. Oracle Utilities Network Management System and Oracle Utilities Mobile Workforce Management will allow us to replace our outdated system with out-of-the-box functionality. We look forward to being able to give our customers the most up-to-date information possible and to accelerate field service during outages. Providing the best customer service in the country means delivering low cost, reliable and environmentally responsible power to our customer-owners,” said Chris Heimgartner, vice president of customer service, Seattle City Light.

“Oracle Utilities Network Management System helps us provide excellent customer service by enabling us to reduce outage durations and provide superior communication during times of greatest customer need,” said Mike Maughan, manager, operations center, Bermuda Electric Light Company Limited.

For more information, click here !

Oracle Customer Services – Open House Series

Learn how Oracle can help you optimize your Oracle investment now to drive down Total Cost of Ownership, Reduce the risk of IT projects and Drive higher business value from your IT investments. You'll learn practical examples of how you can drive cost and risk from your IT infrastructure. Information Technology leaders are under pressure to reduce costs while driving increased IT business value and reducing risk. The Oracle Customer Services Day is focused on helping customers across the product portfolio optimize their investment by leveraging the experience, knowledge and insight of the over 14,000 service professionals and their average of over 6 years of helping customers like you optimize their Oracle investment. Learn and discover ways to drive increased value from your Oracle Software and Support Services. Hear practical examples of how we have helped companies like yours drive increased value from their Oracle investment.

• Lower Total Cost of Ownership – Drive down labor costs though better systems management and maintenance across the entire IT solution lifecycle

• Lower Business Risk – Leverage industry and Oracle best practices to optimize results

• Higher Business Value – Drive better business results through better software utilization

Current schedule of Seminars:

February 3 - Atlanta February 19 - Miami March 19 - Boston March 26 - New York City

April 2 - Toronto April 16 - Reston April 21 - Chicago April 28 - Dallas May 13 - Redwood Shores

Be sure to check out Oracle Events website for seminars near you! You can also Register Now by calling 800.820.5592 ext. 5952

Oracle Continues to Offer Flexible Payment Options to Help Customers Acquire IT They Need

During uncertain economic times, customers expect their IT investment to play a significant role in realizing value from their business operations. Through Oracle Financing, Oracle’s ability to offer flexible payment options helps customers acquire the IT they need while stretching their IT budget and turning large up-front cash outlays into affordable payments over time.

“Oracle continues to have broad credit approval bandwidth, competitive rates, and a solid foundation for funding,” said Anil Vora, VP, Oracle Financing. “Customers will appreciate the flexibility payment plans afford them now more than ever. Large customers value our flexibility and our ability to incorporate a total cost of ownership approach that aligns business value with payments; and midsize customers appreciate the availability of financing.”

Customers can use Oracle financing, leasing, and custom payment plans to acquire Oracle products and services, solutions built on Oracle technology,

and related products and services, from Oracle or a distribution partner. Benefits to customers include the ability to:

Match payments to budget constraints

Align payments to deployment and productivity gains

Significantly reduce upfront cash outlay

Access capital through preservation of credit lines

Choose from multiple payment and lease options for Oracle products and services

Utilize total solution financing for the entire IT operation (ltilifthardware, etc.)

Oracle Financing has helped more than 10,000 Oracle customers in more than 50 countries acquire the IT they need over 20 years of global leadership in software financing.

Quest Enhancement Request System

Would you like for your job to be easier? Quest's enhancement request system can help! By using the Quest tool and vetting enhancements through Quest Special Interest Groups, Industry Users Groups and/or Product Users Group, you can shorten the time it takes for you to find out which

enhancements are most important to customers. Let them decide and do the work for you! For more information on the Quest enhancement request system and how Quest can help you, contact jesse.howard@questdirect.org or click here to get involved today!

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Product News & Announcements

The Post Sales Reference program at Oracle helps customers talk to customers!

This is NOT a typical reference program - this program links Customers-2-Customers! You will be able to talk to people that are interested in what you know and find what you need to know!

Log on to mix.oracle.com and search for the group Customers-2-Customers. Send a request to become part of the group and check each day to see if there are any new requests you can answer!

NEW - PeopleSoft Issues List

The Quest PeopleSoft Advocacy Committee is creating an issues list to track questions and answers on your PeopleSoft product due to the huge success of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Issues List. Please take a moment to provide Quest with some questions you would like to have answered then watch for answers to those questions in upcoming Quest communications. Click here to take the survey.

NEW - JD Edwards World Issues List

The Quest JD Edwards World Advocacy Committee is creating an issues list to track questions and answers on your World product due to the huge success of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Issues List. Please take a moment to provide Quest with some questions you would like to have answered then watch for answers to

those questions in upcoming Quest communications. Click here to take the survey.

NEW - Oracle Utilities Issues List

The Quest Utilities Advisory Council is creating an issues list to track questions and answers on your Oracle Utilities products due to the huge success of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Issues List. Please take a moment to provide Quest with some questions you would like to have answered then watch for answers to those questions in upcoming Quest communications. Click here to take the survey.

Agencies Cut Costs of PeopleSoft Implementation with Oracle’s PeopleSoft Accelerator for Public Sector

Two U.S. state governments are currently in the midst of adopting the new preconfigured PeopleSoft Accelerator for Public Sector from Oracle Consulting that promises to reduce the time and effort of statewide PeopleSoft Enterprise implementations by an average of 30 percent. “Spurred by the chance to also see a similar reduction in implementation times, a number of other federal agencies, local governments, and K-12 school districts in the U.S. are now evaluating the accelerator approach for new PeopleSoft installations,” says Jackie Cheng, senior director of Oracle Consulting. Oracle’s PeopleSoft Accelerator for Public Sector is a preconfigured database instance with a prepopulated

set of templates for the core PeopleSoft modules designed for U.S. public sector organizations. The accelerator aggregates best practices developed during previous public sector engagements and is designed to jump-start many of the set-up routines and workflow processes that are common across the public sector. “With preconfigured best practices we can say, ‘This approach has worked for others when they set up their chart of accounts; will this work for your operations?’” Cheng explains. “This allows public sector customers to quickly configure many of the basic elements to reduce set-up time and costs, and allow the organizations to devote more of their resources to the areas that are unique to them.” In addition to charts of accounts, customers can also take advantage of templates for establishing procurement catalogs, purchasing workflows, and annual financial reports within PeopleSoft. “Moreover, the preconfiguration approach also reduces risk,” Cheng says. “There are times when a customer perhaps isn’t familiar with all the inter-workings and the business flows of their systems. Because many of the basics are already preconfigured, we can help them to make better decisions about how to accomplish specific goals.” Cheng adds that Oracle Consulting now also offers a PeopleSoft to Hyperion Integration accelerator to help public sector customers speed connections between the enterprise resource planning (ERP) and performance management systems. __________________

Podcasts Spotlight

Finance, the CFO's Office and Middleware: Four Focus Areas for Compliance, Automation and Process Improvement Hear why leading finance organizations in the private and public sector have turned to middleware to tackle issues like SOX compliance, asset management, the move to shared services, and measuring a return investments. Listen Now.

New Recorded Webcast Series: Get More from Your Applications with Middleware

This new webcast series provides viewers with the latest tips, techniques, and best practices on middleware for Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel applications. Topics include how SOA integration, portal technologies, identity management, and other middleware approaches can help customers get more from their applications. This series is for an application developer, application technologist, fusion developer, or middleware developer who wants to learn from product experts about how to better leverage application investments. Specific webcast topics and links are posted on oracle.com.

Access the recorded webcasts.

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Pella Corporation to Host Super Reference Showcase

Mark your calendars for Tuesday, April 28 – Thursday, April 30, 2009 and plan now to join Pella & Oracle for 2 days of interactive discussions on how and why these two companies have partnered and planned for success today, tomorrow and beyond.

Sneak Preview

• Exclusive C-Level Session

• Gain insight into the Pella & Oracle partnership – how & why it works

• Learn about Pella lean initiatives

HPllhtkSOAdother Oracle Technologies to the next level

• Hear from a Special Guest Analyst

• Attend a Breakout Session (Flow Manufacturing, OM/Configurator, ASCP/Demand Planning and much more)

• Request a 1:1 demo session with Pella & Oracle

• Participate in a Plant Tour

For more information click here or contact your Oracle account representative.

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SPECIAL DELIVERY! The latest Oracle information delivered right to your desktop

Inside news and original content you won't find anywhere else, delivered to your inbox each quarter, on Oracle applications and technology solutions.

Subscribe to Oracle Newsletters (You may be asked to register.)

Choose from these editions:

Business Intelligence Oracle BI product news from both the technical and the applications perspective, with emphasis on Hyperion and enterprise performance t(Etth)[ See a sample ]

Content Management News on Oracle's content management suite and platform, including Oracle Content Database and Stellent products. [ See a sample ]

Customer Relationship Management Oracle and Siebel CRM products, including Siebel CRM On Demand, focusing on sales, marketing, customer service, analytics, and call center topics. [ See a sample ]

Database Insider News on Oracle Database 11g, including interviews, market news, executive webcasts, and user group and tech guru analysis. (Monthly) [ See a sample ]

European Union The latest news on Oracle's activities in Europe, including contributions to Europe's social, economic, technological, cultural and political development. [ See a sample ]

Executive Strategy The newsletter for Profit Online, offering the best of Oracle's executive content, blogs, podcasts, and in-depth articles from Profit. (Monthly) [ See a sample ]

Executive Strategy Weekly Bulletin Keep up with Profit Online every week with the newly launched Executive Strategy Weekly Bulletin. Get regular updates from Profit Online sent to your inbox every Wednesday. (Weekly) [ See a sample ]

Financial Management Focused on content for CFO's, including product and event news, in-depth analysis from industry pundits, and Oracle executive content. [ See a sample ]

Financial Services Insightful looks at the global financial services market, including product diilttfrom i-flex, and emphasis on regulation and security in the banking industry. [ See a sample ]

Fusion Middleware News, reviews, and insights on the continually evolving, industry-leading Oracle Fusion Middleware suite of products including Oracle WebCenter, Oracle SOAsuite, identity management, application integration, BPEL, and J2EE. (Every two months) [ See a sample ]

Human Capital Management The latest news on Oracle and PeopleSoft HCM applications from drill-downs into Release 9 and Web 2.0 innovations to interviews with industry pundits and analysts on major trends in HR. [ See a sample ]

Lean Supply Chain News and analysis from the fast-moving world of global manufacturing, with an emphasis on the growing movement in Lean philosophies and the importance of IT in goods production and distribution. [ See a sample ]

Linux News on Oracle's continuing contributions to the Linux community, including events, offers, and links to technical articles on OTN and in Oracle Magazine. [ See a sample ]

On Demand Articles on evolving trends in the growing world of software-as-a-service, including new services and technologies available from Oracle. [ See a sample ]

Oracle's Crystal Ball The latest global news, resources and training information for Oracle's Crystal Ball software. [ See a sample ]

Procurement Product news and industry analysis on managing, leveraging, and maximizing supplier relationships in a fast-moving global economy. [ See a sample ]

Public Sector News on Oracle solutions for government organizations and educational institutions, as well as news about how local, state, and federal agencies are embracing new technologies and best practices from private enterprise. [ See a sample ]

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