ERP Software

Oracle Adds Healthcare Functionality

Oracle said Friday it will buy Phase Forward, a software solutions provider of applications for life sciences companies and healthcare providers, in a  deal worth around $685 million.

Oracle said the acquisition is consistent with its strategy to add complimentary assets to its Oracle Health Sciences division.

The company also predicts that Phase Forward's SaaS- based integrated clinical research suite which manages clinical development Phase 1 clinical trials through regulatory submission to post-approval monitoring, will help Oracle's life science customers more effectively capture, access, and share data securely.

"The life sciences and healthcare industries are converging as they seek to control costs while accelerating patient-centered innovation," Neil de Crescenzo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Health Sciences said in a statement "Phase Forward brings outstanding products and employees with significant expertise to Oracle that will help enable the delivery of personalized medicine and value-based healthcare."

In a letter posted on Oracle's website, Crescenzo also said Phase Forward's management and employees will join Oracle as a part of the Oracle Health Sciences global business unit, ensuring the continuity of products and services delivery for Phase Forward customers. The transaction is expected to close in the mid-2010.

With that war chest, Phase Forward stated acquiring companies in related fields, shelling out $11m in 2005 for Lincoln Technologies, which created software to track drug safety after they have been approved for sale by government health regulators. In September 2008, Phase Forward ponied up $40m in cash to buy Clarix, a software company that had created a Web-based interactive response technology (IRT) application suite for clinical trials, which have been traditionally managed through phone calls, not Web-based forms.

Phase Forward has quite a track record on purchasing smaller software companies that are focussed around the web. Phase Forward paid $14m to acquire Waban Software, which sold a competing set of automation and compliance tools for clinical trials with statistical analysis add-ons. And in July, it paid $11m to buy Maaguzi, which sells a set of Web-based tools to do electronic patient reported outcomes paperwork.

The combined set of Phase Forward tools have been used in over 10,000 clinical trials with more than 1 million participants by more than 300 life sciences, pharma firms and regulatory agencies and public health organizations.

Oracle expects the Phase Forward acquisition to close around the middle of 2010.

 Oracle Newsroom

Larry Ellision thoughts on the cloud

Larry Ellison likes to keep his options open; personally he can’t stand the hype of cloud computing with some great quotes such as “more fashion-driven than women's fashion and cloud computing is simply the latest fashion”.

Then on Oracle’s fiscal third quarter earnings call, Larry focuses on fusion and how the architecture can be used for on premise or the cloud.

We think once we deliver Fusion, we’re going to be well-positioned to challenge for the number one slot. One of the important things about our Fusion applications is they are designed not simply to run on premise, which of course they do. But they’re all on-demand or if you prefer, cloud-ready. So we’ll be delivering those applications, both by selling the software directly — kind of the old way of doing it, which is still the most popular way, by the way. We’ll be selling the Fusion applications integrated with our hardware, our servers, and our storage and our networks. We’ll be selling it on the cloud, all modern service-orientated 21st century stuff.

Talk about keeping your options open Larry is right about cloud and the fashion industry though.

Oracle to purchase Hyperion

 

Oracle today agreed to purchase Hyperion Solutions  for $3.3 billion which will make Oracle the No. 1 in the business intelligence market, according to Charles Phillips, Oracle president.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to finalized in April 2007.

"This extends our business intelligence strategy of a year ago, when we launched Oracle business intelligence. That's been one of our highest growth product lines," Phillips said in a conference call this morning. "We now have the most comprehensive BI product line."

This purchase will most  likely start a round of consolidation within the BI area.

"IBM may buy Cognos, HP might end up buying Business Objects or Business Objects may buy another competitor. There will be a lot of pressure on these vendors to react to this acquisition," according to Mr Wang the senior analyst at forester.

What is interesting is SAP has partnership with Hyperion and might make a bid for Hyperion with Oracle having Hyperion it will give them another route into the SAP customer base ,"Now Oracle's Hyperion software will be the lens through which SAP's most important customers view and analyze their underlying SAP ERP data.

Oracle number one player now

Oracle to buy SAP?

The rumour mill is on overdrive at the moment with Oracle putting in a bid for SAP.

The financial experts think there is not much substance to the rumour and might be done to prove to the public that Oracle is large enough to make a bid for SAP.

The timing is perfect to deflect attention away form Sap’s news on releasing a SaaS version for the mid market plus the competition authorities would not allow this deal to go through.

update

31.05.2007 :The story is doing the rounds again with SAP stock up ,the feedback is that  oracle has bought 8% of SAP.

Zdnet Link

Where there is smoke there is fire ,SAP is involved in all the rumours and is getting bad press at the moment for their future strategy.

Everybody Loves Larry

Oracle Fusion Middleware

Oracle‘s new Fusion Middleware helps customers build business processes for several different applications using APIs or other integration points such as WSDLs. The middleware products are then used to help create SOA using Web services, an Enterprise Services Bus and Oracle BPEL Process Manager.

Oracle's Fusion Middleware Stack includes

Oracle Application Server 10g,

Security Developer Tools (to support WS-Security and SAML),

Oracle Identity Management,

Oracle Data Hubs,

Oracle Collaboration Suite,

Oracle process manager,

Oracle web services manger,

JDeveloper tools,

Oracle WBPEL, and

Native support for EJB 3.0 and Hibernate.

All these features hot-pluggable, allowing Oracle users to mix-and-match Fusion Middleware with their existing infrastructure software. “With this approach, we can provide customers a complete SOA environment, or we can let customers use what they already have and simply add added functionality, such as end-to-end security or [BPEL] process management, where they might need it,” MacNeil said.

Oracle ERP fusion

Larry on ERP consolidation

Larry chatting to forbes and his thoughts on the ERP consolidation.

"You have to take a broader view and realize this is an industry like any other--telecom, railroads. They went through consolidation. Why shouldn't the computer industry be any different?"

"This shouldn't have been a surprise to anybody. But it seemed to be, and a lot of people thought I was nuts when I said these things. And that's why we're out there alone as a consolidator. "

Larry also mentioned that Oracle could buy BEA Systems  or buy BusinessObjects, the largest business intelligence vendor.

Forbes

IBM hardware for JD Edwards

IBM is offering a i 520 Solution Edition for Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne for customers with under a hundred seats.

The package will offer as asset lifecycle, customer relationship, financial, human capital, project, supplier and supply chain management (RFID support)

Hardware costing about $21,000

You can get performance data at IBMERP.

Oracle Fusion upgrade path ,costs

Migration to Fusion may require multiple upgrades of each oracle fusion application package. For the majority of applications, Oracle will issue an upgrade to Fusion from only the two latest oracle versions If you’re using an older release, you’ll have to upgrade to one of the newer versions first.

Fusion is a complete rewrite. New product releases  have more problems than normal upgrades. It’s often better to upgrade after the software has been in the field long enough for the initial bugs to be identified by some other company.

There will be a shortage of Fusion specialist expertise after the initial product release. individuals with Fusion experience or even Fusion training will be in  demand and very expensive.

According to Ronald Schmelzer, analyst at  Zapthink (a SOA consultancy), SOA promises tremendous benefits for manufacturers because 70 to 80 percent of their IT costs are for just maintaining their systems. However, even if a manufacturer chooses not to go down the SOA route ,adopting SOA will not be optional because in the next few years, says Schmelzer, “the major ERP vendors, SAP and Oracle, are making their customers adopt their latest platforms … both of which are SOA to the core, and basically providing no other upgrade path.” These are indispensable ERP applications for any manufacturer.  he claims, “By 2010 80% of manufacturers will have adopted SOA because they had no other choice.”

Oracle Fusion resources

Oracle Fusion road map and transition costs

Oracle applications up 56%

Oracle shares  jumped after the ERP company said fourth- quarter profit and revenue beat its own forecast because of high sales.

The growth in new database licenses shows Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison's acquisition strategy is spurring customers to buy an array of programs. Redwood City, California- based Oracle has spent about $19 billion to buy 17 companies since January 2005, mostly for software to manage backoffice tasks.

New license sales of applications gained 83 percent, including the results from Retek  and Siebel Systems , bought in the past year. Excluding those, new application licenses gained 56 %  a sign that sales picked up for PeopleSoft, which Oracle bought for $10.6 billion in January 2005.

Companies are looking for stability and Oracle's results show big is better.