(October 12, 2007) - "Oracle is prepared to proceed immediately," says the official letter delivered today to the Board of Directors of BEA by Oracle, which is proposing to acquire BEA for $17.00 per share in cash - a 25% premium over yesterday's closing price of $13.62. "We have made a serious proposal including a substantial premium for BEA," said Oracle President Charles Phillips. "We believe our all cash offer provides the best value for BEA's shareholders and the best home for BEA's employees and customers," Phillips continued. "This proposal is the culmination of repeated conversations with BEA's management over the last several years. We look forward to completing a friendly transaction as soon as possible." Oracle has been eyeing BEA since at least 2004 and analysts had been predicting since the summer that either private equity firms or Oracle were almost ... (more)

Agile SOA Across the Lifecycle - Part Five: IT and SOA Governance

This is the fifth of a six part series of posts on the Agile SOA life cycle. Here we will at look at IT and SOA Governance. With the introduction of agile, spiral, and scrum development methodologies, the traditional waterfall development approach of testing a near-finished app at the end of many Agile development cycles won't be agile at all, as the elements of the application are constantly changing.  Traditional models of IT governance will also not work. To aggravate testing, the service-oriented architecture (SOA) design pattern is used to make IT  more responsive to changes requested by business. New process tooling has been introduced to specifically assist in the cataloging of service assets, and organization of policies governing SOA. This new set of tooling created to support SOA revolves around governance platforms like HP Systinet / S2, SAG Centrasite, S... (more)

Agile SOA Across the Lifecycle - Part Five: IT and SOA Governance

This is the fifth of a six part series of posts on the Agile SOA life cycle. Here we will at look at IT and SOA Governance. With the introduction of agile, spiral, and scrum development methodologies, the traditional waterfall development approach of testing a near-finished app at the end of many Agile development cycles won't be agile at all, as the elements of the application are constantly changing.  Traditional models of IT governance will also not work. To aggravate testing, the service-oriented architecture (SOA) design pattern is used to make IT  more responsive to changes requested by business. New process tooling has been introduced to specifically assist in the cataloging of service assets, and organization of policies governing SOA. This new set of tooling created to support SOA revolves around governance platforms like HP Systinet / S2, SAG Centrasite, S... (more)

Aria Systems Named "Bronze Sponsor" of Cloud Computing Expo

SYS-CON Events announced today that leading Cloud Computing technology provider Aria Systems was named "Bronze Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 2nd International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, which will take place March 30 - April 1, 2009, in New York City. Aria Systems is the leading provider of subscription billing solutions and offers the only "monetization platform" encompassing the full spectrum of Billing and Customer Lifecycle Management services. The A+ Billing Platform offers clients the on-demand billing industry's most flexible tool for accelerating revenue capture, optimizing cash flow, and enabling actionable market intelligence while significantly reducing operating costs throughout each phase of the customer lifecycle. Acknowledged as the SaaS billing leader in terms of experience and execution, Aria manages and maintains more than 1 million accounts and ha... (more)

Oracle’s Secret Plan for Sun

If Oracle hasn't been exactly forthcoming with its reportedly three-year plan for Sun, it's because it's still trying to figure out exactly what it is. Like what it's really going to do about the Sparc chip, for instance. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who's orchestrating things even if co-president Chuck Phillips is nominally in charge of integration from the Oracle side, is reportedly determined to exploit the cloud phenomenon and turn Oracle-Sun into a cloud-based company by making sure he's got Oracle's whole software stack on network-based appliances built by Sun. He's also reportedly quite taken with Sun's container-based Modular Datacenter, expecting to do better with it than Sun has. Oh, by the way, Sun shareholders get to make their mark on the ballot asking them if they want to sell the joint to Oracle on July 16. Ah-ah, no ballot box stuffing now. ... (more)

Is a Private Cloud Worthwhile?

Much discussion in the cloud computing world has focused on a simple question: Is a private cloud infrastructure worthy of the name? It's been posed in many ways, with some going so far as claiming that there is no such thing as a private cloud. Although discussions like these are all too common in many areas, the question really amounts to little more than counting angels dancing on pin heads. The key issue is whether private cloud-style infrastructure can deliver real benefits like public clouds can. First, let's set out some definitions: The draft NIST definition, perhaps the best we have at this point, states that "Cloud computing is a pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned and rel... (more)

Deploying Oracle Databases to Amazon AWS (EC2, RDS)

Amazon recently added Oracle database hosting capabilities to its RDS service offering. You can rent an Oracle database related infrastructure in a pay-as-you-go fashion now. We are going to explore if corporations should be utilizing Amazon AWS Oracle Database related services (EC2, RDS ), how it should be used, where possible savings and potential trouble points are. With services like Amazon AWS it doesn't matter where your hardware and software physically is - it could be in a room next to you or in some other country. It is much easier and cheaper to procure and get new servers up and running. What's Really New? You swipe your credit card and get an Oracle database server up and running in half an hour. Sounds like magic, especially if you compare it to the weeks and months it normally takes to have an Oracle database server operational in an average enterprise ... (more)

Cloud server newsletter - January 2012

Happy New Year and welcome to the first ElasticHosts Cloud Server Newsletter of 2012! We are very excited about the developments that we have planned for this year but first we need to let you know what we’ve been up to since the last newsletter back in the Summer: 16GB Servers, automatic repeat billing, firewalls Critical alerts by SMS and copied to extra email addresses Powered by ElasticHosts: Link to us Tutorials, global support and status page New Toronto and Los Angeles data centres Control panel revamp White-label program coming soon Account updates and new features If you have logged into your account recently you may have noticed a few extra options on the profile, subscriptions and server configuration pages. For instance, you can now configure a simple port blocking firewall in front of each of your servers. We have also doubled the maximum server size t... (more)

Oracle(R) Database 10g Release 2 with Oracle Real Application Clusters on Linux Sets New TPC-H 300 Gigabyte Benchmark Record

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., July 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Oracle today announced two record-setting TPC-H 300 gigabyte data warehousing benchmarks that hallmarked Oracle(R) Database 10g Release 2's performance power and leadership among enterprise-class databases. Available since July 11, 2005, Oracle Database 10g Release 2 is already setting industry standards by elevating the price performance bar in the 300 gigabyte category and showcasing a 27 percent performance improvement from Oracle Database 10g Release 1. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020718/ORCLLOGO ) Running on a two-node Dell PowerEdge 6800 Cluster with four Intel(R) Xeon 3.33 GHz processors and eight megabyte L3 Cache (EM64T), Oracle Database 10g Release 2 with Oracle Real Application Clusters on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 3 achieved a world record price-performance ratio of... (more)

Oracle Selects the Solaris 10 Operating System as Its Preferred Open Source 64-bit Development and Deployment Environment

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Nov. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Oracle and Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced that Oracle has chosen the Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System (OS), Sun's multi-platform, open source OS, as its preferred development and deployment platform for most x64 architectures, including x64 (x86, 64-bit) AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processor-based systems and Sun's UltraSPARC(R)-based systems. The Solaris 10 OS will be used throughout Oracle's development organization. Oracle also plans to release and ship 64- bit versions of all Oracle products on the Solaris OS prior to or simultaneous with the release of its products on other operating systems. With the selection of the Solaris 10 OS, as well as full access to source code and support for more than 440 x86/x64 systems, Oracle will have access to key features including Dynamic ... (more)

Oracle Supports Major Chinese Trade Company Sinosteel to Improve Management Efficiency

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Dec. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Oracle today announced a successful ERP go-live at Sinosteel Corporation, a leading Chinese trade company specializing in steel related products. The launch of the ERP system, which runs on Oracle(R) applications, is a major milestone in Sinosteel's pursuit of management efficiency. Sinosteel is consolidating the management of its operations, optimizing core business processes and enhancing online interactions with external partners. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020718/ORCLLOGO ) The ERP project involves deployment of key modules of Oracle applications in Sinosteel's headquarters and eight subsidiary companies located in Beijing. The Oracle applications modules run key business processes including financial management, procurement, inventory management, sales management, project management, hu... (more)