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EMC and Oracle Announce Database
Solutions/Services
By Charles King
EMC and Oracle have announced what they describe as
the first certified joint best practice for creating non-disruptive copies of
Oracle 11i application environments. By using a combination of EMC TimeFinder and the Oracle AutoConfig
utility, customers can create a “clone” of their application for testing,
upgrades, business continuity planning, backup and recovery, data warehouse
loading, or hardware migrations, all while production systems remain online.
In a separate announcement, the two companies introduced the Oracle on EMC
Database Accelerator Service. The new service is a joint effort between
Oracle Consulting and EMC Global Services designed to assist customers in
designing, deploying, and optimizing EMC storage systems, software, and
networks running Oracle databases including Oracle9i. The Oracle on EMC
Database Accelerator Service is currently available in North America, and
will become available worldwide in early 2003.
At one level, the EMC/Oracle announcements qualify
as a sort of “geekier than thou” technical advance that will matter most to
owners and managers or large Oracle database installations. At the same time,
however, the announcements serve as a clear reflection of subtle motions we
see roiling the surface of the IT sector. Beginning with the geeky side of
life, the companies have discovered a way of combining EMC TimeFinder and Oracle AutoConfig
so that Oracle 11i applications can be cloned while a system is up and
running. How big a deal is this? Pretty big, actually, for people who maintain
the health and well being of database solutions. While cloning database
information is common in many disaster recovery and business continuity
solutions, usable application clones are more complex and difficult to
create, though they are of considerable value for testing and planning
purposes. Of particular note is that EMC is the only storage vendor to have
tested and validated such a solution with Oracle’s participation and
blessing.
The subtle motions we alluded to earlier have
largely to do with the evolving shape of the IT industry. In the good old
days, specialization was king, and vendors with unique expertise ruled the
bleeding edge of the market with state of the art solutions. After IT
spending hit the skids and many vendors hit the ropes, specialization fell
into disfavor, replaced by more general, cost-efficient approaches from large
systems vendors that leveraged multiple technologies, solutions, and service
offerings. What we have been seeing increasingly over the past year are
groups of specialists strategically banding together to cast larger shadows.
EMC’s partnership with Dell was one of the first and most successful of these
efforts, though others have also emerged. That being the case, what dynamics
do we see propelling the relationship between EMC and Oracle? First and
foremost are the history and thousands of customers the companies share. While
EMC was emerging as the leader of enterprise storage, Oracle was creating the
databases that put storage to work. As the two come under increasing pressure
from hungry, powerful competitors such as IBM, it makes practical and
strategic sense for them to develop unique offerings such as application
cloning that leverage their strengths. We may be
seeing the beginnings of new product and service offerings that marry the
best of many vendors, effectively offering an alternative to the “buy
everything from us” tendency of the IBM’s, HP’s and SUN’s
of the world.
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The Same Old Playbook
By Jim Balderston
Microsoft announced this week that it reached
agreement to acquire PlaceWare Inc., a Web
conferencing services provider. PlaceWare offers
web-based conferencing services through its conference center, as well as
software that allows for what it calls collaborative meetings. Features of
both include Internet whiteboarding, slide
presentations, file swapping, application sharing, remote
control of desktops, live polling, live Q&A, instant messaging to
presenters, and other features designed to make meeting interactive. Placeware says its conference center can scale up to
thousands of users simultaneously claims a large number of Fortune 500
companies as clients. PlaceWare says its
conferencing technology can be used for sales training, analyst briefings,
company meetings, and a host of other events that have been largely held on a
face-to-face basis. Microsoft noted that the PlaceWare
acquisition expands its information worker solutions product base. Microsoft
also announced the formation of a new business unit, Real Time Collaboration
Group.
So why would Microsoft buy PlaceWare?
If one looks at the functionality found in MS Messenger now, many of the same
features — like application sharing, whiteboarding,
and file swapping already exist. Now some of these features work better than
others, and some have severe restrictions — most notably the ability to scale
up to larger groups. But in many ways, we see this as a well-used page from
the Microsoft playbook, much like “Student Body Right and Student Body Left”
were used by USC in the glory days of the USC football program. As an
opponent, you knew it was coming, and knew it was coming all the time.
Microsoft has never really been a pioneer in
technology spaces. Instead of leading the wagon train — and getting a chest
full of arrows — they prefer to hang back a bit and wait to see what
technologies are gaining traction in the marketplace and then, after some of
the danger has been cleared out, move in with gusto. Here we see that same
pattern. Microsoft has seen the increasing appeal of Instant Messaging both
on the consumer side and increasingly within the enterprise firewall. As IM
becomes more prevalent, especially in the enterprise, it begins to make the
communication time frame of email look more and more like snail mail in
comparison. Considering email has long been known as “the killer app” on the
Internet, one suspects there is a real opportunity
here. Microsoft has continually beefed up its Messenger product; we see this
acquisition as a means to add perhaps more polish and stability to its
collaborative applications package while cleverly sidestepping potential
future legal and licensing issues with AOL. Such an addition to its dominant
office productivity tools will be no small thing. We also suspect that using PlaceWare’s conferencing center will be a boon to Redmond
from two possible directions. Firstly, the conference center is a service: one
subscribes to it just as one does to, say, MSN. Second, what could provide a
better test bed and research facility into future product development than an
active, real-world service? By noting which features are used — or ignored —
Microsoft can determine how to push its development efforts in the area of
collaborative meeting software. It can also watch how users attempt to hand-wire
existing product features into a new functionality, thereby giving a roadmap
to the company for future feature enhancements. We also can’t help but wonder
how a more interactive and feature-rich Messenger or Messenger-like product
will go over with consumers who also are beginning to use IM as a more
collaborative tool.
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Roto-Rooter
Unplugs More Than Drains
By Jim Balderston
Roto-Rooter Inc., the
nationally known plumbing outfit with the distinctive and eternal jingle, has
announced that it will begin equipping its 1,500 plumbers and drain cleaners
with wireless technology that will automate billing and payment procedures as
well as adding dispatch of the company’s trucks and employees. The new system
will be built around a software system built by Minneapolis-based Gearworks Inc., and will use Motorola mobile data phones
with GPS systems to pinpoint where trucks and workers are. Gearworks specializes in wireless and Web-based
applications that are focused on the point of delivery where dispatched
workers delivering goods or service interact with customers. The system will
also allow Roto-Rooter to manage customer billing
and credit card payments through mobile credit card terminals and potable
printers using Gearworks’ etrace
application. The company plans to begin distributing the phones and
associated gear to employees later this year.
When your drain is plugged up and the basement is
slowly filling with water time is truly of the essence. One could argue that
such a situation actually puts new meaning on the over-used phrase “real
time.” In fact, time can’t get much more real than when the next twenty
minutes will determine whether the drain can be unplugged before it swamps
the furnace, water heaters, electrical circuitry, and the like. A house
without heat, hot water or electricity is somewhat diminished as a domicile,
at the bare minimum
What we find most intriguing about this announcement
— like others before it — is the seemingly mundane nature of the application
of the technology at hand. Plugged drains have been around for years, and so
has Roto-Rooter. What is notable here is that it is
an example of an application of existing — and not particularly cutting edge —
technology that could have a truly transformative effect on the company that
deploys it. There is little here that is cutting edge. Existing phones,
wireless networks, and hardware are being placed in the hands of people who
need them, and who will be better able to serve their customers and the
enterprise as a result. Isn’t that the goal of such deployments? One would
not be so sure in looking at some of the cutting edge deployments of, say,
CRM or ERP in the past few years. Images of the future tossed about by
Internet and IT “visionaries” always seem to focus on some yet-to-be-realized
market niche that may or may not ever materialize. The lesson here seems
straightforward enough: there are still many opportunities to offer real
business-changing products that are time-tested and consist largely of off-the-shelf
components. We would argue that there are still
large swaths of the business community that could be substantially aided by
the deployment of what many visionaries would see as dated technology. These
market opportunities are here, and now, and real. And in our way of thinking,
that’s real, real-time.
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NetLedger
Adds Further CRM Integration
By Myles Suer
NetLedger announced this
week that it has added sales management, order placement, customer service,
marketing automation, and Web publishing to its product mix. NetLedger claims the new CRM features match or surpass
Web delivered CRM applications such as SalesForce.com. In contrast to
SalesForce.com, however, NetLedger integrates its
CRM application with its back-office accounting, inventory, and shipping
applications. These features and enhancements are free of charge to current
subscribers. New subscribers can access NetLedger's
application services starting at $50/user/month.
We believe that NetLedger
may be on to something in enabling customers to manage all their key business
processes in a single, integrated system. That has been a dream for any number
of current and failed vendors, and with only a bit more than 6,000 customers,
it is too early to declare NetLedger the long-term
winner in the Web-delivered, outsourced service space. However, at the same
time we believe the company’s value proposition extends to those making
software for the Global 2000, since NetLedger has
become (probably accidentally) a laboratory for learning how enterprise
applications should be integrated. For many ISVs, applications are still
developed by separate, disconnected corporate fiefdoms; at NetLedger, the application and product management teams
seem to act in concert. Given this, we believe that what the company learns
could extend far beyond the small and medium sized companies that NetLedger serves.
With this addition of business intelligence, NetLedger will be the first company to fit all of its
significant business applications/processes under one tent, a distinction we
believe will help this enterprise software laboratory to become increasingly
valuable to the industry, if not stockholders, over time. Maybe this is why
Oracle is looking over NetLedger’s shoulders and
Larry Ellison has personally invested in the enterprise.
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