Ellison: Fusion Applications in 2010

Oracle plans to launch its long-awaited Fusion Applications in 2010, and they will be deployable both on-premises and as SaaS (software as a service), CEO Larry Ellison said Wednesday during a keynote address at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. Oracle has placed special emphasis on improving the user experience with Fusion, as well as embedded BI (business intelligence) throughout the applications, Ellison said. Fusion Applications, which Oracle first announced several years ago, will combine the best elements of Oracle's various business software product lines into a next-generation suite.

Ellison's keynote contained the most specific information the company has provided about Fusion Applications since first announcing the project several years ago. We're absolutely committed to do that," he said to applause. "We can afford to not only maintain the software you're running today, but also build the software you may want to move to tomorrow." Ellison did not provide details regarding licensing and pricing models, including whether Oracle will sell the new applications via subscription, as is the norm with SaaS. But Oracle is nonetheless ensuring the products are ready for SaaS, including by developing monitoring tools that will track their performance, Ellison said. The CEO took pains to tell the packed room of Siebel, JD Edwards and E-Business Suite users that Oracle has no plans to abandon the product lines anytime soon. "Oracle will continue to enhance those applications for the next decade and beyond. While SaaS vendors provide users with service-level agreement guarantees, "there aren't very good tools for figuring out whether you're actually getting the service levels you're paying for," he said. This gives Oracle "a huge advantage" because the SOA model will allow users easily to tie together "the Fusion generation and all the stuff you have deployed today," Ellison said. "We don't think all customers are going to replace what they have today with Fusion," he added. "We think they will augment what they have with some Fusion. Oracle's tools will enable it to "not only contractually commit but prove we're delivering the service levels." Fusion Applications are based on a SOA (service oriented architecture) provided by Oracle's Fusion Middleware stack, Ellison said.

Fusion is designed to be delivered that way. ... We have replacement applications and then we have net-new applications." The initial suite will include modules for financial management, human capital management, sales and marketing, supply chain management, project management, procurement management and GRC (governance, risk and compliance), but other key areas, such as manufacturing, will come later. Oracle has worked "very, very closely" with customers to design and test Fusion Applications, work that has resulted in a superior user interface, Ellison said. Ellison stressed the benefits of the modular approach. "You assemble the components in the order you want to use them, in the order that makes sense for your industry," he said. Embedded BI is another major focus of the suite. "You can't use the system without using business intelligence," Ellison said. The application allowed the user to bring up a dashboard showing which order manager was responsible for the particular transaction, and then begin an instant-messaging conversation with him directly from the tool.

In a demonstration, a pair of Oracle executives showed how the system alerted one user that a particular shipment had been delayed. In turn, the order manager was able to search for less critical orders and reroute them to fulfill the first one. "We tell you what you need to know, what you need to do, and we tell you how to do it," Ellison said. While Oracle "definitely has the capability to deliver this as SaaS, it's really up to them to figure out if they want to enter [that market] large-scale," Wang added. Ellison's presentation proved that "Fusion apps are real," said Ray Wang, a partner with the analyst firm Altimeter Group. In some product areas, such as talent management, "they can't compete without the SaaS option," he said. In a presentation Tuesday, on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) vendor and Oracle rival Salesforce.com compared multitenancy to an office building, where individual tenants share the overall infrastructure but customize their office spaces.

SaaS applications are different from straight application hosting, because they use a "multitenant" architecture wherein customers share a single instance of an application but their data is kept private from other customers. Oracle "will definitely" offer a hosted version of Fusion Applications, although it remains to be seen exactly how their SaaS strategy for the software plays out, Wang said. They're playing catch-up." Meanwhile, the work ahead of companies looking to adopt Fusion Applications sooner rather than later is "not trivial," said Floyd Teter, head of the Oracle Applications Users Group's Fusion Council, which has been educating group members about the upcoming applications release. When Fusion Applications arrive, they will also raise the competitive stakes between Oracle and its main rival, SAP. But SAP spokesman Saswato Das dismissed Oracle's announcement. "Basically, our Business Suite 7 is the most comprehensive and flexible suite of applications on the market," Das said. "Oracle has been talking about Fusion for a long time, and our suite is available now. One key step customers should take is to catalogue their application customizations and determine which ones could be retired, Teter said. "A lot of us have done a lot of custom things. The skill set now is more Java and specifically [Java Enterprise Edition]. You also better have some knowledge of JavaScript." In addition, Fusion Applications rely on Oracle's JDeveloper IDE (integrated development environment), rather than other Java development tools like Eclipse.

If you're a long-term Oracle customer, it's easy to lose track." Fusion Applications will also require some companies to acquire new development skills, Teter said. "A lot of us run a lot of customizations through MOD PL_SQL. That's going to be gone. For many companies, there will be plenty of time to plan, since the first version of Fusion Applications won't include certain functional areas. In the meantime, we'll continue to stay current on EBS." But Teter said the vendor's work on Fusion has produced impressive results, particularly in regards to user experience. The lack of manufacturing has prompted the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, which uses E-Business Suite, to wait for a future version, said Teter, who is a project manager at the lab. "When I get a full-functionality replacement, we'll look at it. Earlier in his keynote, Ellison turned to Oracle's recently announced Exadata 2 appliance for data warehousing and transaction processing.

Exadata 2 uses Sun hardware, while the original machine, announced at last year's OpenWorld show, used Hewlett-Packard iron. He claimed the machine widely outperforms and is much less expensive than competing technologies, such as from IBM, calling it "the fastest computer that has ever been built to run data warehousing applications." "This system will outperform any of the competition," he said. Oracle is in the process of buying Sun Microsystems but the deal is on hold while European officials conduct an antitrust review. Ellison temporarily ceded the stage to California Gov. Ellison didn't discuss the acquisition during his keynote, but Sun and its officials have played an active role in this year's OpenWorld conference. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who delivered a joke-peppered talk espousing the value of technology, from biotech to the Hollywood special effects that powered his long career as an action star. "Think of Conan the Barbarian fighting the giant snake," he said, referring to his role in the 1982 film based on Robert E. Howard's tales of a legendary warrior king. "I never could have done that and look so studly without technology," he said to an eruption of laughter from the crowd.

Schwarzenegger also congratulated Ellison and Sun chairman Scott McNealy on the pending acquisition, stressing the companies' importance to California's economy. "Working together, I know the sky is the limit for you and your employees," he said.

Virtualization and iPhone jailbreaks

In all the hubbub surrounding the release of new Macs you may have missed the Windows 7 release. Well, if you're one of those people who needs Windows for work but prefers to use a Mac, maybe you do. Yeah, yeah, we're Mac users and so who cares?

In order to use Windows on your Mac you require either Apple's Boot Camp or some variety of virtualization application. The major players in this market-VMWare and Parallels-have released new versions of their applications and Rob's spent time with both. And it's just those applications that are the focus of my interview with senior editor Rob Griffiths. Tune it to hear his opinions. Apple has closed a security hole in a recent iPhone update and that's forced jailbreakers to seek other means of entry. After a word from Macworld Superguides, senior contributor, Ben Long, and I discuss the state of iPhone jailbreaking.

Ben and I talk about whether jailbreaking is safe and still worth the bother. Or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader at: http://rss.macworld.com/macworld/weblogs/mwpodcast/ You can find previous episodes of our audio podcasts at Macworld's podcasting page. Download Episode #174 AAC version (21.3 MB, 43 minutes) MP3 version (20.4 MB, 43 minutes) To subscribe to the Macworld Podcast via iTunes 4.9 or later, simply click here. Got any feedback on this podcast? You can also leave us a message at 415/520-9761 if you'd like to have your comments included in a future podcast.

Send me an e-mail or an audio comments in the form of an AAC or MP3 file. Show Notes I begin the episode with a reading of my Eight Steps to Internet Unpopularity. Rob's taken a look at both Parallels Desktop 5 and VMWare Fusion 3. He also reviewed Sun's VirtualBox 2.1.4 last spring. If you're a troll, nitpicker, endless promoter, grudge holder, or simply clueless, you'll want to give it a listen. We touched on Boot Camp, but failed to mention that, according to Apple, Snow Leopard isn't yet ready to tackle Windows 7. During my talk with Ben I mentioned that the App Store has 100,000 apps. I also plugged Ben's book, Complete Digital Photography for good reason.

I wasn't making that up. It's outstanding. This episode is sponsored by Macworld Superguides. You'll absolutely be a better shooter after reading it. Follow this link for a discount on the just-released Total Snow Leopard Superguide.

Is Facebook Prepping a New Homepage?

New tweaks to the Facebook homepage have been spotted in the wild that may make it easier to see what's going on within your network. Screenshots of the new homepage first appeared on The Next Web, and Inside Facebook. New features include improved filters for the newsfeed, a revised right-hand column and a new Publisher box reminiscent of Facebook Lite.

A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed the social network is currently testing a new homepage designs. Facebook Publisher The most obvious change of the proposed redesign is the disappearance of the "Publisher" box where you post status updates, Web links, photos, videos and events. Still, without explicit confirmation the new features should be considered rumor. Instead, you would simply have an "Update Status" button on the far right side of the news feed. News Feed Filter Where the Publisher typically sits, Facebook has placed a filter for your News Feed called 'View Top News.' The new filter looks like it functions similarly to the 'Comments' link now sitting in the left-hand column of your Facebook homepage. There are no screen shots showing how this button works or if it contains the same functionality as the Publisher, but I would assume it would do the same job.

Next to the top news filters is a title that looks like it alternates between headlines like 'Evening News' and 'Recent Stories' depending on the time of day you're viewing it. Although the new filter is just a minor tweak, this may be the first visible sign of FriendFeed-like features on Facebook. The central placement of the top news filter may make it a more popular feature by helping users keep tabs on any Facebook activity they may have missed. As Mashable points out, the new filter is similar to FriendFeed's Best of Day feature. This brings the 'Events' feature closer to the top of the page making it easier to see upcoming birthdays, parties and other events within your network.

Right-Hand Column Another interesting tweak is the removal of the 'Highlights' section in the right hand column. This is a welcome change since it moves more useful information to a place where you might actually see it. Facebook's Dark Past with Redesigns Until Facebook makes an announcement about new features, it's hard to know what new redesigns users will see. It's interesting to note that this tweak would make the Facebook home page closer to the failed redesign that Facebook users revolted against back in March. It should also be noted that the rumored tweaks look similar to features found in Facebook Lite, which makes me wonder if this just isn't a revision of that format. When Facebook caved to its user base earlier this year over a significant homepage redesign, I thought the social network made a huge mistake.

Of course, even if Facebook rolls out some new homepage features, there's no guarantee they'll stick around. I, for one, actually like the failed redesign, and the hodgepodge revision we ended up with had some serious flaws, like the poor placement of the 'Events' section. If users revolt once more, which I'm sure they will, Facebook should grow a pair and stick to its redesign plans.

Judge says TD Ameritrade's proposed security fixes not enough

A federal judge's rejection of a proposed settlement by TD Ameritrade Inc. in a data breach lawsuit marks the second time in recent months that a court has weighed in on what it considers to be basic security standards for protecting data. In September 2007, Ameritrade announced that the names, addresses, phone numbers and trading information of potentially all of its more than 6 million retail and institutional customers at that time had been compromised by an intrusion into one of its databases. U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco yesterday denied final approval of a settlement that had been proposed by TD Ameritrade in May to settle claims stemming from a 2007 breach that exposed more than 6 million customer records . In arriving at his decision, Walker said the court didn't find the proposed settlement to be "fair, reasonable or adequate." Rather than benefit those directly affected by the breach, Ameritrade's proposed settlement is designed largely to benefit the company, Walker wrote in his 13-page ruling. The stolen information was later used to spam its customers.

The company also offered to retain the services of an analytics form to find out whether any of the data that had been compromised in the breach had been used for identity theft purposes. As part of an effort to settle claims arising from that incident, Ameritrade this May said it would retain an independent security expert to conduct penetration tests of its networks to look for vulnerabilities. The company also said it would give affected customers a one-year subscription for antivirus and antispam software. He described the additional security measures that Ameritrade proposed in the settlement as "routine practices" that any reputable company should be taking anyway. It was these offers that the judge dismissed as too meager.

Penetration tests provide a reliable way for companies to detect the sort of security weaknesses that led to the Ameritrade breach, Walker said. The two "very temporary fixes do not convince the court that the company has corrected or will address the security of client data in any serious way, let alone provide discernable benefits," he noted. But "as a large company that deals in sensitive personal information, penetration and data breach tests should be routine practices of TD Ameritrade's department that handles information security," he wrote. A TD Ameritrade spokeswoman said the company would provide its response to the judge's ruling soon. In August, the federal court for the Northern District of Illinois, denied a request by Citizens Financial Bank to dismiss a negligence claim brought against it by a couple. The case is the latest to illustrate a growing willingness by courts around the country to consider claims of negligence and breach of contract brought by individuals against companies for failing to protect sensitive data.

The two had claimed that Citizens' failure to implement two-factor user-authentication measures had resulted in the theft of more than $26,000 from their home equity line of credit. Such rulings are relatively rare in consumer lawsuits against companies that suffer data breaches involving the potential compromise of credit card data and personal information. The judge hearing the case allowed the claim to move forward, saying there was a reasonable basis to show that the bank had not moved quickly enough to implement stronger user authentication measures as it should have. Until recently, courts have tended to reject such lawsuits mainly on the grounds that consumers suffer little financial harm from such breaches. A case before the Maine Supreme Court is testing whether consumers can seek restitution from merchants for the time and effort involved in changing payment cards and bank accounts after a data breach. They have also held that consumers can't seek damages for any potential injury that could stem from any future ID theft that might result from such breaches.

Budget cuts could increase server failures, warns Gartner

ORLANDO - Despite an improving economy , companies aren't moving quickly replace servers, PCs and printers, which will likely cause an increase in failure rates over the next two years, according to Gartner Inc. He added that the number of delayed replacements should reach 10% of all servers by 2010. As a result, Sondergaard said, IT operations "are going to have to start to plan for the impact of increased equipment failure rates." Gartner's hardware forecast was the starkest indication of the cumulative impact of IT budget cutbacks. In round numbers, the scheduled replacement of some three million servers worldwide, or about 3% of all servers, has been delayed, Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's global head of research, said today at the research firm's Symposium/ITxpo 2009 conference here. For example, recent outages at some service providers provide at least the appearance of growing equipment problems. in some recent service provider outages.

Sondergaard said that enterprise IT spending worldwide is expected to decline by about 6.8% this year, and won't return to 2008 levels until 2012. "The IT market is exiting its worst year ever," he added. Budget cuts are expected to continue. Gartner estimates that 2009 worldwide enterprise IT spending will total some $2.3 trillion compared to $2.5 trillion in 2008. Randy George, information services manager, at the Osceola County Schools in Florida, said the time for replacing the department's main computer system is fast approaching. The IBM server is four years old, and five years is an ideal replacement point, said George. George has been meeting a vendor about upgrading the IBM System I, "but whether we will have the funds for it is questionable," he said. It's not hardware reliability that's a concern, but its ability to keep up with growing demands.

The school system has 53,000 students and some 7,000 employees, he added. "There have been a couple of times where we have peaked its capacity," said George. The school district has been adding more applications to the System I while the demands on the hardware also grow. If system capacity isn't increased, then "the users may just have to live with a little less service than what they are use to." Gene Hall, Gartner CEO, said that while IT managers are planning for growth, "they don't expect to see everything back to normal in 2010," he said.

Privacy researcher pans Netflix’s contest sequel

Winners of the Netflix Prize for boosting Netflix's movie recommendation engine barely had a chance to start spending their $1 million prize before controversy erupted over a second contest. Ohm writes that Netflix would be taking too big a risk with customer privacy given the sort of demographic and behavioral data it would need to share with contest participants: "Netflix should cancel this new, irresponsible contest, which it has dubbed Netflix Prize 2. Researchers have known for more than a decade that gender plus ZIP code plus birthdate uniquely identifies a significant percentage of Americans (87% according to Latanya Sweeney's famous study.) True, Netflix plans to release age not birthdate, but simple arithmetic shows that for many people in the country, gender plus ZIP code plus age will narrow their private movie preferences down to at most a few hundred people. Privacy researcher Paul Ohm, an associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School, posted a recommendation of his own regarding the Netflix Prize 2 on the blog Freedom to Tinker: He called on Netflix to nix the project.

Netflix needs to understand the concept of 'information entropy': even if it is not revealing information tied to a single person, it is revealing information tied to so few that we should consider this a privacy breach." Slideshow: Networkiest movies of all-time  Meanwhile, AT&T Labs-Research, Yahoo Research and other members of the Bellkor's Pragmatic Chaos team are celebrating their win in the initial 3-year-long Netflix Prize contest. Netflix shared data with researchers for that contest too, and despite its efforts to do so without compromising customer privacy, researchers did find that piecing together identities from something as seemingly innocuous as movie preferences wasn't as difficult as first thought. They earned $1 million in beating out 40,000 other teams from 186 countries to improve upon Netflix's Cinematch system for predicting which movies customers will like or dislike. Ohm argues that disclosing data such as gender, ZIP codes and ages makes people much too easy to identify. Follow Bob Brown on Twitter Netflix says in its blog that Netflix Prize 2 "will focus more on helping customers early in their experience with Netflix, drawing on many more sources of data to try to find just the right movies." For more on network research, follow our AlphaDoggs blog.