APPLICATIONS UNLIMITED
Fusion. More than 34,000 customers use this technology
stack independent of our applications, another 15,000 use
it with our applications, and it represents a billion dollars
annually as a business for Oracle—and that’s growing as
much as 80 percent year to year. Every single area of middleware in which we have products is rated as a leading product
set. It’s not just that this technology works with our applications; it is absolutely best-of-breed in the market. <>
Oracle Fusion Middleware, Defined
Oracle Fusion Middleware is a comprehensive family of products ranging from application development
tools and integration and business
process management solutions to
business intelligence, collaboration,
and identity management.
Oracle Fusion Middleware helps
drive business growth and innovation by providing the ability to
rapidly change business processes
within applications or integrate new
systems and business processes
with existing applications.
With data spread across many
disparate systems, delivering accurate, unified information is a challenge. Oracle Fusion Middleware
provides the tools to unify your
business intelligence across all your
enterprise applications.
Oracle Fusion Middleware also
brings together the essential components of collaborative productivity,
including secure Web conferencing,
content management, e-mail, voice
mail, and an integrated calendar.
Oracle Fusion Middleware is spe-
cifically designed to assist you in
meeting regulatory mandates in a
sustained, repeatable way so you
can minimize risk, control spending, and enforce better financial and
IT discipline. In addition, through
secure access—both internal and
external—Oracle Fusion Middleware
helps you implement end-to-end
policy enforcement and holistically
manage all risks. And, because it’s
modular, you purchase only what
you need when you need it.
Getting Ahead of Web 2.0
Paul Pedrazzi, the founder of AppsLab, on connecting employees and getting the job done
Ten years ago, employees used the tools and services that
employers installed for them to get their jobs done. Today, they
still use what they are given, but many are downloading and
installing nonapproved applications or signing up for outside
services. The reason: corporations aren’t keeping up with Web
2.0 technologies that can help employees get their jobs done
more quickly. The result: employers have less control than they
did in the past, but even more important, they’re not creating a
culture of employee loyalty and satisfaction.
“Employees are trying to get their jobs done within the
organization, and they don’t have the tools they need. Either
the tools don’t exist, they can’t be found, or in some cases they
are just not usable enough. Whatever the reason, employees
feel stuck,” explains Paul Pedrazzi, the founder of Oracle’s
AppsLab. “So they’re saying, ‘I need to get this job done. I’m
going to go use this other tool or service that’s available, and
I’m going to get my job done.’ Employees are not doing it to
be malicious, to break IT rules, or to be hip with Web 2.0.
They’re doing it because they want to be more productive. I
think that’s the perspective that executives should have.”
RIDING AHEAD OF THE WAVE
Social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn help
people connect with each other, while tools like wikis, blogs,
and other collaboration and document-sharing products help
share thoughts and ideas. These solutions are seeing expo-
nential rates of user adoption, and not surprisingly, people are
bringing them into the workplace—with or without permission.
Today, Oracle employees don’t have to go outside the firewall for their own Web 2.0 applications. Oracle AppsLab,
an internal think tank designed to explore and implement
consumer-driven Web 2.0 technologies in the corporate world,
is delivering the apps to their desktops. For example, Oracle
AppsLab has launched a new internal site called Idea Factory.
“Anyone can post an idea, such as a product feature or a way
to improve an internal process to the site. Other Oracle staffers can then read those ideas and rate them. They can also add
comments or share their own ideas,” says Pedrazzi.
“The power is in the transparency. Great ideas are now visible
to the 65,000-plus people at Oracle. Now they can see it and
say, ‘That’s a good idea, but it’d be better if we added this other
element to it.’ So the idea grows and gets better,” Pedrazzi says.
“In a typical month, we have more than 15,000 visitors reading,
commenting, and posting their ideas; but even more importantly, people are excited about making a difference,” he adds.
The second recent addition to the Oracle internal community—Connect—takes social networking into the corporate
space. So now Oracle employees can stay connected to their
internal network of people, view and share extended contact
information, provide kudos to each other, and keep track of the
ideas and projects their colleagues are working on. But unlike
MySpace or Facebook, everything resides in a secure environ-
