Skechers’ management is growing the company’s
line of technical and athletic footwear and expanding
internationally—and Oracle solutions are proving to be
a good fit. Building Oracle financial, supply chain, and
business intelligence solutions on the Oracle Database,
Skechers IT is poised to help the company take a bold
step in the global footwear industry. —By Monica Mehta
18 Stepping IT Up
Cover: Bob Adler
EDITOR’S NOTE
5 ANOTHER CHAIN UNBOUND
Delivering products to market faster. Holding less
in inventory. Removing steps in complex global
processes. Oracle customers are breaking free from
traditional supply chains. —By Aaron Lazenby
LUMINARIES
6 ENGINEERING CHANGE
How smart IT solutions can remove inefficiencies from
the product development process—and reduce the
time it takes to get to market. —By Swapan Jha
7 FORWARD THINKING
INSIDE ORACLE
11 SECURE FOUNDATIONS
Oracle Chief Security Officer Mary Ann Davidson
talks about protecting valuable intellectual property
from hackers. Plus: the Oracle Exastack platform for
independent software vendors, and a powerful new
processor for Oracle’s Sun hardware.
LEADING STRATEGIES
14 CORE COMPETENCIES
Dell CIO Robin Johnson helped
the company retire 6,000 internal
applications—and save as much as
US$350 million. —By Aaron Lazenby
GLOBAL MANUFACTURING
27 COOL CUSTOMER
IT strategists at Tecumseh use Oracle applications to
consolidate financial and supply chain data, improving
demand forecasting and creating more-efficient
end-to-end operations. —By Fred Sandsmark
FORECASTING DEMAND
31 CLEAR CONNECTION
Oracle-based systems helped
Plantronics executives understand
global demand and streamline
manufacturing and delivery of products
to reach new markets and weather
economic volatility. —By Minda Zetlin
ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS
35 KEEPING AN EDGE
Principal Financial Group pilots a cloud-based Oracle
Fusion Human Capital Management project to provide
new insight to global HR managers. —By Marta Bright
HIGHER EDUCATION
38 SOA WITH SMARTS
University of Virginia bypasses expensive
customizations to deliver SOA-based applications that
meet users’ needs—and prepares the IT department
for the future adoption of Oracle Fusion Applications.
—By Alan Joch
HARDWARE PERFORMANCE
41 ORACLE TAKES IN SOME SUN
Oracle’s IT department basks in great results with Sun
servers and storage in the datacenter.
—By Monica Mehta
MANAGEMENT STRATEG Y
45 WHAT IS SUCCESS?
Why business and IT leaders need
to agree on a definition of success
if they want to deliver results to their
customers. —By Minda Zetlin
QUESTIONS AND @NSWERS
48 PERFECT ATTENDANCE
Oracle Applications Users Group Executive Vice
President Bonnie Johnson shares her veteran tips for
attending Oracle OpenWorld.
