Oracle unveils Database 11g, bares CRM On Demand gains in AsPac

Over a real-time conference call covered by the international IT press, Oracle recently introduced Oracle Database 11g, the latest release of the world’s most popular database.

With more than 400 features, 15 million test hours, and 36,000 person-months of development, Oracle Database 11g is the most innovative and highest quality software product Oracle has ever announced.

“Oracle Database 11g, built on 30 years of design experience, delivers the next generation of enterprise information management,” said Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president for database server technologies of Oracle.

“Our customers are facing challenges of rapid data growth, increased data integration, and data connectivity cost pressures. Oracle Database 10g pioneered grid computing, and more than half of Oracle customers have moved to that release,” he said.

Mendelsohn added: “Oracle Database 11g delivers the key features our customers have asked for to accelerate broad adoption and growth of Oracle grids, representing real innovation that addresses real challenges.”

Oracle Database 11g was designed to help organizations take control of their enterprise information, gain better business insight, and quickly and confidently adapt to an increasingly changing competitive environment.

The new release extends Oracle’s unique database clustering, data center automation, and workload management capabilities.

Database 11g features advanced self-management and automation features to help organizations meet service level agreements. With organizations facing regular database and OS upgrades, and hardware and system changes, Database 11g uses Oracle Real Application Testing, making it the first database to help customers manage cost-effective changes to their IT environment quickly.

Database 11g’s Oracle Data Guard, on the other hand, enables customers to use their standby database to improve performance in their production environments as well as provide protection from system failures and site-wide disasters.

Oracle Database 11g also has significant new data partitioning and compression capabilities for cost-effective information lifecycle and storage management. Compression ratios of 2x to 3x or more for all data can be achieved with the new advanced compression capabilities of Database 11g.

Oracle has consistently led the industry in protecting database applications from planned and unplanned downtime. Oracle Database 11g was designed to continue this lead by making it easier for administrators to meet their users’ availability expectations.

A new Data Recovery Advisor helps administrators significantly reduce recovery downtime by automating problem investigation, intelligently determining recovery plan and handling multiple failure situations.

Other key features of Database 11g are Oracle Fast Files, the next-generation capability for storing large objects (LOBs) such as images, large text objects or advanced data types; faster XML; Transparent Encryption; Embedded OLAP Cubes, which are enhanced to behave as materialized views in the database to allow developers to use industry standard SQL for data query; and Connection Pooling and Query Result Caches.

In a separate event, Oracle also announced that its Siebel CRM (Customer Relationship Management) On Demand business is gaining momentum in the region.

Companies of all sizes in the Asia-Pacific are using Siebel CRM On Demand to centralize vital customer information and sales data in order to gain real-time insight into customer interactions and gain significant business value.

In addition to established CRM On Demand customers in the Asia-Pacific, Oracle also recently secured a host of new customers from Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand.

Oracle expects to see continuing momentum in its “on demand” CRM business in Asia-Pacific. Among the key drivers of this business are comprehensive functionality in Siebel CRM On Demand Release 14 — the latest version of the product — to meet customer requirements; a significant ramp-up in joint go-to-market activity with key partners; and continued focus on delivering greater value to its customers through unique value propositions such as Siebel CRM On Demand Private Edition and Partner Licensing Option.

Siebel CRM On Demand delivers the industry’s most complete hosted CRM solution. Based on more than 12 years of CRM expertise with more than 4.6 million CRM users and 5,000 CRM customers globally, CRM On Demand delivers the most comprehensive set of sales, marketing and service automation capabilities, with virtually no upfront IT investment at a predictable cost.

“Oracle continues to extend its CRM market leadership and widen the functionality gap over its smaller competitors, especially in the area of CRM On Demand,” said Simon Banks, director for CRM On Demand in the Asia-Pacific.

“We are continuing our rapid pace of innovation with 14 releases of Siebel CRM On Demand in just three and a half years. The latest version combines the industry’s most comprehensive CRM functionality with next-generation usability, advanced customization capabilities and comprehensive integration to increase end-user productivity,” Banks added.

Siebel CRM On Demand Release 14 starts at $70 per user per month.

The CRM market in the Asia-Pacific is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18.9 percent between 2006 and 2011 and reach $846.4 million in total software revenue by 2011.