Targeting Microsoft’s and IBM’s dominance in the enterprise collaboration market, Oracle Thursday trumpeted the immediate availability of Oracle Collaboration Suite Release 2, boasting new real-time Web conferencing capabilities as well as other enhancements.
“Release 2’s focus is real-time,” Sunir Kapoor, vice president of Oracle’s Enterprise Messaging & Collaboration Business, told
internetnews.com.
Kapoor also cited the new suite’s compliance with the growing host of
regulations that firms must deal with, from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to HIPAA
to the USA Patriot Act and European Data Privacy Act. Kapoor said
compliance with new regulations was a priority with Release 2, and he noted
that the process has been eased by the suite’s technical structure, which
has been unabashedly constructed around the company’s Oracle9i Application
Server and Oracle9i Database.
“There’s one repository,” Kapoor said. “That’s the mainstay of our value
proposition.”
Because of the deep integration with Oracle’s database, the suite can offer
new features like flashback recovery in Oracle Email, which allows
Microsoft Outlook users to recover deleted messages without administrator
assistance.
“Oracle offers a common repository model for content and collaboration,
which means that for the first time, all of the infrastructure tools used
to manage structured data, and the underlying skills related to database
administration and storage management, can be applied to unstructured data
stores,” said Dan Rasmus, senior analyst with Giga Group.
Alan Wamser, Systems Analyst II at Hayes Medical, said that capability was
a sure selling point for his firm.
“Consolidation of systems was a priority for us,” Wamser said. “Oracle’s
strategic approach to collaboration just makes sense, and they are the only
company presenting this option right now. By leveraging the Oracle9i
Database and Oracle9i Application Server, we’re not only increasing the
security and scalability of our systems, we’re also reducing our total cost
of ownership.”
Referring to Microsoft Exchange Server and IBM Lotus, Kapoor said, “The
alternative is fragmented stacks.”
That, he argued, will help Oracle capture Microsoft customers as they face
the prospect of migration to Exchange Server 2003 (formerly known as
Titanium) and the follow-up version, code-named Kodiak.
“When they start considering the cost of migration, it’s expensive,” Kapoor
said, noting that firms face costs of $100 to $400 per seat just for the
migration. Oracle is offering up Release 2 with a perpetual license for the
entire suite at $60 per named user and an annual license at $15 per named
user. That includes all components of the suite and limited run-time
licenses for Oracle9i Database and Oracle9i Application Server. Firms that
just want Oracle’s new Oracle Web Conferencing as a stand-alone can obtain
it for $45 per named user. Also, unlike solutions offered by competing
firms, Oracle said an Oracle Collaboration Suite or Oracle Web Conferencing
license is only necessary for the initiator of the Web conference, not for
all the participants.
The big ticket item in the new version is Oracle Web Conferencing, which
Oracle promised will allow customers to reduce operating expenses,
consolidate real-time systems and offer a slew of real-time capabilities
like document presentation and sharing, co-browsing, whiteboarding, chat,
voice streaming and secure storage and playback of Web conferences .
Overall, the suite integrates horizontal applications like email,
voicemail, calendar, files and search, and also offers collaborative
application services which allow developers to extend collaboration within
other applications. The new version adds custom workflow support in Oracle
Files, allowing companies to create workflows that match specific business
processes for managing documents. It also provides directory enhancements
in Oracle Voice Mail and integration with the Outlook client that lets
users configure their voicemail through Outlook. Oracle said it also
enhanced resource scheduling and added a standards-based SyncML server in
Oracle Calendar to provide support for a multitude of mobile devices.
