Oracle News Desk

Judge Finds Google Copied More Java Code than Jury Said

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:15:00 EDT

District Court Judge William Alsup, who refused last week to decide whether Google had fairly used the Java IP a jury said Android infringed, had no trouble Friday deciding that the jury made a mistake in finding Google only copied nine lines of Java’s rangeCheck code as well as infringing the sequence, structure and organization of 37 Java APIs. In a judgment as a matter of law the good judge said Google directly copied eight other Java files and that it wasn’t a petty little thing. FOSS Patents had said when it came out that the jury’s verdict was odd since “there are code files in there that are much larger than the rangeCheck function, and infringement was so clear that it shouldn’t even have been put before a jury.” The judge effectively said the blog was right.

Cloud Expo New York: Building a Private, Public, or Hybrid Cloud?

Fri, 11 May 2012 03:00:00 EDT

Whatever your course, meet Cloud complexity head on with a unified approach to handle extreme performance, reliability, availability, and simplicity. In her session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Ayalla Goldschmidt, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Oracle, will reveal the underpinnings for the Oracle Public Cloud as well as technology best-practices for developing private and hybrid cloud architectures using Oracle’s Engineered Systems together with Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle Fusion Middleware is a complete array of technologies enabling you to embrace the paradigm shift of cloud computing and take full advantage of the cost savings and improved agility they promise. Together with Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata provide the world’s first and only integrated engineered system, which provide enterprises the best possible foundation for running enterprise applications with the performance, elasticity, reliability, and scale characteristics expected for cloud-based applications.

Google Demands New Java API Trial

Thu, 10 May 2012 08:45:00 EDT

Google, as expected, has put in its papers asking the court to declare a mistrial because the jury only decided it infringed 37 Java APIs in building Android and didn’t decide whether that infringement constituted so-called “fair use” of the code. So it wants a whole new trial “as to both infringement and fair use as to Oracle’s claim that Google is liable for infringement of its copyright on the structure, sequence, and organization of the 37 API packages.” Google claims the two issues – infringement and fair use – are “opposite sides of the same coin” and “indivisible.” It’s standing on its Seventh Amendment rights to trial by jury and a unanimous decision on liability, using its “indivisible” contention to oppose a partial retrial in front of a new jury. Oracle has yet to reply to Google’s “indivisible” argument but it wants the judge to decide the fair use question in one of those handy judgments as a matter of law (JMOLs) that both Google and Oracle asked for before.

Judge Refuses To Decide ‘Fair Use’ in Java Trial

Thu, 10 May 2012 06:15:00 EDT

Judge William Alsup Wednesday refused to decide whether Google had fairly used the Java IP a jury found Android infringed Monday. There are, you see, circumstances that allow copyrighted work to be copied without the owner’s consent such as creating something new that advances the public interest but the jury deadlocked on that issue and returned only a partial verdict. Oracle hoped the judge would intervene and hand down a judgment in its favor as a matter of law since Google’s liability depends on it but he refused. He reportedly said, “I don’t think it would be right to rule in favor of Oracle” at a hearing Wednesday. His decision suggests that Google will get the new trial it’s asked for. “I hate to even contemplate the idea of another trial,” the judge was quoted as saying, “but if it comes to that, that’s the way it will have to be.” It’s unclear whether a new jury would be asked to decide infringement as well as fair use like Google wants. Judge Alsup also reportedly refused to throw out the jury verdict that Google cribbed nine lines of Java code. He is expected to rule on the copyrightability of APIs and of course he has to rule on Google’s motion for a mistrial. The existing jury is currently hearing the patent infringement phase of the case and has heard from folks like Android creator Andy Rubin as well as other engineers.

Google and Android Infringed Oracle Copyrights

Tue, 08 May 2012 10:00:00 EDT

After days of deliberating, a San Francisco jury Monday found that Google and its Android operating system infringed the Java copyrights now held by Oracle. However, the jury remained as deadlocked as it was last Friday over the issue of whether Google made so-called “fair use” of the IP. It couldn’t come to a unanimous decision on that question. Google denied all the allegations and claimed it developed Android from scratch and that the parts of Java it did use aren’t covered by copyright. After the verdict was read Google moved for a mistrial – which would mean a whole new trial and possibly new evidence – while the judge accepted the partial verdict and forged ahead. The partial verdict says Google infringed the sequence, structure and organization of 37 Java APIs by using those APIs in Android. FOSS Patents figures that was the most important decision the jury made. The blog also figures there’s really no “fair use” case here and is critical of the instructions given to the jury about fair use.

Judge Refuses to Decide Oracle-HP Case

Mon, 07 May 2012 08:15:00 EDT

As much as the trial judge in the case between HP and Oracle over Itanium would like them to settle, Reuters reported an Oracle lawyer saying it wouldn’t happen. No surprise there. The judge the other day refused to settle the matter himself by finding for one side or another. Probably a smart move considering it would only set off an appeal. His 20-page decision the other day not to decide suggests that Intel may ultimately be forced to divulge financial information about the Itanium it’s refused to turn over for discovery; and allows that Oracle may have a case given the “puffery” of HP’s public statements about Itanium’s roadmap extending until 2017 – Oracle claims it lost $120 million in service and support profits to HP’s “deceptive scheme” – and HP, which has apparently provided some secret sealed documents about Oracle private assurances to continue to support Itanium, may have a point about relying on such promises. HP claims damages of $4 billion in lost profits.

Cloud Expo New York: The Java EE 7 Platform - Developing for the Cloud

Mon, 07 May 2012 03:00:00 EDT

The focus of Java EE 7 is on the cloud, and specifically it aims to bring Platform-as-a-Service providers and application developers together so that portable applications can be deployed on any cloud infrastructure and reap all its benefits in terms of scalability, elasticity, multitenancy, etc. The existing specifications in the platform such as JPA, Servlets, EJB, and others will be updated to meet these requirements. Java EE 7 continues the ease of development push that characterized prior releases by bringing further simplification to enterprise development. It also adds new, important APIs such as the REST client API in JAX-RS 2.0 and the long awaited Concurrency Utilities for Java EE API. Expression Language 3.0 and Java Message Service 2.0 will undergo an extreme makeover to align with the improvements in the Java language. There are plenty of improvements to several other components. Newer web standards like HTML 5 and Web Sockets will be embraced to build modern web applications.

Cloud Expo New York: Borderless Applications in the Cloud

Sat, 05 May 2012 16:00:00 EDT

As virtualization adoption progresses beyond server consolidation, this is also transforming how enterprise applications are deployed and managed in an agile environment. The traditional method of business-critical application deployment where administrators have to contend with an array of unrelated tools, custom scripts to deploy and manage applications, OS and VM instances into a fast changing cloud computing environment can no longer scale effectively to achieve response time and desired efficiency. Oracle VM and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder allow applications, associated components, deployment metadata, management policies and best practices to be encapsulated into ready-to-run VMs for rapid, repeatable deployment and ease of management.

Cloud Expo New York: Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Deployment

Sat, 05 May 2012 12:30:00 EDT

According to a 2011 survey by the Independent Oracle User Group, over 50% of Oracle’s customers have deployed or are considering deploying private clouds. Most private clouds today support non-production workloads because enterprises are unable to deploy mission-critical applications in their private cloud. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Anand Akela, Sr. Principal Product Director at Oracle, will discuss how the same Oracle technology that powers the Oracle Public Cloud enables you to deploy mission-critical applications in your cloud.

Oracle Wants At Least $777 Million from SAP in Retrial

Fri, 04 May 2012 08:00:00 EDT

Oracle wants at least $776.7 million in damages from SAP when the pair returns to court July 18 to retry Oracle’s copyright infringement case against its German rival and SAP’s now defunct third-party maintenance subsidiary TomorrowNow. A jury last year awarded Oracle a record $1.3 billion. The judge thought the award was way too fabulous and knocked it down 80% to a mere $272 million, saying it wasn’t supported by the evidence. Oracle refused to take the money, which is how it got a new trial. It wants that $1.3 billion back and told the judge it has a right to pursue what it claims are actual damages based on the “fair market value of the rights infringed.” It’s asked to be allowed to present evidence of what a hypothetical license would have been worth had it been willing to give TomorrowNow a license to the massive amount of IP it illegally downloaded off of Oracle’s servers. Oracle used that trick the last time through and it paid off.

First Decision in Java Trial Goes to the Jury

Wed, 02 May 2012 07:45:00 EDT

Two weeks after the trial started, the first part of the three-part Oracle case against Google went to the jury mid-day Monday. Among other things the poor jury – one of whom reportedly didn’t want to continue but the judge persuaded her to – has to struggle with are the judge’s 19 pages of instructions, instructions neither side appreciated. A pity judges aren’t required to make instructions comprehensible to the average juror instead of an eventual appeals court. This jury has to decide if Google infringed Oracle’s Java copyrights, or rather parts of Java, to wit, the structure, sequence and organization of 37 Java APIs – as the judge instructed them – in developing Android and then whether Google made “fair use” of the widgetry and thereby advanced the public interest by adding something new and different to the whole megillah – and not necessarily something profitable – two separate decisions.

‘Google Totally Slimed Sun’: Gosling

Tue, 01 May 2012 08:15:00 EDT

After Sun’s ex-CEOs Scott McNealy and Jonathan Schwartz testified for and against Oracle, respectively, last week at the Oracle v Google infringement trial, Java creator James Gosling, who hasn’t been able to hold a job at either Oracle or Google for more than a few months, waded into the discussion over the weekend on Oracle’s side. “Just because Sun didn’t have patent suits in our genetic code doesn’t mean we didn’t feel wronged,” he wrote on his web site. “While I have differences with Oracle, in this case they are in the right. Google totally slimed Sun. We were all really disturbed, even Jonathan: he just decided to put on a happy face and tried to turn lemons into lemonade, which annoyed a lot of folks at Sun.”

Judge Plans to Tell Jury Java APIs Are Copyrighted

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:00:00 EDT

Judge Alsup – who really wishes Oracle and Google had settled so he wouldn’t have to hear the Java trial – is proposing to decide whether APIs are copyrightable himself and not have the jury wade into that legal brier patch. However, he is also proposing to instruct the jury that the structure, sequence and organization of the asserted Java APIs are copyrightable, which between you, me and those angels dancing on the head of a pin over there is the same as saying the APIs are copyrighted. The good judge is going to wait for the jury to come home with a verdict on whether Google infringed the Java APIs – and the overwhelming evidence presented at trial suggests it did – before he says whether or not they are copyrightable and springs that tiger out of its cage.

McNealy & Schwartz Testify for Opposite Sides in Java Trial

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:30:00 EDT

Former Sun CEO Scott McNealy, an off-again-on-again buddy of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, testified for Oracle Thursday in its infringement suit against Google and Android. His surprise appearance – in the middle of Google’s laying out its copyright defense – was used to scotch testimony given minutes before by his pony-tailed successor at Sun Jonathan Schwartz who testified for Google. (It’s just so utterly Sun.) As in all jury trials the decision could come down to personalities. From the industry’s point-of-view it’s the first – and long-overdue – time McNealy has publicly butted heads with Schwartz whose appointment as Sun CEO is at least as unfathomable as why HP ever let Mark Hurd go.

A Pragmatic Journey to the Cloud at Cloud Expo New York

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:15:00 EDT

As enterprise adoption of cloud computing accelerates, organizations must have a strategy and roadmap for moving to the cloud. Faced with different options including building a private cloud, subscribing to public clouds, or leveraging a hybrid cloud, organizations need a rational and pragmatic approach. In his Focus Lunch Keynote at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Rex Wang, Vice President of Product Marketing at Oracle, will explore the emerging trends in cloud computing and offers best practices for how organizations can successfully navigate a journey to the cloud.

Judge Bars Oracle’s Newly Validated Patent from Java Trial

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:01:00 EDT

The judge in the Java trial told Oracle late Wednesday that it can’t assert the patent that the Patent and Trademark Office just said was valid against Google. It’s too late, he said, although the patent part of the case won’t start until next week or whenever the jury decides the trademark infringement part it’s been hearing since April 16.

Knoa Software Launches EPM 7.0 for Oracle Siebel CRM

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:01:00 EDT

Knoa Software, a provider of end-user experience and performance management software, on Tuesday announced the availability of Knoa Experience and Performance Manager (EPM) 7.0 for Oracle(R) Siebel(R) CRM. This latest platform offers Oracle Siebel CRM users detailed reports and metrics that help identify, prioritize and take action on end-user experience and performance issues impacting adoption and effectiveness. With Knoa EPM 7.0 for Oracle Siebel CRM, there is immediate data available to the support teams on potential errors, both system and user, that can be leveraged to assist in resolving issues. The impact is substantial and immediate. Both the quantity and length of phone calls to resolve the user issues can be reduced, often by 10 to 20 percent or more, with profound positive financial impact, improvement in productivity and increases in user satisfaction.

PTO Strengthens Oracle’s Java Case

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:30:00 EDT

The US Patent and Trademark Office has reconsidered its so-called “final” rejection of one of the Java patents that Oracle claimed Google infringed and decided that nine of the patents claims are perfectly valid. Apparently Oracle got wind of the PTO’s change of mind late last week and rushed in Sunday to tell the court about. Conveniently, the claims upheld match Oracle’s to a “T” with a little to spare, and, as FOSS Patents points out, there’s nothing quite like teeth of a re-examined patent. Google, of course, is going to squawk but the way Oracle left it with the court it would only assert patents that weren’t rejected by the PTO. And here the PTO has validated one neatly ahead of the patent side of the case getting heard so it’s likely that Google will have to face charges of violating three Java patents not the whittled-away two.

Java Trial: Google Witnesses Incredibly Hazy

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:30:00 EDT

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, decked out in dark Armani duds for the trial of his landmark case against Google and Android, testified Tuesday that he had considered buying RIM or Palm to compete against Apple and its iPhone. Ultimately he decided that RIM was too expensive and Palm wasn’t competitive enough and a separate “Project Java Phone” that Oracle had started was a “bad idea.” Google’s lawyer claimed that because Oracle failed to develop its own product it’s going after Google and Android to get a piece of the action. Google CEO Larry Page, widely reported as uncomfortable on the witness stand and unable to make eye contract except with the ceiling, testified that he couldn’t remember much of anything. He appeared so evasive and said “I don’t recall” or “I’m not sure” to so many of the questions posed by Oracle’s star lawyer, David Boies, that CNBC ran the headline “Blank Page?”

An Enterprise Cloud for Business-Critical Applications at Cloud Expo NY

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:15:00 EDT

For enterprise class cloud services, companies need a broad, comprehensive and flexible platform for their applications. The Oracle Public Cloud, offering a broad set of best-in-class, integrated services that are secure, elastic, and 100% open standards-based, offers organizations choice in development and deployment of business-critical applications. In his general session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Sandeep Banerjie, Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Public Cloud, will discuss how these subscription-based services can speed your application development and deployment time, offer the flexibility of application portability, and the ease with which you can access, use, and manage them.

Integrating Big Data into Your Data Center at Cloud Expo New York

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:00:00 EDT

Weblogs, social media, smart meters, sensors and other devices generate high volumes of low density information that isn’t readily accessible in enterprise data warehouses and business intelligence applications today. But, this data can have relevant business value, especially when analyzed alongside traditional information sources. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Jean-Pierre Dijcks, Senior Principal Product Manager in Oracle’s Data Warehousing group, will outline a reference architecture for Big Data that will help you maximize the value of your Big Data implementation.

SAP to Challenge Oracle’s Database Dominance

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 07:30:00 EDT

SAP, a database neophyte, means to throw a nominal $492 million at its Hana database analytics appliance to prove that it’s a database contender – at least in-memory Big Data databases – and make Larry Ellison eat his words. During Oracle’s last earnings call Larry said SAP must be on drugs to think it could take on Oracle in databases with a security- and recovery-lacking vehicle like Hana. SAP has designs on being number two – although Microsoft and IBM might have something to say about that – so it’s going to set up a $155 million Hana Real-Time Fund, managed by SAP Ventures, for start-ups to dip into to develop real-time apps and an ecosystem for Hana’s real-time data. As of last month it had 24 start-ups leveraging the Hana platform. Whether they got any of the money is unclear.

Oracle’s Great Suit Against Google to Go to Trial

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 07:30:00 EDT

Monday April 16 is the start of what the judge has called the “World Series of IP cases,” an eight-week trial in which Oracle will seek to prove that APIs are copyrightable and that Google infringed 37 Java APIs when it spun up Android. The trick for Oracle, the judge said, will be convincing a jury that a programming language in the public domain can be infringed. Oracle, on the other hand, will be able to show the jury the now famous 2010 Tim Lindholm e-mail in which the Google engineer flatly told Google’s founders they needed to negotiate a Java license lest they infringe. All the alternatives, he said, “suck.” The judge has previously told Google this e-mail is a hot potato that could burn them.

Oracle-Google Talks Fail; Android to Go to Trial

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 08:45:00 EDT

As almost any causal bystander could have predicted, Oracle and Google couldn’t come to terms after a Pollyanna magistrate judge ordered them to try to settle their differences over Java and Android one more time last week ahead of a jury trial starting April 16. It’s just a good thing there have been no reports of Oracle co-president Safra Katz picking her teeth with the bones of Android chief Andy Rubin, both of whom were told to show up for the negotiations and presumably did. The judge sent out word Monday that “Despite their diligent efforts and those of their able counsel, the parties have reached an irreconcilable impasse in their settlement discussions” and that “no further conferences shall be convened.”

HP & Oracle Each Wants Court to Say It’s Right

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:15:00 EDT

Ahead of a May 31 trial, HP and Oracle Monday separately asked the court for a summary judgment in its favor to resolve their bruising fight over whether Oracle can legally stop supporting servers based on Intel’s Itanium chip. HP, the biggest of the few Itanium users, claims Oracle is contractually obliged to continue supporting its Itanium boxes. Oracle claims it isn’t and stopped porting its software to the architecture last year claiming the chip was secretly at end of life. Oracle’s decision caused HP sales to tank. The litigation caps the dogfight HP sparked by hiring Léo Apotheker, the former CEO of Oracle’s hereditary enemy SAP, as its CEO and bringing in one-time Oracle president and now Oracle antagonist Ray Lane as non-executive chairman.

Oracle and Google Ordered Back into Android Settlement Talks

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:00:00 EDT

Oracle and Google have been ordered back into settlement talks. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal, who tried to mediate a settlement last year over Oracle’s Java infringement beef with Google and Android, told the companies they have to sit down again before April 9, a week before the trial starts on April 16. They have to send Oracle co-president Safra Katz and Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin. The case is now pretty much an API copyright infringement case. Oracle’s patents claims having been decimated. Oracle could conceivably assert new patents in another case.

CCC Information Services Inc. Leverages Oracle Fusion Middleware

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 08:00:00 EDT

CCC Information Services Inc. has selected an Oracle Fusion Middleware-based solution to help the company realize greater efficiency in its development environment and to deliver improved performance to its installed customer base of approximately 21,000 collision repair facilities, 350 insurance companies and a range of other claims industry participants. CCC is the nation's leading provider of advanced software, workflow tools and enabling technologies to the automotive claims and collision repair industries. CCC is a customer advisor to Oracle through the Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategy Council. With Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle SOA Suite 11g, Oracle Coherence and other Oracle Fusion Middleware products, including Oracle Identity Management, Oracle JDeveloper, and Oracle WebCenter, CCC can simplify its technology environment and minimize development time, improving the company's ability to quickly deliver enhanced solutions to customers.

Oracle Bounces Back from Q2 ‘Aberration’

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:15:00 EDT

Oracle, which suffered a dodgy Q2, called that rare earnings miss and soft software showing an “aberration” when it reported its Q3 numbers Tuesday. The company came in with stronger-than-expected income, up 18% to $2.5 billion, or 49 cents a share – 62 cents in Wall Street’s language – against a tough compare, because good old fashioned software license sales neutralized weak hardware sales from its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Lately Oracle has preferred cloud buys like RightNow and Taleo. Oracle’s revenues were up 3.1% to $9 billion, again ahead of expectations. Its operating margin widened from 34.1% to 36.7%.

Updated: Oracle v Google Android Trial Set for April 16

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 11:45:00 EDT

The District Court for the Northern District of California Tuesday scheduled the Android trial weighing Oracle's infringement claims against Google for April 16. It should run eight glorious weeks. Google wanted the trial to wait until fall as originally scheduled. So Oracle got what it wanted. But on Wednesday Google's lead counsel asked for a continuance, saying he and others on Google's legal team will be occupied elsewhere and wants the trial delayed until after June 29 or at least until April 30. Of course, the judge was aware of the scheduling conflict so it might not make any difference. According to patent wars observer FOSS Patents he told Google a few hours later that the prospects of any formal motion to delay "are not great." It appears that behind the scenes he's been coordinating with other district court judges to reschedule the trials demanding the presence of Google's lead counsel et al elsewhere.

Oracle’s Case Against SAP to Be Retried in June

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 08:00:00 EST

Oracle’s copyright infringement case against SAP and TomorrowNow, its defunct third-party maintenance arm acknowledged to have ripped off petabytes of Oracle IP, will be retried starting June 18 the court ordered Tuesday. Oracle is fighting to retain the unprecedented $1.3 billion damages award it got from the jury the first time through. The judge subsequently decided Oracle only proved actual damages of $272 million and cut the jury largesse. Oracle protested and opted for a new trial. The date will change if one of Oracle’s lawyers is in court in New York on another matter on the 18th. The judge has the idea that Oracle is going to settle out-of-court.

PTO Finds Gosling Java Patent Invalid

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:45:00 EST

Oracle’s vaunted patent infringement case against Google and Android has shrunk to the size of a thong bikini – and like a freshman during spring break, the Patent and Trademark Office is looking forward to another round of strip poker. Of the five patents Oracle started with after ultimately withdrawing two, the PTO’s re-examinations have left it only one. The latest to fall was Java pappy James Gosling’s US patent RE38,104 on a “method and apparatus for resolving data references in generated code.” The PTO says it’s invalid although its decision isn’t absolutely final yet. Before the PTO’s decision, which took an awfully long time, case watcher Florian Mueller was beginning to think Oracle might get a lot of mileage just out of the Gosling patent since it looked pretty fundamental. Now that the PTO has pretty much shot it down he reckons the patent part of Oracle’s case is pretty much lost unless – after a long-winded process – the PTO’s Board of Appeals for Patent Appeals and Interferences or the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overrules the PTO on some counts.

Oracle Wheels Out Its Big Data Appliance Ahead of Schedule

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:30:00 EST

In a surprise move on Tuesday, January 10, Oracle wheeled out its Big Data Appliance. That’s the one it said in October would be ready sometime in the first half. Only nobody believed it meant early in the first half. Heck, it’s not even clear anybody thought Oracle could make the first half at all and it probably couldn’t have met so early a date if it hadn’t been secretly closeted for months with Cloudera. It’s using Cloudera’s version of Hadoop in the thing rather than lose time dicking around rolling its own. Cloudera is the oldest, most established of the Hadoop start-ups whose ranks now include MapR (tight with EMC, its Greenplum database and the EMC Data Computing Appliance) and Hortonworks (buddies with Microsoft and SQL Server 2012) and it’s assumed to have more customers and more experience than anybody else. Observers say Oracle’s use of Cloudera shows it’s serious. Big Data is supposed to be a $70 billion industry growing at maybe 20% a year and Oracle wants more than its fair share so it’s not letting any grass grow under its feet. To prove it’s serious, Oracle is low-balling the highly engineered system. Rather than charge millions like it does for its Exadata, Exalogic and Exalytics appliances, Oracle’s Big Data Appliance will go for a mere $450,000 a rack with maintenance on both the hardware and software running only 12% a year. The price is a third less than expected. For the money customers will get a full rack of 18 Sun Fire x86 servers with 216 CPU cores, 864GB main memory, 648TB of raw disk storage, 40 Gb/s InfiniBand internal connectivity and 10 Gb/s Ethernet connectivity, perfectly sized for the greatest number of customers. Users also get Cloudera’s open source Distribution Including Apache Hadoop (CDH) and Cloudera Manager software, Cloudera’s Google Big Table-ish HBase, an open source distribution of R, the programming language, the Community Edition of Oracle’s NoSQL Database, Oracle’s HotSpot Java Virtual Machine and Oracle Linux, the Oracle fork of Red Hat. The widgetry can be used in multiple ways. Oracle and Cloudera are going to split support, with Cloudera getting the hard software questions. Oracle’s also got a bunch of separately priced connectors so users can integrate data stored in the CDH Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) or Oracle NoSQL Database with Oracle Database 11g. The four connectors cost $2,000 per server processor. Betcha Oracle figures it can up-sell Big Data Appliance users on Exadata, Exalogic and Exalytics since everything’s tightly integrated. It’s also possible that Oracle might want to buy Cloudera eventually depending on how things go and how its vision of itself as a database company morphs. Currently they’re bound together by a non-exclusive multi-year alliance. A huge win for Cloudera, the start-up is reveling in the validation it’s getting from Oracle and all the feet Oracle can put on the street. It can probably anticipate an uptick in its consulting and training business. It also figures the Oracle ecosystem will produce new tools, applications, systems and services in support the CDH platform.

Oracle to Spend $1.9 Billion Buying Taleo

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:25:00 EST

Oracle rolled out of bed Thursday morning and said it’s going to buy Taleo and its talent management cloud widgetry for $46 a share or roughly $1.9 billion net of Taleo’s cash and debt. That’s an 18% premium. Not bad for a company that was originally bootstrapped. Taleo (say Ta-LAY-oh) competes with SuccessFactors, which SAP is buying for $3.4 billion, and its stock price fattened up after the SuccessFactors deal was announced in December on speculation it would be taken out by Oracle. Taleo is supposed to handle more SaaS transactions than anybody except Salesforce.com.

Oracle to SAP: ‘See You Back in Court’

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

As predictably as the sun rising in the east, Oracle Monday rejected the slashed $272 million award for damages that the presiding federal court judge decided it should get from SAP for its admitted copyright infringement rather than the $1.3 billion the jury awarded Oracle in late 2010 following a captivating and highly publicized trial. Oracle told the court it wants the new trial it was offered to “vindicate” the jury and its property rights as well as to avoid risking its right to appeal the court’s decision. SAP, which agreed to pay a $20 million fine to the US government to avoid criminal prosecution, said it was “disappointed.” Calling the jury award “grossly excessive,” Judge Phyllis Hamilton last September found Oracle only proved actual damages of $272 million. SAP’s third-party maintenance arm TomorrowNow illegally downloaded reams of Oracle software and customer-support documents before it was shut down in 2008.

Google Loses Appeal to Suppress Evidence in Java Suit

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:00:00 EST

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington Monday punctured Google’s hopes of hiding the telltale Lindholm e-mail from the jury when Oracle finally drags Google and Android before the bar to answer charges of infringing its Java copyrights and patents. The appeals court sided with the district court that has already told Google six times that the highly compromising e-mail couldn’t be suppressed. Neither court bought Google’s story that it was an artifact protected by attorney-client privilege that was turned over in discovery to Oracle by mistake. The appeal court found that Google engineer Tim Lindholm “was responding to a request from Google’s management, not Google’s attorneys.” It said the message concerned a negotiation strategy, not a legal strategy and “does not evidence any sort of infringement or invalidity analysis.”

An Enterprise Cloud for Business-Critical Applications

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:45:00 EST

For enterprise class cloud services, companies need a broad, comprehensive and flexible platform for their applications. Oracle recently announced the Oracle Public Cloud, which offers a broad set of best-in-class, integrated services that are elastic, secure and manageable, offering organizations choice in development and deployment of business critical applications. In his opening keynote at the 9th International Cloud Expo, Tyler Jewell, VP, Product Management & Strategy, Oracle Public Cloud, discussed how the new services can speed your application development and deployment time, while maintaining a low cost infrastructure and the ease with which you can access, use and manage them.

Many Clouds, Many Choices

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:45:00 EST

As enterprise adoption of cloud computing accelerates, organizations must have a strategy and plan for moving to the cloud. What should you put into public clouds? Should you create a private cloud? Should you use cloud applications, platform or infrastructure? How should organizations get started on the road to cloud computing? In his general session at the 9th International Cloud Expo, Rex Wang, Vice President of Product Marketing at Oracle, explored best practices for how organizations can move to cloud computing.

Judge Blocks Oracle’s Appeal in SAP Case

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:00:00 EST

Oracle can’t appeal the judge’s decision to cut the $1.3 billion jury award in its suit against SAP to a mere $272 million unless it rejects the $272 million, the judge told Oracle last Friday. Oracle is trying to avoid the other option the judge gave it, which is a new trial. If Oracle rejects the $272 million, there would be a new trial and then it could appeal the judge’s decision. The judge contends Oracle only proved actual damages of $272 million when SAP’s now defunct TomorrowNow third-party maintenance subsidiary illegally downloaded reams of Oracle software. Reuters, which reported the decision, said the order did not indicate if Oracle could accept the $272 million and then appeal, but an IP lawyer the wire service talked to said probably not. If SAP appealed to the size of the judge’s award Oracle might be able to try for the $1.3 billion.

Oracle v Google Java Trial Up in the Air

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:15:00 EST

Last week Oracle’s long-simmering Java infringement suit against Google, already postponed from Halloween, was scheduled to go to trial “on or after March 19.” On Thursday the court entered another order saying it won’t set a trial date any time soon and suggesting that given the demands on its calendar it could be 2013 before the case gets heard. Presiding Judge William Alsup, who figures, speaking “from experience,” that the trial will take two months, also said in his order that “The court will not set a trial date until Oracle adopts a proper damages methodology, even assuming a third try is allowed (or unless Oracle waives damages beyond those already allowed to go to the jury). For this ‘delay,’ Oracle has no one to blame but itself, given that twice now it has advanced improper methodologies obviously calculated to reach stratospheric numbers.”

Oracle Fusion Applications - Installation and First Impressions (Part 5)

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 12:15:00 EST

Oracle Forms and Reports is one of Fusion Middleware components needed for OFA installation. Forms is a GUI tool used to develop, generate and run database front end applications. Reports is a GUI tool used to develop, generate and run database reports. For the purposes of Oracle Fusion Applications installation we will secure Forms and Reports with Identity Management. Once you download and unzip Oracle Forms and Reports software and run installer you will be presented with the welcome screen.