Oracle Collaboration Suite: All in one inbox

Mon, 05 May 2003

Lela E. Madjiah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Nothing frustrates computer users more than viruses attacking their system and frequent downtime. In fact, virus attacks and downtime have become so common they are considered a given, part of the game.

In a company where communication is vital, virus outbreaks and downtime affects whole systems of operation, including email and file sharing. These problems augment the already daunting task of managing corporate data and communication as the Internet and corporate intranet continue to grow.

According to industry analyst firm IDC, an enterprise employing 1,000 knowledge workers wastes US$48,000 per week, or nearly $2.5 million per year, due to an inability to locate and retrieve information.

It is therefore a big relief that Oracle software has come up with a new product, the Collaboration Suite, which it claims to reduce downtime, prevent virus outbreaks and lower costs.

The software is an integrated suite of enterprise level applications which focus on managing all of the communications between individuals and teams, the content they create, as well as the information necessary for supporting them. It supplies email, voice mail, calendars, file services and integrated search capabilities, along with the ability to access this information from any type of interface -- standard desktop clients, file protocols, Web, wireless and telephone.

"Oracle Collaboration Suite integrates the email, voicemail, phone, fax, scheduling, calendaring, meeting management, file management and more in a single product," Chris Hummel, vice president for marketing and business development in Oracle Corporations' Asia-Pacific Division, said here recently.

The new software eases user administration of e-mail, voicemail and fax by providing one integrated message store with one centralized inbox. It provides voice access to your calendar, allowing you to review your schedule and receive alerts when new meetings are created or existing meetings are changed.

"In addition, it allows users to easily search across all enterprise information repositories regardless of where the information is located," said Hummel.

This is made possible by time-saving features such as UltraSearch, which allows users to search for corporate information within all shared files, including faxes and email, thus increasing their productivity.

"On top of that, it integrates with familiar desktop clients and interfaces like Microsoft Outlook and Explorer so no end user training is need," Hummel added.

The company also claims that the software drives down the costs of administration, software, hardware and migration in the following ways:

* Software: By consolidating all corporate data into a single, unified repository, studies have shown that user productivity can increase as well as save IT departments time and money. According to a recent, independent study done by iGillotResearch, Oracle's own email implementation saved the company approximately $13 million in the first year of deployment.

* Hardware: Oracle Collaboration Suite allows user to consolidate hundreds of servers to one, single and reliable infrastructure, significantly reducing IT costs.

* Reduced Administration: By centralizing all communications in one infrastructure, the software enables IT managers to reduce administration time and lower support costs. For example, a recent case study on customers conducted by Abilene Christian University showed that they were able to lower support costs by 50 percent.

* Migration: According to Ferris Research, the typical cost for customers to migrate from Microsoft Exchange 5.5 to Microsoft Exchange 2000 is $100 per mailbox for corporations larger than 1,000 seats.

The Oracle Collaboration Suite includes:

Oracle Email: Uses the Oracle9i database as a single message store for email. It provides message delivery, standards-based client access, a browser-based client, powerful server side rules and filters, superior virus eradication capabilities and administration utilities.

Users can access and manage all messages from the interface of their choice, including a Web browser, phone, PDA and fax.

The Oracle Email message store manages messages of all types - including email, voice mail, and fax - with unmatched data availability, data integrity, low recovery time, and fault- tolerance capability. It takes advantage of Oracle 9i's Real Application Clusters, multithreading and parallel processing so thousands of users can run with rapid response times.

Oracle Voice Mail: Leverages the data world to provide scalable, reliable, voice mail and inbound fax capabilities. Voice mail and fax applications are built on standard interfaces while the messages are stored in the Oracle9i database (voice mails are stored as .wav files and faxes are stored as .tif files).

Support for Enterprise Computer Telephony Forum (ECTF) standards, collectively known as "CT Server", allows Oracle Voice Mail to easily integrate with a variety of enterprise and carrier class switches.

Oracle Calendar: Offers a choice of Web clients with Personal Information Management (PIM) and full group scheduling features, access over the wireless Internet via WAP or i-Mode, desktop clients available for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX, full support for Microsoft Outlook through the Outlook Connector, access by Short Message Service (SMS), and full synchronization with a range of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).

Oracle Files: Increases employee productivity by enabling users to easily collaborate with their co-workers worldwide, and find files with a single search.

The Web interface and the support for all the familiar desktop protocols (SMB, AFP, NFS, FTP, HTTP, or WebDAV) allow employees to quickly benefit from the system without additional training.

Oracle UltraSearch: A Web-based, "out-of-the-box" search solution that searches across multiple repositories: Oracle databases, IMAP mail servers, HTML documents served up by a Web server, Oracle 9iAS Portal, files on a disk and many more.

Oracle UltraSearch uses a "crawler" to index documents; the documents stay in their own repositories, and the crawled information is used to build an index that stays within your firewall in a designated Oracle database. Oracle UltraSearch thus enables users to search across the content assets of a corporation without the need for re-architecting IT topologies, compromising security, or programming against hard-to-use API's.

Wireless and Voice: For enterprises and service providers looking to increase efficiency and drive revenue with mobile technology, the Oracle Collaboration Suite Wireless capabilities provide a complete platform for mobile development and deployment.

Wireless functionality includes mobile services such as PIM and email, and location-based, and push services (via SMS, WAP, e-mail and voice). These services can run out-of-the-box or extended with custom functionality.

Oracle Collaboration Suite Wireless capabilities use a multi- channel XML framework so applications can be built once for any device. An open architecture and the use of XML and J2EE standards ensures support for current and emerging technologies.

The software was launched six months ago and already has caused rivals IBM and Microsoft to worry so much that "we consider the new product a success," said Hummel.

Lower cost is one of the reasons. A customer-based study by the Radicati Group, Inc. of enterprise messaging and collaboration, including IBM Lotus, Microsoft Exchange, Oracle Collaboration Suite, and Sun Microsystems found the Oracle Collaboration Suite had the lowest downtime costs of US$11.30 per user, compared with $132.34 for Microsoft and $98 for IBM.

Hummel claimed the clients had been very enthusiastic about the software due in large part to the fact there had not been any real innovation in the market in the last 15 years.

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