Oracle Collaboration Suite everything in a single inbox
Oracle Collaboration Suite everything in a single inbox
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.