Oracle Announces New Oracle Exastack Program for ISV Partners

Oracle Exastack Program Enables ISV Partners to Leverage a Scalable, Integrated Infrastructure to Deliver their Applications Tuned and Optimized for High-Performance
Redwood Shores, CA – June 28, 2011

News Facts

Enabling Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and other members of Oracle Partner Network (OPN) to rapidly build and deliver faster, more reliable applications to end customers, Oracle today introduced Oracle Exastack Ready, available now, and Oracle Exastack Optimized, available in fall 2011 through OPN. 

The Oracle Exastack Program focuses on helping ISVs run their solutions on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud - integrated systems in which the software and hardware are engineered to work together. These products provide partners with a lower cost and high performance infrastructure for database and application workloads across on-premise and cloud based environments. Leveraging the new Oracle Exastack Program in which applications can qualify as Oracle Exastack Ready or Oracle Exastack Optimized, partners can use available OPN resources to optimize their applications to run faster and more reliably – providing increased performance to their end users. 

By deploying their applications on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, ISVs can reduce the cost, time and support complexities typically associated with building and maintaining a disparate application infrastructure - enabling them to focus more on their core competencies, accelerating innovation and delivering superior value to customers. 

After qualifying their applications as Oracle Exastack Ready, partners can note to customers that their applications run on and support Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud component products including Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server. Customers can be confident when choosing a partner’s Oracle Exastack Optimized application, knowing it has been tuned by the OPN member on Oracle Exadata Database Machine or Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud with a goal of delivering optimum speed, scalability and reliability. 

Partners participating in the Oracle Exastack Program can also leverage their Oracle Exastack Ready and Oracle Exastack Optimized applications to advance to Platinum or Diamond level in OPN. 

Oracle Exastack Programs Provide ISVs a Reliable, High-Performance Application Infrastructure

With the Oracle Exastack Program ISVs have several options to qualify and tune their applications with Oracle Exastack, including: 

Oracle Exastack Ready: Oracle Exastack Ready provides qualifying partners with specific branding and promotional benefits based on their adoption of Oracle products. If a partner application supports the latest major release of one of these products, the partner may use the corresponding logo with their product marketing materials: Oracle Solaris Ready, Oracle Linux Ready, Oracle Database Ready, and Oracle WebLogic Ready. Oracle Exastack Ready is available to OPN members at the Gold level or above. Additionally, OPN members participating in the program can leverage their Oracle Exastack Ready applications toward advancement to the Platinum or Diamond levels in the OPN Specialized program and toward achieving Oracle Exastack Optimized status. 

Oracle Exastack Optimized: When available, for OPN members at the Gold level or above, Oracle Exastack Optimized will provide direct access to Oracle technical resources and dedicated Oracle Exastack lab environments so OPN members can test and tune their applications to deliver optimal performance and scalability on Oracle Exadata Database Machine or Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Oracle Exastack Optimized will provide OPN members with specific branding and promotional benefits including the use of the Oracle Exastack Optimized logo. OPN members participating in the program will also be able to leverage their Oracle Exastack Optimized applications toward advancement to Platinum or Diamond level in the OPN Specialized program.

Oracle Exastack Labs and ISV Enablement: Dedicated Oracle Exastack lab environments and related technical enablement resources (including Guided Learning Paths and Boot Camps) will be available through OPN for OPN members to further their knowledge of Oracle Exastack offerings, and qualify their applications for Oracle Exastack Optimized or Oracle Exastack Ready. Oracle Exastack labs will be available to qualifying OPN members at the Gold level or above.

Partners are eligible to participate in the Oracle Exastack Ready program immediately, which will help them meet the requirements to attain Oracle Exastack Optimized status in the future. Guidelines for Oracle Exastack Optimized, as well as Oracle Exastack Labs will be available in fall 2011.

Supporting Quotes

“In order to effectively differentiate their software applications in the marketplace, ISVs need to rapidly deliver new capabilities and performance improvements,” said Judson Althoff, Oracle senior vice president of Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales. “With Oracle Exastack, ISVs have the ability to optimize and deploy their applications with a complete, integrated and cloud-ready infrastructure that will help them accelerate innovation, unlock new features and functionality, and deliver superior value to customers.”

“We view performance as absolutely critical and a key differentiator,” said Tom Stock, SVP of Product Management, GoldenSource. “As a leading provider of enterprise data management solutions for securities and investment management firms, with Oracle Exadata Database Machine, we see an opportunity to notably improve data processing performance - providing high ‘quality golden copy’ data in a reduced timeframe. Achieving Oracle Exastack Optimized status will be a stamp of approval that our solution will provide the performance and scalability that our customers demand.”

“As a leading provider of Revenue Intelligence solutions for telecommunications, media and entertainment service providers, our customers continually demand more readily accessible, enriched and pre-analyzed information to minimize their financial risks and maximize their margins,” said Alon Aginsky, President and CEO of cVidya Networks. “Oracle Exastack enables our solutions to deliver the power, infrastructure, and innovation required to transform our customers’ business operations and stay ahead of the game.”

Supporting Resources
Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN)
Oracle Exastack
Oracle Exastack Datasheet
Judson Althoff blog
Connect with the Oracle Partner community at OPN on Facebook, OPN on LinkedIn, OPN on YouTube, or OPN on Twitter

About Oracle PartnerNetwork

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized is the latest version of Oracle's partner program that provides partners with tools to better develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN Specialized offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle’s growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to differentiate through Specializations. Specializations are achieved through competency development, business results, expertise and proven success. To find out more visit http://www.oracle.com/partners.

About Oracle

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

PTCL upgrades its telephone exchanges to Latest next generation network technology

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) is upgrading its Telephone Exchanges from Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) based technology to latest Next Generation Network (NGN) technology for providing better and improved services to its valued customers.

This is to inform our valued customers that PTCL will start the migration series from Korangi Exchange Area from 3^rd July 2011 till-13 July 2011 to streamline and make the service and Hi-tech, utilizing state of art technology.

The customers of Korangi exchange area are being notified that all those telephone numbers with the prefix series 511 and 513 will be migrated on 3-7-2011 from 1:00 am to 9:00 am, 509 on 5-7-2011 from 1:00 am to 9:00 am, 508 on 7-7-2011 from 1:00 an to 9:00 am and 505 and 506 on  9-7-2011 to 13-7-2011 from 1:00 am to 9:00 am. There will be no change in the existing telephone numbers after the migration. There will be minor change of procedure for activation and de-activation of code barring service and other value added services.

PTCL regrets and apologize for any inconvenience and discomfort caused to its customers during the migration. PTCL assures its customers to keep the outrage time as minimum as possible and to provide its customers with uninterrupted, smooth and leveled services.

For any help or assistance customers can call PTCL help desks or call center agents round the clock, on 1236.

PTCL aims to provide its customers with good quality of service and anticipates the customers support during the migration process.

PTCL joint development project with ML&C Department

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) begins joint development of information and communication technology infrastructure in Military Lands and cantonment offices across the country.

PTCL and ML&C department has taken this joint initiative to automate the business processes by introducing Information Technology and computerization at all levels of hierarchy. PTCL will be connecting all 62 Military Estate Offices (MEO’s) and Cantonment Boards (CB’s) through internet. It will facilitate the cantonments with a mix of its diversified product range including, Premium Internet Bandwidth with end to end fiber connectivity, Premium Business DSL and wireless broad band EVO Services. It will also provide a backbone to ML&C department to run a centralized online system.

Naveed Saeed SEVP commercial PTCL stated,” The primary objective of this automation initiative is to improve efficiency, streamline operations and provide quality services to the people living in Cantonments. The scope of this endeavor includes development of a countrywide multiple technology driven Network infrastructure”. He further added that, “PTCL will provide the optimum and quality services bringing new information highways and futuristic product basket for the residents of cantonments”.

Niaz Malik EVP Corporate Services and Product Development PTCL stated, “This understanding between PTCL and ML&C department is a good step and PTCL would accomplish the project within the stipulated time”. He further added that, “PTCL works as an engine of economic growth for the country by not only exploring new horizons in the arena of information and technology but also extending its network and services to different areas and departments. Thus, it aims for perfection in all fields of telecommunication as it is constantly improving and upgrading its services to ensure customer satisfaction and has the fastest growing network in the country”.

Oracle Health Sciences Delivers Oracle® Argus Safety from the Cloud

Oracle Health Sciences today announced the availability of Oracle® Argus Safety On Demand, a cloud-based version of Oracle’s industry-leading integrated global adverse events management and regulatory reporting solution.

Oracle Argus Safety On Demand provides an advanced and comprehensive adverse events management system that helps life sciences companies enable regulatory compliance, drive product stewardship, and integrate safety and risk management.

“Oracle Argus Safety On Demand enables health sciences organizations to accelerate deployment and time to value for the industry’s leading adverse event reporting and management software,” said Neil de Crescenzo, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Health Sciences. “Oracle Argus Safety, as delivered via the Oracle Health Sciences Cloud, provides new levels of agility in deploying, managing and scaling the comprehensive solution – all backed by Oracle’s unmatched technical and industry expertise.”

As a cloud application, Oracle Argus Safety On Demand enables health sciences organizations and their contract resource organization (CRO) partners to accelerate deployment, obtain on-demand scalability, reduce IT management resource requirements and gain a more predictable IT spending pattern.

Oracle Argus Safety On Demand is part of a comprehensive portfolio of Oracle Health Sciences Cloud Applications and is powered by the Oracle Health Sciences Cloud.

Supporting Resources

• Oracle in Health Sciences
• Follow Oracle Health Sciences on Twitter
• Join the Oracle Health Sciences Community on Facebook
• White Paper:  Oracle Health Sciences Cloud

About Oracle

Oracle is the world’s most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SAP Makes Analytics Easy for SMEs and Lines of Business

As part of its goal to bring customers of all sizes powerful, easy-to-use analytics solutions that lead the market; SAP AG recently announced the latest offerings tailored to fit the needs of small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) and lines of business. Via flexible deployment options, SAP® Crystal Server 2011 software and the 4.0 release of SAP® BusinessObjects™ Edge Business Intelligence (BI) software are designed to help enable customers to get up and running quickly to better understand all facets of their businesses and make confident, data-driven decisions as events unfold, in real time.

These latest solutions from the business analytics portfolio from SAP are intended to help SMEs and lines of business get the most out of their IT investments and maximize their available resources by putting analytics tools directly into the hands of the people who need them most. SAP Crystal Server (formerly, SAP Crystal Reports Server) is an entry-level BI solution for small companies and departments that will include self-serve data search and exploration in addition to the core functionality of report and dashboard viewing; SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI will help enable them to address virtually any BI requirement – from reporting, visualization and ad-hoc analysis to data integration and data quality.

Additionally, with user-friendly enhancements such as a consistent, customizable and more intuitive user experience as well as delivery to any mobile device, the analytics software will help empower all types of users – from novices to professionals – to make more effective business decisions, enabling faster response times to impact the business and ultimately help drive greater profitability.

“In a new era of economic growth, small and midsize companies constantly need insights that help minimize risk and capture fleeing new business opportunities,” said Dan Vesset, program vice president of Business Analytics research, IDC. “The latest release of business intelligence software for small and midsize companies from SAP empowers growing companies to adopt brand new innovations such as integrating structured and unstructured data and even information from social networks. Newly refreshed and intuitive user interface and brand new mobility functionality help more users in the growing company get the relevant and accurate data on time, decide and act with confidence, and contribute to greater growth and profitability.”

With the 4.0 release of SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI, for the first time SMEs and lines of business will have quick insight into structured information as well as unstructured information like data from social networks using new text analysis functionality. Regardless of where the most relevant information resides, it will assist anyone within an organization to analyze it and collaborate to make informed decisions based on facts rather than gut reactions – all without needing to rely on IT.

With new event insight capabilities and 64-bit architecture, customers will be able to use SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI to monitor business scenarios as they happen in real time, formulate action plans accordingly and even compare and contrast historical trends to help predict future outcomes. The organizations will be able to equip their customer-care call centers with text analysis to watch what is being said on blogs, Facebook and Twitter, and help mitigate potential brand damage by creating alerts for product defects and recalls.

With SAP Crystal Server 2011, sales and marketing departments challenged with correlating the success of their campaigns with overall revenue will be able to use the included SAP BusinessObjects Explorer™ software to navigate and  drill down to granular levels and monitor how those campaigns are affecting return on investment (ROI) in real time. The goal is to help them to quickly cease investing in less successful campaigns in a particular global region and reallocate those investments to campaigns that are driving substantial sources of revenue.

By delivering tight integration between its BI and enterprise information management (EIM) solutions, SAP helps customers better understand their businesses by supporting the entire information life cycle – from data to dashboard. Not only can they embed things like BI dashboards into other business applications, but with EIM they can help ensure the data comprising those dashboards is accurate, current and trusted.

“SAP Crystal Server and SAP BusinessObjects Edge BI are two perfect examples of how we are innovating to alleviate the pain points commonly experienced by SMEs and lines of business,” said Tom Kindermans, SVP, Ecosystem & Channels, Asia Pacific & Japan. “We work closely with our customers, and we are turning analytics into something that is easily accessible by making it more affordable and less time-consuming. A broader range of organizations and departments will now be able to get stronger value and insights to solve business problems efficiently and effectively.”

Oracle Insurance Announces Availability of Oracle Insurance Policy Administration 9.4

New Version Expands Localization Options for Global and Regional Insurers, and Includes New Features that Facilitate Compliance and Reduce Risk.

News Facts

Oracle Insurance today announced the availability of Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity 9.4, the newest version of its rules-based policy administration system for life, health and annuity insurers. This release includes expanded multi-language, unit-linked product and fund processing capabilities that enable regional and global insurers to rapidly configure and deliver localized products and provide better service for end users with a single, adaptive policy administration solution.

To further support insurers in the growing Japanese market, Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity 9.4 includes Kanji/Kana language support and pre-defined content, as well as imperial date processing..For the broader global market, Version 9.4 includes new localization flexibility for configuring and managing international mailing addresses as well as regional variations for client information.The solution now enables insurers to calculate unit-linked pricing and valuation, in addition to market-based processing and pre-configured unit linked content – enabling insurers operating in international markets to rapidly configure unit-linked products and ensure accurate fund pricing and valuations for their customers. Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity 9.4 includes new features that facilitate compliance and reduce insurer risk, such as expanded role-based security and masking capability to further protect sensitive customer data.The solution can be configured to restrict processing of specified activities based on time of day and user role, reducing exposure to market timing risks.This newest version enables insurers to eliminate duplicate records of clients, helping to reduce underwriting risks and providing a single view of the client for improved service.

Supporting Quotes

“Despite the turmoil in financial services generally, and among life, health and annuity insurers in particular, there is still keen interest in renewing and/or replacing policy administration systems,” said Craig Weber, senior vice president, Insurance, Celent. “The ability to leverage a single, rules-driven policy administration system for multiple global operation centers can help insurers realize significant improvements in speed to market, customer service, compliance with regional regulations, and consolidation efforts. We believe such initiatives are necessary to help the industry address service and distribution imperatives.”

“Today’s global insurers require the ability to provide higher levels of service and quickly bring to market innovative products that stand out from the competition, and also stay current with local legislation. To succeed, they require agile and flexible systems that enable them to meet the unique localization requirements of the markets in which they operate, whether in North America, Asia Pacific or the Pan-European Region. Oracle Insurance Policy Administration for Life and Annuity 9.4 meets this need with expanded international market capabilities that enable insurers to reduce risk and profitably compete wherever their business takes them,” said Kevin Walma, vice president, Insurance Products, Oracle Insurance.

Supporting Resources

Oracle Insureance on Face book
Oracle Insureance on Twitter
Oracle Insureance on Linkedin
Oracle Insureance on Youtube
Oracle Insureance on Blog

About Oracle

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world’s most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site athttp://www.oracle.com.

Trademark

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Oracle Introduces Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure

Combines Oracle’s Blade Servers, Storage and Oracle VM Software to Speed Cloud Deployments  

Redwood Shores, Calif. – June 14, 2011

Oracle announced the Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, a fully integrated, pre-tested solution which helps accelerate enterprise Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud deployments.

The new solution leverages Oracle’s unique ability to engineer and integrate key infrastructure components and speed virtual machine deployment times by up to 98 percent, lowering TCO and improving productivity for enterprises and cloud service providers.

The Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure combines Oracle’s Sun Blade server modules, Oracle Solaris or Oracle Linux, Oracle’s ZFS Storage Appliance, and Oracle VM, the only VM fully certified and supported with Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications. With Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g the solution can be managed and supported as a single system.

Oracle Consulting is available to complement the solution with assessment, architecture and implementation services to help ensure optimal deployment. Additionally, Oracle Advanced Customer Services offers production readiness, installation, mission critical support and preventative monitoring services to help customers achieve operational readiness and high availability to maximize the value of enterprise cloud infrastructure investments.

The new solution provides an ideal foundation for IaaS and extends Oracle's rich portfolio of cloud offerings which includes Oracle On Demand, cloud services, as well as comprehensive Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products.

The Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure is endorsed by the Intel® Cloud Builders program as an effective way to quickly deploy IaaS cloud capabilities.

 “Oracle is radically simplifying cloud deployment with a pre-tested, single vendor solution for enterprise cloud infrastructure,” said Ali Alasti, vice president of hardware development, Oracle. “By engineering our hardware and software together, the Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure cuts deployment time from weeks to hours and helps customers get virtualized infrastructure up and running faster.”

“The Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, based on Intel® Xeon® processor-based Oracle blade servers, provides a solid blueprint for true enterprise-class IaaS deployments,” said Pauline Nist, general manager, Mission Critical Segment, Datacenter Group, Intel. “Oracle’s solution is a welcome addition to the Intel Cloud Builders program, and opens the door for ongoing engagement and innovation in cloud computing.”

Supporting Resources

·         Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure

·         Oracle Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure in Intel’s Cloud Builders Program

·         Oracle Optimized Solutions

·         Oracle Advanced Customer Services

·         Oracle InfraRed blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter

·         Oracle's Virtualization Blog

                                             

About Oracle

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company.  For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Intel Signs MoU with Allama Iqbal Open University

Intel Pakistan, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) to promote integration of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the education environment via various Intel® Teach Program offerings that focus on teacher training, curriculum development and technology adoption.

The enhanced Intel® Teach Program portfolio is designed to enable teachers to introduce, expand and support 21st century learning with a project-based approach in the classroom. Intel Teach will use the “Train the Trainer” model to provide both face-to-face and online instruction to help teachers integrate technology into their classrooms. Teachers will be able to create lesson plans that meet local and national education goals and standards.

Intel Pakistan will work with the initial group of teachers to help them become Intel Teach trainers themselves. These trainers will be responsible for sharing their newly acquired skills with other teachers in their jurisdiction. To ensure that the program’s curriculum maintains relevancy and reflects lessons learned from feedback and research, Intel Pakistan will regularly provide updated material to the Intel Teach trainers and monitor quality through on-site visits. Certificates to Master and Participant teachers will be provided through the AIOU platform as well.

Speaking at the occasion, Asma Aziz, PR Manager Intel Pakistan said, “More than 288,591 teachers have been trained on the curriculum since the program’s inception, and have reached more than 70 districts and cities in the country.”

“These teachers work as agents of change and belong to a new genre of techno savvy teachers who are better equipped to prepare their students to face the challenges of the 21st century workforce. Our partnership with AIOU today promises to provide teachers with the skills and resources they need to bring about that change,” Asma said. “Our objective is that trainee teachers receive hands-on experience with technology aided teaching methodologies”.

AIOU is the first Open University in Pakistan, and is a unique institution because of its philosophy, system, approach, functions and overall structure. The University with its main campus at Islamabad and network of 36 regional centers spread all over the country is providing education to its students all over Pakistan and in the Middle East. So far, out of 36 regional centers concurrent trainings for Master Trainers of AIOU have been conducted at Multan, Sahiwal, Faisalabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Peshawar, Abbottabad, Quetta and Karachi by Intel Education Senior Trainers and these trainings are being followed by Participant Teacher trainings these days.

Oracle Announces Third Annual Kickoff Event for Oracle PartnerNetwork Members Around the Globe

Live, Virtual Event Offers Partners Strategic Insights on How to Grow and Profit through the Oracle PartnerNetwork Program in Fiscal Year 2012 

Redwood Shores, CA – June 6, 2011 

News Facts 

· Further enabling its valued global partner community to learn, grow and profit, Oracle today announced it will host its third annual Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) global kickoff event on June 28, 2011. 

· The live, virtual session will provide partners with specific sales strategies, messages and opportunities that will enable them to successfully plan and engage in the OPN program for Oracle fiscal year 2012. 

· Oracle President, Mark Hurd and other top Oracle product development executives from around the globe, will discuss Oracle’s strategic product focus areas for fiscal year 2012 and how partners can utilize Oracle’s extensive applications-to-disk product portfolio, including Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic, to expand customer opportunities and business growth. 

· Registration is open for OPN Partners at http://bit.ly/lm1WPU

· Hosted by Judson Althoff, Oracle Senior Vice President of Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales, and top regional Oracle Alliances and Channels executives, the event will give partners deeper insight into Oracle’s vision and plans for the upcoming year, as well as deliver: 

       o Information on how to increase revenue opportunities through service offerings; 

       o Program updates to help ISVs and OEMs grow their businesses; and 

       o Strategies on how to leverage Oracle technology to differentiate themselves from the competition. 

· During the event, Oracle will also share how partners can tap OPN’s expansive Enablement 2.0 and Knowledge Zone resources and more than 60 specialization options to enhance their business offerings and revenues. To date, more than 2,000 partners have achieved a specialized status through the Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialized program. 

Kickoff Provides Worldwide Partners Insight and Knowledge for Success in FY12 

· The interactive, virtual event will feature customized content for each region and a live Q&A session, allowing partners to use online and social media resources to provide real-time feedback and ask questions throughout the event. 

· Regional events will take place in: 

       o EMEA Kick-Off - Tuesday, June 28 at 6:00 am PDT / 2:00 pm BST 

       o LAD Kick-Off - Tuesday, June 28 at 8:00 am PDT / 12:00 pm DST 

       o North America Kick-Off - Tuesday, June 28 at 10:00 am PDT / 1:00 pm EDT 

       o Japan Kick-Off - Tuesday, June 28 at 6:00 pm PDT / Wednesday, June 29 at 10:00 am JST (Tokyo) 

       o APAC Kick-Off - Tuesday, June 28 at 8:00 pm PDT / Wednesday, June 29 at 8:30 am IST (India) / Wednesday, June 29 at 11:00 am SGT (Singapore) / 1:00 pm AEDT (Sydney) 

Supporting Quotes 

· “Oracle partners are an important contributor to Oracle's success and an invaluable asset to our customers around the globe,” said Judson Althoff, Oracle senior vice president of Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales. “Oracle technology combined with our partners’ expertise is an unbeatable force in the market, and Oracle is committed to providing partners the tools and knowledge they need for us to win and grow together. The global partner kickoff arms partners with the insight and strategies they need to be competitive and successful in the coming fiscal year.” 

· “The Oracle OPN global kickoff provides a unique opportunity for Oracle and our partners to come together to share and receive feedback on our vision and strategy for the upcoming year,” said Ted Bereswill, senior vice president of Oracle North America Channel Sales. “Oracle continues to innovate and acquire new technologies – each of which represents new and untapped opportunities for our partners. The primary objective of this event is to help our partners understand Oracle’s strategy, solutions and how best to engage with the Oracle sales force and customers to deliver better solutions and improve business results.” 

Supporting Resources

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN)

Register for the OPN Kickoff Event FY12

Lydia Smyers Announces Oracle Partner Kickoff Event FY12

OPN Specializations

Judson Althoff blog

Connect with the Oracle Partner community at OPN on Facebook, OPN on LinkedIn, OPN on YouTube, and OPN on Twitter

About Oracle PartnerNetwork 

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized is the latest version of Oracle's partner program that provides partners with tools to better develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN Specialized offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to differentiate through Specializations. Specializations are achieved through competency development, business results, expertise and proven success. To find out more visit http://www.oracle.com/partners. 

About Oracle 

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com. 

Trademarks 

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

PTCL has launched IPv6 following the Global trends

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (LTD) has successfully deployed Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) to provide large address space to its valued broadband customers.

Internet Protocol Version 6, deals with the IPv4 address exhaustion as IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, and supports 2128(340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456) addresses. It can be installed as a normal software upgrade in internet devices and is interoperable having backward compatibility with IP4 applications and devices.IPv6 deployment strategy is designed not to have any flag days or other dependencies and to run well on high performance networks (e.g. Gigabit Ethernet, OC-12, ATM, etc.).Having a probability of affecting only a few portals that too for a few hours with out having any kind of outrage over all and at the same time still be efficient for low bandwidth networks (e.g. wireless). In addition, it provides a platform for new internet functionality that will be required in the near future.

IPv6 being a global phenomenon will be implemented with in the time period of 5 to 10 years starting with a transition period from 8th June 2011 with the major goals; to reduce the total time which people have to spend configuring and managing systems, to deploy High-bandwidth multimedia, fault tolerance application and virtual private networks (VPNS) along with speeding up the network.

The large address space being provided by IPv6 allows many more devices and users on the internet along with extra flexibility in allocating addresses and efficiency for routing traffic. It also eliminates the primary need for network address translation (NAT), thus improving total connectivity, reliability, and flexibility. IPv6 will re-establish transparency and end-to-end traffic across the Internet. PTCL having the major shares in market has shifted to IPv6 so that the PTCL customers can also avail any feature of IPv6 by browsing any global IPv6 portals .PTCL has always strived to provide its customers with the best and most affordable services adapting to the global trends.

This new globally launched service and PTCL adaption to it will reinforce PTCL image as the customer oriented organization and secure networks will be easier to build and deploy in an IPv6 world along with Quality of Service.

P@SHA President Represents Pakistan in WIEF 2011

Jehan Ara, President Pakistan Software Houses’ Association for IT and ITES has represented Pakistan in the World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF) 2011 held in Astana, Kazakhastan on July 7-9.

She was among few female leaders of Muslim world invited to present her expert opinions and suggestions on the development and progress of Muslim nations. Also, there were 100 features speakers of the forum which were considered as business leaders in their countries.

Jehan participated various panel discussion at the WIEF with fellow panelists from the UK, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the US and Kazkhstan on the subject of “Deploying Innovative Technologies”. She got involved actively in the main forum which focused on Leadership, innovative Technologies and Islamic banking.

She spoke about the recently launched P@SHA Social innovation Fund and explained the forum how youths talent are planed to encourage towards invention, innovation, self-employment and entrepreneurships.

President P@SHA also gave detailed presentation on ICT innovation activities in Pakistan to vast audience belong to different countries. Also, she actively participated in pre-forum session at WIEF focused on businesswomen and youth.

Besides her, former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz also participated at various sessions highlighting various aspects for socio-economic developments of Muslim countries.

World Islamic Economic Forum

The 7th WIEF has theme ‘Globalizing Growth: Connect, Compete, Collaborate’, this year’s forum seeks to highlight the vast investment opportunities available in Kazakhstan and to forge stronger cross border partnerships between the Central Asian nation and the rest of the world, in particular, other Muslim nations.

WIEF provides us with a platform to engage investors in the Middle East and the rest of the world with our Strategic 2020 initiative to diversify our economy.

Topics of discussion at the WIEF will include prospects for the expansion of the Halal food industry, Islamic banking, the future of alternative energy, empowering SMEs and introduction of innovative technologies, the increasing role of SMEs and social entrepreneurship. The Forum is expected to attract key Heads of State and Government to address their economic agenda, together with more than 2000 business leaders from around the world.

HP Extends Cloud Leadership with New Hybrid Delivery Solutions

HP extended its Hybrid Delivery solutions portfolio so enterprises can improve their agility and quickly respond to changing customer and citizen needs. Hybrid delivery environments, which combine traditional IT infrastructures with private and public clouds, enable enterprise agility by using flexible delivery models to best meet changing market demands. Recent research conducted on behalf of HP reveals that 95 percent of business and government executives believe agility is important to the success of their organizations. Investments in technology were viewed as a key factor to increasing agility in the next five years.

HP CloudSystem – the most complete, integrated and open platform for building and managing services across private, public and hybrid cloud environments – now includes the industry’s first “dual bursting” capability to help clients manage uneven demands. This innovation allows clients to provision and dynamically scale resources up and down either via a public cloud provider or through an on site pay-as-you-go cloud model. In addition, to enable service providers to take advantage of the rapidly growing cloud market, HP announced HP Cloud Agile, a comprehensive program that spans the full HP enterprise portfolio including Cloud System. To speed time to revenue and improve financial flexibility for a broad range of service providers, the program provides participants with direct access to HP’s global sales force and its worldwide network of channel partners, as well as opportunities to deliver new cloud services.

HP Hybrid Delivery services enable clients to select the best method of delivery for their organizations, tuned to their environments. HP Support Services for Cloud System provides a single point of accountability with integrated hardware and software support, 24/7 coverage, proactive problem prevention and automated HP Remote Support. As a result, clients can shift resources from trouble shooting to innovation, improving their ability to quickly respond to changing customer and citizen demands. In addition, HP CloudStart services extend the capabilities of HP CloudSystem to help clients define initial private cloud services, implement internal costing and chargeback, and comply with clients’ existing security and backup policies. New functionality automates deployments of basic applications, compliance monitoring and patch management in a private cloud. This allows clients to realize the benefits of cloud computing in a compressed timeframe. New HP CloudSystem curriculum and courses from HP Education Services provide clients with knowledge and change management support to quickly realize the full potential of their cloud technology investments.

New HP security services, available through the cloud, mitigate risk of security vulnerabilities, while lowering the financial commitment often required for security contracts. Services include: HP Enterprise Cloud Service – Vulnerability Scanning, which reduces the risk of data loss or unauthorized access by reducing common security mistakes.

LARGE GLOBAL COMPANIES WORRIED ABOUT FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE

Eighty-two percent of large organizations admit to not having complete visibility into profits leading to impaired financial performance.

Research reveals senior business and IT managers across Europe, U.S., Middle East and South Africa’s large organizations struggle with a lack of visibility into profits that is impairing financial performance, morale and business success

The research, entitled “Performance Management: An Incomplete Picture,” also highlights the significant issues with the data-gathering processes that is central in creating a dangerous ‘four-month’ data lag.

The research, conducted by Dynamic Markets, surveyed 1,499 managers in large organizations in 13 countries across the world.

Managers typically spend over a third (36 percent) of their week number crunching in spreadsheets. In fact, 82 percent of those involved in scenario planning use spreadsheets to manipulate and investigate data during this task.

Handling data this way means it becomes outdated quickly -- on average, data used to make decisions is more than four months old, worse still is that 28 percent of managers do not even know the age of the data they use.

John O’Rourke, Vice President EPM Product Marketing at Oracle, said: “Management is clearly struggling to cope with the vast volumes of data being generated by their businesses, which is manifesting itself in a serious lack of visibility into profitability across the entire company. Without enterprise business planning systems to give organizations an end-to-end planning process that links strategic, financial, and operational planning to profitability and cost management, they are going to continue to struggle with fragmentation and have no option but to continue ‘making decisions in the dark.’”

“According to the research, most businesses appear to have a fragmented approach to performance management often underpinned by spreadsheets. This piecemeal approach to planning rather than opting for a holistic view can lead to dangerous inaccuracies, human error, and serious time lags. To combat this, leading edge companies are implementing common enterprise performance management systems that take the time and complexity out of ensuring all relevant information is delivered in a timely fashion, supporting more agile planning and decision-making,” said O’Rourke.

Eighty-two percent of large organizations admit to not having complete visibility into profits leading to impaired financial performance. 46 percent of the participants believe this creates potentially erroneous business decisions, 40 percent feel this can impair financial performance and 38 percent believe it results in flawed business planning that will hamper business success.

Professor Andy Neely, Deputy Director, AIM Research, said: "Organizations today face significant challenges in extracting accurate information on profit and performance. As the volume of available data increases, so does the complexity of organization structures. The shift to shared services, accompanied by the tendency to outsource and partner, makes it more difficult than ever before to allocate costs and apportion overheads. As this research shows, the consequence for executives is a partial picture of performance."

Eighty-seven percent of businesses managers criticize their inter-departmental data sharing and communication, with 71 percent describing the links between strategic goals, operational plans and budgets as “fragmented.”

Mobilink Brings Dell Streak 5 to Pakistan

Dell, with its partner Mobilink, yesterday announced the launch of the Dell Streak 5 in Pakistan.The Dell Streak 5 is an all-in-one ultra-portable 5-inch Android™-based Pocket Tablet designed to provide users with web-browsing, digital entertainment, social connection, and personal navigation experience. 

Launched in partnership with Mobilink, the Dell Streak 5 comes with 3 months of complimentary GPRS on the Mobilink network. 

Price: 

· Mobilink is offering Dell Streak 5 at a price tag of Rs. 49,999 

Specs for Dell Streak 5 

· Launch Date : June 2010 ( yes Mobilink is bringing a year old model ) 

· Weight : 218gms 

· Size : 79.1 x 152.9 x 9.98mm 

· OS : Android 2.2 ( Honeycomb 3 is the latest one with 3.1 on the horizon) 

· Processor : QSD 8250 ( Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz) 

· ROM & RAM : 512MB / 512MB 

· Flash Memory : 16GB Internal – upgradeable 

· Screen : 5 Inch – 480 x 800 pixel TFT 

· Camera : 5MP Rear , 0.3MP Front – LED Flash 

· Others : WiFi B / G , Bluetooth 2.0 , Micro USB , GPS and GeoTagging 

Ali Jaleel, General Manager, Developing Markets Group, Dell, said: 

The Dell Streak 5 is designed for people who are constantly interacting online and want to expand their ability to access their digital lives on-the-go. 

The Dell Streak hits the sweet spot between traditional smartphones and larger-screen tablets and its unique size will help people discover new ways to enjoy the web, connect with friends, and navigate their lives, We are extremely excited to deliver this new connected experience to consumers. 

Wasif Mustafa, Director Value Added Services, IR and Geo-Segmentation, Mobilink, shared 

“As a company geared to deliver the best and latest in mobile technology to its customers, Mobilink is pleased to partner with Dell as they launch their first mobility device in Pakistan.” 

Dell Streak is available at selected Mobilink Customer Service Centres and Mobilink customers will also get a free leather case and an extra battery with purchase of Dell Streak.