Oracle is expanding its year-old Data Hub suite, used to help customers synchronize data centrally for specific customer scenarios using Oracle software, by adding a further four hubs.
Hubs are planned for manufacturing, government and two for financial services, and likely to rely on Oracle’s database with connectors to third-party applications like PeopleSoft and SAP. Oracle did not provide a date for the hub’s availability.
Oracle will also certify developers constructing what Oracle president Charles Phillips termed the information architecture, an IT infrastructure built using Data Hubs, grid technology and what Phillips termed information age applications.
Phillips, revealing Oracle’s plans while opening the vendor’s OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, California, said certification went beyond certification as a DBA or application server programmer.
We want you to be more skilled… you can be masters of the platform, Phillips said.
Oracle also plans a 40-city road show to be hosted with partners Intel, Dell, Novell and Red Hat called The Architecture of the Future. Phillips said the road show would provide developers with information on how to build applications.
Phillips said: The idea is there’s a new architecture built on commodity computing and low cost servers… we need to help people think about how to get there, Phillips said.
The Architecture of the Future is designed to emulate the previous VOS Initiative, formed between Veritas, Oracle and Sun Microsystems to provide pre-integrated products.
Separately, Phillips noted Oracle is also in talks with database rival, and one-time anti-trust opponent, Microsoft to further the companies’ partnership. Oracle is already a member of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Industry Partner program, and while Phillips did not reveal how the companies are expected to collaborate further he said he is optimistic about several initiatives.
Phillips used his opening OracleWorld keynote to promote the notion of information age applications built using Oracle software and architectures.
The company’s president defined information age applications as applications that provide good, complete, accessible, information, in a timely manor, consistently across all applications and that provide one view of the customer.
Phillips said Oracle’s core competence is around information, which is served up to customers via the database, eBusiness suite, portal and e-mail. The Oracle architecture is underpinned by grid, which helps customers fully utilize capacity in servers.
Data Hubs, information age applications and the information architecture are strikingly similar to other industry middleware initiatives, founded on the notion of composite applications applications that draw on services or systems elsewhere that are exposed as web services. SAP has, notably, been pushing a composite applications strategy via NetWeaver.
Phillips chose to dismiss NetWeaver, claiming Oracle already has products and customer references while SAP is still creating products using a complex mixture of Java and SAP’s Abap. That [strategy] is going to be very hard. As they inject complexity into their architecture, we endorse their strategy wholeheartedly, Phillips said.
