Oracle Arms Developers with the Most Comprehensive Cloud Native Framework

Oracle Cloud Native Framework provides deployment models for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, hybrid cloud and on-premises users

Oracle today announced the Oracle Cloud Native Framework, providing developers a cloud native solution that spans public cloud, on premises and hybrid cloud deployments. Capitalizing on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and the recently announced Oracle Linux Cloud Native Environment, the Oracle Cloud Native Framework introduces a rich set of cloud native managed services and on-premises software. The Oracle Cloud Native Framework also introduces Oracle Functions, a new breakthrough serverless cloud service based on the open source Fn Project.

As organizations move to the cloud, they are facing new and difficult challenges addressing cultural change and increased complexity. DevOps and cloud native tooling have left many developers and projects behind the curve. Moreover, organizations eager to use standard open source components and leverage cloud capabilities, but are impeded by the number of complex choices, lack of training and fear of cloud vendor lock-in. By providing cloud native capabilities and offerings regardless of the deployment scenario and leveraging open standards established by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Oracle, a platinum member of CNCF, is uniquely providing its customers with choice while meeting the broad deployment needs of developers.

“With the growing popularity of the CNCF as a unifying and organizing force in the cloud native ecosystem and organizations increasingly embracing multi cloud and hybrid cloud models, developers should have the flexibility to build and deploy their applications anywhere they choose without the threat of cloud vendor lock-in. Oracle is making this a reality,” said Don Johnson, executive vice president, product development, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

To further enable developers to build and deploy modern applications, Oracle is introducing a rich set of first class Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services built on Oracle’s Gen 2 Cloud IaaS and existing foundational Kubernetes orchestration and management layer, the Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE). These new offerings are focused on three critical Oracle Cloud Infrastructure cloud native layers:

Application Definition & Development

• Oracle Functions: Scalable, multi-tenant serverless functions that let users focus on writing code to meet business needs without having to know about any infrastructure concepts. Users only pay when a function is invoked, but pay nothing when the code is not running.
• Streaming: A highly available, scalable and multi-tenant streaming platform that makes it easy to collect and manage streaming data. Streaming enables applications such as IoT, security and supply chain, where large amounts of data are collected from many sources and need to be processed in real time.

Provisioning

• Resource Manager: A managed service that can provision all Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources and services. Resource Manager reduces configuration errors and increases productivity by managing infrastructure declaratively (i.e. “infrastructure as code”) using industry standard Terraform.

Observability & Analysis

• Monitoring: An integrated service that reports metrics from all resources and services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Use predefined metrics and dashboards, or use the service API to obtain a wholistic view of the health, performance, and capacity of the system. The monitoring service includes alarms to track these metrics and take action when they vary or exceed defined thresholds. Alarms provide a critical service to help users meet service level objectives and avoid interruptions.
• Notification Service: A scalable service that broadcasts messages to distributed components, such as email and PagerDuty. With the notification service, users can easily deliver messages about Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to large numbers of subscribers through a publish-subscribe pattern.
• Events: An offering that enables users to react to changes in the state of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources, both when initiated by the system or by user action. Events can store information to Object Storage, or they can trigger Functions to take actions, Notifications to inform users, or Streaming to update external services.

With the announcement of Oracle Functions, a new breakthrough serverless solution based on the open source Fn Project, developers can easily deploy and execute function-based applications without the need to manage compute infrastructure. Oracle Functions is Docker container-based and completely pay-per-use, so charges are incurred only when functions are run. The underlying Fn Project, which Oracle Functions offers as a fully-managed service, can run on-premises, in a data center, or on any cloud. The Oracle Cloud Native Framework supports both modern (cloud native) and traditional (WebLogic, Java, and database) applications. The enterprise grade platform can be leveraged for sustainable strategy, managed services, and curated OSS.

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Telecom Leader Uses Oracle to Secure Communications Services

UNIFI Communications, a leading international voice carrier, has selected Oracle Communications to improve long-term efficiency and communication reliability for its growing customer base. UNIFI will replace its existing session border controller platform with Oracle’s Enterprise Session Border Controllers (E-SBC), optimizing Internet Protocol (IP) voice, video, and data services for the carrier.

UNIFI is a leading Managed Service Provider (MSP) delivering enhanced telecommunication services for more than 100 million active subscribers. As one of the largest carriers of international voice traffic, UNIFI developed a footprint in more than 130 countries over the last decade to support the demands of global service providers accessing local markets.

UNIFI will deploy the Oracle Acme Packet E-SBC 4600 to increase its network capacity utilization and operating efficiency, in addition to improving the voice quality of its telecommunication services. The E-SBC 4600 solution is a key component of Oracle’s leading network session delivery and control infrastructure platform portfolio.

“The seamless integration of Oracle's enterprise session border controller into our platform will greatly expand our network capacity, enhance our technical performance capabilities, boost efficiency in a shrinking margin environment, and further positioning UNIFI as a leading competitor in the tier-one carrier market worldwide,” said Brian Shatku, CFO of UNIFI Communications. “By deploying this advanced communication solution, our company is empowered to be more flexible and efficient in the rapidly shifting wholesale marketplace.”

“With Oracle Communications, UNIFI has the robust network infrastructure to provide its customers with highly reliable, interactive and real-time unified communications services,” said Doug Suriano, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications. “Our technology will allow UNIFI to modernize voice interconnection between Mobile Network Operators and access the latest, most innovative tools available for a session border controller.”

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Western Digital Transforms Business Processes with Oracle Cloud

Western Digital has been able to combine numerous applications, reduce approval times by 70 percent, rationalize suppliers by 50 percent and improve acquisition agility on a global scale.

After acquiring SanDisk and HGST, Western Digital faced the challenge of rationalizing three Fortune 500-size on-premises ERP systems. Western Digital decided it needed a modern suite of best-in-class ERP applications that would enable it to enhance the customer experience and achieve a competitive advantage while improving employee productivity. After careful evaluation, Western Digital selected Oracle ERP Cloud, which has allowed it to seamlessly extend its on-premises applications to the cloud and establish a modern business platform that can seamlessly scale to support its future expansion plans and new technology innovations.

“The process of rationalizing three large legacy systems and associated applications gave us a unique opportunity to drive change, as more than two thirds of our organization would have to undergo change no matter what application we selected. We needed a simple, yet scalable cloud platform that could power our rapidly growing business,” said Steve Phillpott, CIO at Western Digital. “With Oracle Cloud we have been able to consolidate applications, automate key financial workflows and radically improve productivity. Oracle has been the catalyst for change and is pivotal in our digital transformation journey.”

“The technology industry is an incredibly fast-paced and competitive market, where the quickest, most agile players win. Western Digital has done an incredible job bringing three large enterprise organizations onto a single Fortune 100-scale platform to significantly improve efficiency and business agility,” said Rondy Ng, senior vice president, Oracle Applications Development. “With Oracle ERP Cloud, Western Digital will be able to continually take advantage of the latest innovations to gain a competitive advantage and successfully position itself for future growth.”

Western Digital’s adoption of Oracle ERP Cloud builds upon its use of both Oracle on-premises and Oracle Analytics Cloud. With Oracle, Western Digital is able to avoid massive file download times and manual analysis to provide its employees with access to the information they need to make better, faster decisions

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5 Key Skills Your Team Needs to Nail Cross-Channel Marketing

The cross-channel marketing model has been in effect for many years, but it continues to evolve as an art and science. That evolution requires an ever-expanding skill set for the talent you add to the team. To identify talent or determine what type of skills development to invest in, here are some of the key skills for succeeding at cross-channel marketing:

Video Production

It's important to develop skills in video production. It has become such a popular form of content across channels. For example, audiences like to watch videos on social media, websites, and even through emails. Sure, you could outsource this task or hire a production company. However, it's better to add this to the internal team's skill set as a competitive advantage. Also, it provides a way to add videos at any point that an opportunity arises. This includes participation in conferences, community events, or special campaigns.

Acquiring skill means developing an understanding of video software, social media video tools such as Facebook Live, and other technical capabilities associated with video production including editing and sound. A good place to start is online technical training courses offered through organizations like Udemy.

Paid Search and Social Media

There are opportunities across search and social media to reach a targeted audience. Yet, there's a lack of understanding of how to do it to achieve the maximum ROI.

Therefore, it helps to add this skill to your marketing team's toolbox. This means learning how to leverage Google AdWords and Bing for paid search opportunities. The results of this know-how can drive more traffic to your website. It can also provide insights on how to improve SEO and your overall content strategy.

The same goes for sponsored content and social media ads on Facebook and Instagram. Include a team member who has experience beyond organic social media, someone who can use these social media advertising tools effectively in conjunction with your other channel tactics.

Content Strategy and Development

While you can hire freelance writers to produce content, they may not have the acumen to truly understand how to craft content or develop the topics that work effectively for your audience. That's why it helps to have team members who are highly skilled in content development. They know how to conduct the research. Then, these content experts can apply existing insights to create a content calendar that delivers the most relevant and engaging content.

Plus, they understand how to leverage different tools to enhance the content development process. This includes content management systems (CMS) and tools such as BuzzSumo that reveal trending topics. This skill should include knowledge of how to take content and repurpose it into specific content vehicles. These vehicles include infographics, infomercials, podcasts, social media posts, and video scripts. Additionally, knowing where to distribute the content, including the appropriate syndication outlets, adds value.

Analytics

One of the biggest challenges is measuring results in cross-marketing channel campaigns. This is because using a combination of channels means that each channel has some impact on the results. But, in what measure? And, how do you know which channel to emphasize and when to get the greatest results?

Therefore, having a team that can leverage analytics tools and understands the insights they deliver is one of the greatest assets. This skill determines the combination, frequency, and timing for all marketing tactics across channels. From there, the team can refine content messaging. This skill requires learning how to use Google Analytics and similar programs. Also, it includes the ability to create various reports from the available data. Finally, a team member skilled in analytics can explain how to apply the findings to specific strategic goals and tactics.

Programming

Although not as critical, being well versed in coding can propel a marketing team member's value far above everyone else. This is because it's a skill that can address the marketing department's need to personalize and customize its tactics for a diverse audience.

For example, someone who knows how to program can localize a landing page based on the incoming IP address of a website visitor. This means the landing page could have content that reflects a particular city where that visitor is from as well as offer specific promotions to them versus someone visiting from another city where you do business. Additionally, programming skills may be valuable for APIs that further customize marketing efforts as well as for adding chatbots or apps.

Oracle Named a Leader in CRM Suites Evaluation by Independent Research Firm

Oracle has been named a leader in CRM suites by Forrester Research. The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suites, Q4 2018 gave Oracle the highest score of any vendor in the current offering category and cites Oracle’s ability to unify front- and back-office functions, noting that “Oracle's far-reaching vision is to enable the connected digital enterprise by integrating data, intelligence, and experiences across B2B and B2C customer journeys that span the front and back office.”

According to Forrester, modern CRM strategies enable differentiated customer experiences “by leveraging vast amounts of interaction, behavioral and transaction data to enable contextual experiences that deliver value to the customer...” Forrester cites intelligence as a key differentiator, saying “Intelligence-driven engagement streamlines work and allows CRM users to focus on the tasks that matter most to business outcomes.” The report also notes that “the value of CRM has shifted toward helping organizations better support customers in their end-to-end engagement journeys to garner their satisfaction and long-term loyalty...”

“At Oracle we know there is no such thing as a static and predictable customer journey and that’s why we are focused on providing powerful and actionable insights in context, in motion and in real time across the entire customer experience,” said Stephen Fioretti, Vice President Product Management, Oracle Service Cloud. “We believe our position in the Forrester Wave for CRM Suites underscores our data-driven approach to helping organizations make every customer interaction matter.”

For the report, 11 vendors were evaluated across 33 criteria, which were grouped into three categories: current offering, strategy and market presence. Oracle received the highest score of any vendor in the current offering category, and received the highest score possible in the product strategy criterion. Oracle also received the highest possible scores in the  sales force automation (SFA), confi­gure price quote (CPQ), marketing automation, customer service, field service, customer journey support criteria, as well as the highest score of any vendor in the go-to-market approach criterion.

Oracle (Customer Experience) CX Cloud is an integrated set of applications which empower organizations to take a smarter approach to customer experience management and business transformation initiatives. By providing a trusted business platform that connects data, experiences, and outcomes, Oracle CX Cloud helps customers reduce IT complexity, deliver innovative customer experiences, and achieve predictable and tangible business results.

Leading Utilities Weather the Storm with Oracle

Oracle Cloud Platform Application Development 2018 Associate - 1Z0-926 Exam Dumps

As weather volatility increases, customers look to Oracle Utilities to help maintain and restore power to millions

evere weather events are increasing in both frequency and intensity. To help keep power available while supporting predictable restoration for millions of affected customers, the top utilities across the globe rely on the performance and dependability of Oracle Utilities Network Management System (NMS).

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, “In 2018 (as of October 9), there have been 11 weather and climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each across the United States.” Likewise, a study by the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC) covered in Science Daily, noted that “extreme weather events have become more frequent over the past 36 years, with a significant uptick in floods and other hydrological events compared even with five years ago.”

When emergencies strike, utilities’ grid operations need to effectively respond to unplanned outages, integrate emergency and mutual-aid crews, and get accurate information to customers fast. Built from the ground-up as a fully-integrated outage and distribution management system, NMS gives utility operations teams accurate, timely, and reliable information critical for meeting the challenges of 21st-century grid operations. Today, more than 40 utility customers—including 6 of the top 9 utilities in the U.S.—depend on the industry-leading Oracle NMS platform in their control centers; several of which have the most demanding storm performance requirements in the industry. On the East Coast of the U.S. alone, power can be restored to 19.4 million customers faster thanks to Oracle NMS.

Customers rely on Oracle to navigate the storms

“The past three years has brought a relentless stream of hurricanes and storms, including Matthew, Irma and Michael,” said Josh Stallings, systems & standards manager, Georgia Power Company. “During each, Georgia Power Company was able to rely on Oracle NMS to bring order to an otherwise chaotic situation. In particular with Irma, which resulted in service interruptions for some 1,630,000 customers we had more than 425 concurrent users on NMS, allowing our operations staff to have a single valid source to monitor and understand what specific parts of the electrical distribution system were impacted, as well as validate the current state of various devices and equipment on the distribution system. The software also allowed us to perform meaningful customer communications ranging from broad-scale restoration targets down to event level communication for cases of trouble with repair crews onsite.”

“In Ireland, we are experiencing more extreme weather events each year,” said Robert Power, NMS system manager at ESB Networks. “Storm Darwin was a turning point in February 2014. The development team fully supported us implementing all required enhancement requests identified in the aftermath of this storm. Since going live with Oracle NMS in April 2017, the system has demonstrated exceptional performance for more than 150 users, coordinating and reporting on all outage activity. Hurricane Ophelia was our first real test, however, the intuitive and flexible nature of the application allowed us to configure storm rules, ETRs and UI as needed to reflect our unique user and system requirements to best manage the restoration effort.” 

Oracle NMS: The calm before, during and after the storm

Based on 30 years of market experience, NMS leverages market-leading outage management technology with distribution management and advanced analytics to empower utilities to maximize grid operation capabilities, shorten outage duration and optimize distribution, all while keeping their customers engaged and informed. NMS reported outstanding performance during the recent hurricane season, which included Florence and Michael. Oracle is now working closely with its utility customers to brace for extreme weather on the horizon this winter, 15 of which serve more than 1 million customer meters each.

“While we previously viewed a catastrophic episode such as Katrina as a once in a lifetime event, they are fast becoming yearly occurrences,” said Rodger Smith, senior vice president and general manager for Oracle Utilities. “As such, the technology to stabilize the world’s power grids and prepare them for uncharted weather territory needs to be equal parts cutting-edge and battle-tested. Oracle’s field-proven NMS system has enabled our customers to weather the most intense storms, helping maintain and restore power to millions. Utilities have enough to worry about during a major weather event, they will attest that our Network Management System isn’t one of them.”

Providing a “single-pane-of-glass” to maintain efficient grid operations, Oracle NMS presents the information control center operators need to effectively optimize the grid end-to-end from the substation to the end customer. Built on a data-centric, platform-based approach with integrated applications, Oracle NMS delivers unified user access to outage management (OMS), distribution management (DMS), distributed energy resource management (DERMS) as well as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems.