Oracle and Sun Publish First World Record TPC-C Benchmark using Flash Technology.

Oracle announced a new world record TPC-C benchmark result for Oracle Database 11g running on Sun SPARC® servers with CMT technology and the Sun Solaris Operating System. The Oracle-Sun benchmark used an innovative combination of Sun's fast CMT servers to power the database, along with Sun's new flash technology to speed I/O. Oracle Real Application Clusters allowed Sun and Oracle to scale performance on a 12-Node Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 cluster.

With this benchmark, Oracle and Sun become the first vendors to achieve world record TPC-C performance results using Flash Storage technology.

• Using hardware size measured in racks of equipment as priced for the benchmarks, Oracle and Sun were able to set the world record using eight times less hardware than IBM used for its largest benchmark.
• The Oracle-Sun configuration consumed four times less energy than the IBM configuration even though it ran 26% faster.
• Based on average response time of New Order transaction in TPC-C benchmark, the Oracle-Sun benchmark demonstrated 16 times better transaction response times than the IBM benchmark.
• Oracle Database 11g running on the Solaris10 Operating System achieved a record-breaking 7.7 million tpmC at $2.34/tpmC.
• Oracle is now the TPC-C world record holder in both major categories - performance and price/performance.

Visit Oracle Database Insider blog at blogs.oracle.com/databaseinsider.

Analytics is supposed to answer questions that will lead to actions. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus is the most powerful tool available to help customers answer critical business questions, such as:

• How many orders were placed
• What customers are responsible for the highest volume of orders
• What they're implementing
• What exactly is the issue with any products/services
• What are the unusual pattern changes that will lead to actionable data
• Sales trends by region

I could go on and on about Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus's innovative capabilities and easy-to-use features. However, what I want to highlight is another Oracle product that is a tremendous complement to Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus. I am talking about Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Database 11g.

Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Database 11g come with a wealth of statistical functions, limited only by the user's imagination in terms of what one can accomplish in the analytical arena. The analytical capabilities that comes with the Oracle database help businesses answer questions such as:

• What customers are most likely to default on the credit card payments (prediction)
• What attributes contribute the most to customer satisfaction (correlation)
• How many Service Requests should be expected for the upcoming months (prediction)

We decided to explore the analytical capability of the database to complement Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus to predict and to establish cause-effect. One example where we utilized the power of both technologies was to predict the number of orders for a given company. So, the challenge was to predict the number of orders for the next three months so that the company could plan for production, staffing, marketing, stocking, and more. As you know, any prediction requires availability of historical data. The more historical data one has, the more reliable the prediction. The idea was to generate a new set of three-month predictions of orders on a monthly basis. The least squared model (prediction equation) to predict was used. This model relies on the intercept and slope of a regression analysis to predict. In this case, the model is a simple linear regression that can be plotted by using the database functions REGR_SLOPE and REGR_INTERCEPT.

We wrapped these two functions with a PL/SQL package for simplicity (we could choose to call the database functions directly from Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus). Basically this package runs at zero hour of the first of each month, generating an output fact table with the predicted values. This table becomes part of the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus's physical, business and presentation layer. That way, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus can present this data by region, country, state and product. This provides a comprehensive forecast by different components of the business.

Also, because these algorithms reside in the database, response time is significantly better than trying to crunch a complex statistical model at the application level with frequent interaction between the application and the database. Oracle's decision to put these statistical functions at the database level was brilliant, to say the least.

What was done above is just a small sample of how one can add more analytical capabilities to Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus. This combination (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus and Oracle Database) is a key component of any organization that wants to achieve a competitive advantage at a very low cost of ownership. Companies that rely on analytics for their business decisions can gain a competitive edge. For example, how to price a product to maximize revenue, how many seats can an airline overbook (Yield Management), how to price hotel rooms and ensure high occupancy with maximum revenue (revenue management) are all areas where analytics play a huge role for achieving competitive advantage.

This was an innovative way to utilize the power of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus and the Oracle Database to predict orders so that the company could make intelligent decisions pertaining to the ecosystem associated to orders.

The overhead television with the History Channel makes the time go by when plodding along on the treadmill early each morning at the gym. It used to be that you had to rely on reading the captions from one of the televisions hung from the ceiling. Recently, they've installed audio jacks on each of the machines so that you can hear the channels versus having to read the captions - a much better option and permits one to get what's being broadcast even when you lose your favorite spot right in front of the set.

Several weeks ago, the broadcast focused on Lewis and Clark's expedition from Pittsburgh via St. Louis and thence to the Pacific Ocean near present-day Portland, Oregon. The expedition began in August of 1803, arrived at the Pacific in December of 1805 and then arrived back in St. Louis by September of 1806. While they weren't the first non-natives to make the journey, they certainly became the best known. This is largely because it was a very well documented scientific expedition rather than one of conquest or a land-grab.

The broadcast story focused on the role of Sacagawea, a young Native-American mother who proved invaluable as an interpreter during much of the trek. As I was half-listening, one particular fact caught me completely by surprise and I had to do some additional digging to learn more about it.

As the expedition went farther West, there was less familiarity with local Native American dialects and languages. Consequently, and according to the above link:

"While Sacagawea did not speak English, she spoke Shoshone and Hidatsa. Her husband Charbonneau spoke Hidatsa and French. In effect, Sacagawea and Charbonneau would become an interpreter team. As Clark explained in his journals, Charbonneau was hired "as an interpreter through his wife." If and when the expedition met the Shoshones, Sacagawea would talk with them, then translate to Hidatsa for Charbonneau, who would translate to French. The Corps' Francois Labiche spoke French and English, and would make the final translation so that the two English-speaking captains would understand."

So, in each conversation with the Shoshones, there were four people involved. We think of ourselves as sophisticated, worldly-wise, resourceful and full of initiative. Yet, here was a band of about three dozen strangers making their way through completely foreign territory, through potentially hostile Native American lands. They made the effort and found ways to communicate respectfully with those they met in order to advance science and map these new territories. This is a remarkable achievement by any measure and it happened over 200 years ago.

I have frequently flown coast-to-coast across the United States for business and pleasure. Mostly I sit on an aisle seat to allow an easy way to get up and stretch my legs. Occasionally, the aisle isn't available and I'll take a window. Because I don't often get to look out and watch the passing landscape, it is always a treat to see the vast panorama of the American Great Plains rolling on for a couple hours beneath the aircraft wings. Admittedly, it's an ironic juxtaposition to see endless miles of prairie whilst squeezed into a seat that is 17 inches wide.

Invariably, perhaps because of my interest in history, I think of the early settlers who braved months of wagon trains to move to a better place with new opportunities. It gives me pause to think that I can get from my home to the airport and from there to San Francisco - about 3,000 miles - in roughly the same time that it would take a wagon train to cover 1/3 the distance from my home to the airport. While I'm covering the ground at roughly a mile every ten seconds, they were plodding along at about a mile every thirty minutes. It's amazing to reflect on this.

The wagon trails had names like: Butterfield, Oregon, California, Santa Fe, and Mormon. I found a consolidated site here from which the above links were taken. I marvel at the hardships that the settlers endured to reach their goal of the newborn America dream. There is an account of one such journey here that lists the travelers and followed by descriptions of the experience.

Over the years, we've become more casual, speedy, and cost-effective about getting from one place to another. Times change and our modes of accomplishing the same objective has certainly changed as technology innovation has advanced and been made available to the masses. More recently, we've added an increased security process layer to the travel experience. While it took a while to work out the methodology, the efficiency has improved to the point where, even as a seasoned traveler, I occasionally feel like I'm holding up the security process rather than the other way around. We become used to a certain way of doing things, resent when our comfortable pattern is disrupted, but eventually come to accept the "new order" and learn to work with it. Then we realize that the relatively small inconvenience of time is more than compensated by the security we gain. The overall efficiency of the travel is certainly not impacted that severely by a three minute wait in the security line.

Another new and fresh approach to the traditional way of doing thing is taking place in the identity management space. A group of companies and organizations representing public and private deployers, implementers, government agencies from around the world have recently come together to create a new initiative. This alliance is called the Kantara Initiative.

We are excited about the opportunity that Kantara Initiative represents for several reasons.

Firstly, it is a uniquely structured venue with a diverse membership that has come together to solve challenges in the identity space. The organization is open, flexible, and affordable so as to foster and encourage innovative solutions to the problems in the identity space. We have been working on this for some time in collaboration with many companies and organizations from around the world and have developed an approach well suited to today's needs. Organizations of all sizes, deployers and their business partners, smaller innovative developers, traditional identity management suppliers, WEB 2.0 communities, government agencies and commercial companies from around the world have joined in this effort

Secondly, the problems we face are not just about technology, but rather a combination of business policy and privacy requirements, balanced against interoperability, usability, as well as technology harmonization. All of these issues need to be addressed for identity-based solutions to succeed and for deployers to leverage their benefits. Kantara Initiative is uniquely positioned to address these needs.

Thirdly, the members of Kantara Initiative have long-proven experience, competence, and market leadership in each of these areas. Members come from a diverse, worldwide background and represent companies, agencies, and individuals with deep experience and subject matter expertise. To be sure, these companies, organizations and individuals have remarkable achievements to-date. And, now these members are anxious to come together and work collaboratively within this broad community to leverage that synergy toward even greater achievements.

So in summary, the innovative governance structure, diverse and experienced membership, and range of business and technology issues that we will work on, make this a unique and exciting time for the identity space as a whole.

Having said all of that, there are still those who have their doubts. While we were in the formative stages, one of my colleagues in the initiative sent me a famous quotation:

There is nothing more difficult to carry out,
nor more doubtful of success,
nor more dangerous to handle,
than to initiate a new order of things.

For the reformer has enemies in those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.

This lukewarmness arises partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the law in their favour; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have actual experience of it.

N. Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)

To be clear, establishing a 'new order' is not the end of the journey. It is just the beginning. It is essential that all of us who are truly interested in advancing the interests of the identity management space as a whole become actively engaged. We must work hard to positively engage with one another. We must do what is best in the interests of all those who are building and deploying identity management solutions. Because it is only by positively engaging, conversing, and collaborating with one another in an open forum that we can advance our collective interests and help customers achieve the benefits that, open, standards-based, and interoperable identity management solutions can provide.

I hope that you will consider joining us in this effort. We welcome your participation.

Usually when we use the word innovation, it refers to improving products or services. Sometimes this is a gradual process, like adding functions to a software product or adding more customer service options (like self-service check-in for airlines). Sometimes innovation can be radical, such as the Nintendo Wii, which changed the game console market almost overnight, or flying cars that are currently being prototyped (a process that will take many years).

But innovation doesn’t always have to be products and services. Business models can be innovative as well. Look at the Apple iPod. Although the design and the user interface are very slick, the true innovation is not in the hardware, but in the integration with iTunes. Apple solved a fundamental dilemma in the music business. The existing business model in music--selling CDs--was declining in popularity. The alternative model, downloading music via peer to peer networks, had legal issues. Apply made downloading easy and integrated enough for people to actually prefer this over downloading music for free.

Another example of business model innovation is software-as-a-service (SaaS), or on demand. The true innovation is not in the license versus subscription structure (Capex vs Opex), but in opening up of new capabilities. Traditionally, only large companies can manage full-functionality software and deal with the global complexity. However, globalization and regulation do not differentiate between large and smaller organizations. The software that a smaller organization could manage would not provide enough functionality to handle their own complex globalization and regulatory issues. SaaS and related models allow smaller organizations to run fully functional software. The dilemma has been ‘broken.’

Business model innovation usually is about ‘breaking the code,’ where code would mean the way you usually do things--how you believe things work. Innovation is finding a way to eliminate those limiting beliefs.

This is the same way of thinking I’d like to apply to strategy, which is full of limiting beliefs as well. One of the most common misconceptions about strategy is that it's about making choices, about the either/or questions. As Porter says, either cost leadership or differentiation. Or, according to the value disciplines of Treacy and Wiersema, either customer intimacy, product innovation or operational excellence. Strategy innovation is about finding ways to do and/and, and eliminate those limiting beliefs.

I believe the Oracle strategy has done so. Remember the ‘$1 billion saved’ advertisements from a few years ago, where Oracle saved that much money by implementing its own software in a single instance? The cost savings turned out to be not even the most important result. Oracle’s efforts turned out to be the basis for the current innovative product strategy: ‘best of breed from a one stop shop.’ A complete and open product set, integrated using a common middleware layer. Choice for customers, without the burden of having to integrate yourself. Another dilemma broken. And with the single view of the customer that Oracle has established in its own business, we have global insight into what customers are doing.

There's operational excellence and product innovation and customer intimacy, and we can’t say one is more important than the other. They’re all equal parts in the Oracle mix. Strategy innovation in action.

Most of the dictionaries define innovation as a new way of doing something. It’s also defined as an incremental, radical, or revolutionary change in products, processes or organizations. However, bringing that mindset to your day-to-day work is something that needs a lot of courage, time, dedication, and support (from your superiors as well as from peers). Work can become boring over a period of time if nothing changes. On day one it may be too complex to even understand what all it is about. But on the fifth or tenth day it becomes manageable--then comes the day when you feel the job is taking you nowhere. This is what happens to more than 99% of the people doing same or similar work every day. The other 1% are able to avoid that boredom by trying to do their work differently or looking for the ways to do it faster or more efficiently. That mindset, that determination to kill the boredom from everyday life, is another kind of innovation.

Everyone wants his work to be interesting and most people want it to be challenging as well. Nobody wants boring work that never changes. Still, most people fail to be innovative. What does it take to be innovative?
· Willingness to look for new ways of doing your job
· The ability to manage work pressure so that you can analyze what is happening with your job and what needs to change.
· Support and encouragement from your supervisor and peers.

As soon as a process or a work methodology becomes an everyday job without any significant changes, then it is probably a good time to start thinking about bringing innovation into the job. I believe it is good to be selfish in this regard. If innovation happens, then anyone can generalize it for the betterment of the organization. Not everyone may be innovative but they can be very good watchmen. If someone dares to try a new way of doing something and it works, no one hesitates to start doing it the same way immediately.

Further, I believe innovation cannot come in isolation. In other words, you cannot set up a group of 10 people in the organization to bring innovation into the system. A dedicated group can facilitate or focus on innovative people but cannot bring all the positive changes that the system may need. Innovation needs real people working on real problems in their day-to-day work and identifying the areas that need a different treatment. So, an organization that believes in innovation must make sure to identify innovative people and nurture them in the organization irrespective of the employees’ type of work and role.

For more blog posts from Vik, visit Dare to Code at adfjsf.blogspot.com

After an overnight flight from Washington, D.C., Oracle President Charles Phillips and Oracle Senior Vice President Thomas Kurian and some of my friends on the demo team packed the Hilton London Paddington to kick off the European launch events. Concurrently, Munich, Germany and Paris, France hosted similar launch events on July 2nd.

New Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle WebLogic Suite Innovations
There was a lot of interest, particularly in London, in the strong Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Database installed bases. The announcement about the new Oracle GridLink for Real Application Clusters (RAC) feature was a big hit. Enhanced integration between Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle RAC means higher data access reliability and performance in clustered environments. And it’s easy to set up—which cuts down on implementation time. Another Oracle Application Grid feature that had people asking questions was Oracle ActiveCache, enhanced integration between Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Coherence. It’s going to be key for organizations that need accelerated responsiveness for Web applications but need to get from point A to point B quickly and without code changes.

Online Resources
In addition to the physical events, the team also rolled out an impressive 11g revamp of www.oracle.com/middleware Web pages, Oracle Technology Network pages, blogs and downloads—and a brand-new Web site called the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Launch Center that’s dedicated to 11g release product information, tutorials and overviews. A lot of work went into every single asset, page forum and blog—like the Application Grid blog. But what was more impressive was that it was all rolled out in the span of about an hour.

World Tour – Coming to a City Near You
If you don’t happen to live in or near one of the initial 10 launch cities, the Launch Center is a great place to start. Even better, we’re now going broad in our plans to take the show to over 100 cities starting later this month. Check out the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Forum events for a city near you.

Next stop on the launch tour, Sydney, with Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo to follow next week. At least it was nice to relax a bit during the July 4th holiday.

The afternoon breakout sessions in Washington, D.C. were great. Unfortunately we had to turn people away from the Oracle WebCenter session. Vince Casarez must have done such a great job with the demo during the keynote that he over-packed the house. SOA, Application Grid--featuring Oracle WebLogic Suite--and Identity Management were also really, really well attended. I'm glad that we made the call to run the sessions 2 times to make sure that attendees could see what they came for. For those who didn't catch the keynote live, it's now available on-demand. We didn't webcast the breakout sessions but they will be available in-person when the 100+ city Oracle Fusion Middleware Forum kicks into high gear later this month.

Another thing that really started to resonate were some points that Thomas Kurian made during his keynote about the amount of time and effort that has gone into the development of the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g release. He spoke about millions of person-hours in automated and stress testing, the thousands of developers who worked on the release...and more. It really came together when I saw and heard the breakout presentations, the features, and realized the thought (and sweat) that has gone into it. Innovation takes a lot of effort.

Washington, D.C. - By The Numbers
2 - (At least 2 that I'm aware of) all nighters pulled by some of the public relations and OTN folks to make sure that all of the information, documentation, and downloads got out and posted on-time for July 1st
1,000+ - people who were registered for the event at the Mellon Auditorium. It was standing-room only.
1 - Satellite truck to get the live keynote webcast out
1 - X-ray truck to x-ray our satellite truck to make sure that everything was OK. We were in a federal building.
3675 - Miles (or 5915 km) from Washington, D.C. to London---the next stop for Thomas Kurian, Charles Phillips, and the demonstration crew for the next event on July 2nd
66 - The highway between the Mellon Auditorium and Washington Dulles Airport that got closed while our demo crew was on the way to the airport trying to get their flight out
1 - Big sigh of relief, from me and many other folks, when everyone made their flight
3 - Ring Circus
Given that European holidays are fast approaching, we decided to go with a three-prong approach to the initial European leg of the tour. So while the Washington, D.C. team kicks off another event in London, two more teams are doing the launch in Paris and Munich.

It's going to be another long day.

Wow. That was probably one of the most impressive—and ambitious--keynotes I’ve seen. Just a quick break here in the press room before I head off to finish lunch and then to breakout sessions later this afternoon. Hope you caught it online.

A lot of information covering Oracle’s development tools, service-oriented architecture, enterprise portal, application server and identity management strategies. A ton of information. Even though I’ve seen everything a number of times—starting at the very beginning, years ago, and more recently as the presentations came together, the demos were built and up into rehearsals at Oracle’s HQ and today in the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium— I’m still glad that I’ll be able to look back to it online. The replay should be available tomorrow.

Who’s Here and Personal Highlights
It’s always interesting to see and hear what resonates with the crowd, especially as we go from city to city. Here in the federal capital of the U.S. we obviously got a solid showing from public sector customers but also a good representation from some commercial ventures—many of which have a solid presence in the area.

Five demonstrations and five customers who are already using Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g products or were a part of the beta were the highlight for me. It really brought everything to life and made it very real and tangible.

What Resonated…at Least What I Heard People Talking About
It was interesting to see how many people were interested in the Oracle Identity Management 11g sections and the Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g sections. Maybe I’m picking up on that more because I was surrounded by public sector customers. As I anticipated, the complete identity management strategy that Thomas Kurian spoke about had people listening intently. There are a number of enhancements to the Oracle Internet Directory and Oracle Virtual Directory that will definitely be time savers down the road for many of our customers.

Another key innovation is the fact that this release delivers on Oracle’s strategy and vision to deliver service-oriented security. Expect to hear a lot more about that from us in the coming months. At a high level, we’re talking about abstracting away access and entitlements management from the application. This may or not make sense, depending on how technical or security-savvy you are. But for developers and development managers this makes a lot of sense. Historically, security has been so tightly bound to the actual application it makes development, changes, reporting and administration difficult. By abstracting these away you will now be able to define and implement security declaratively—building applications in Oracle JDeveloper, and Oracle ADF app, SOA application or Web Portal.

Speaking of Web portals, the latest view into Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g looks awesome. Vince Casarez, VP of Development, did a full-on run-through of the latest—including a live demonstration of an Oracle WebCenter application on an iPhone. I’ve spent a lot of time working with some of the early adopter and beta customers over the past few months and I keep hearing great things from the Oracle WebCenter crowd. The new Composer feature for quick development, even by business users, and WebCenter Spaces for team collaboration are definitely hot with the agency and federal crowd. I was talking to two gentlemen on my way over here about how these features would apply to rolling out new services to constituents and making their virtual teams more connected.

Off to the breakouts now.

Washington, D.C. – July 1, 2009
Welcome to my first post on the innovation blog. I’m writing this from Washington, D.C. as we’re just about to launch the 11g release of Oracle Fusion Middleware. It’s been a long and sometimes crazy ride. But it’s great to see the story about this latest release finally unveiled to the world.

Just as this is the kickoff to the innovation blog, it’s also the kickoff of a 100-city tour to share the realities, key features and innovations in the Oracle Fusion Middleware product line. At 10am Eastern we start here in Washington, D.C. and from there the road show will cover at least ten more cities in July including London, Munich, Sydney, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Sao Paolo and Mexico City…to name a few.

Much of yesterday was spent on rehearsals, final checks on demonstrations and technical checks. We were all up early this morning, but it’s going to be a great event.

Oracle President Charles Phillips and Senior Vice President Thomas Kurian will be starting the show, with a tag-team keynote covering the overall strategy as well as key innovations and enhancements to a number of middleware products. Hope you can catch the keynote online—or better yet, in person if you’re in the greater Washington, D.C. area. Look for some interesting guest speakers to join them on stage. The venue is great and only a few blocks away from the White House. I haven’t been here since 1986, so it was nice to get a chance to walk around a bit last night between rehearsals and catching up on email. More soon.