What do you guys think of this?
Final Oracle8(TM) Beta Ships On 7 Platforms To 170+ Organizations Worldwide
Extensive Beta Testing Prepares Market for Powerful Object-Relational Platform
for OLTP, Data Warehousing, Network Computing Applications
REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., March 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Oracle Corp.
(Nasdaq: ORCL) today announced the final phase of its Oracle8(TM) beta
program, an extensive testing program designed to prepare the market for the
industry's most powerful open systems database platform to date. Oracle8
builds on the foundation of Oracle7, the relational core of Oracle(R)
Universal Server, to create a versatile object-relational business platform
for high-speed transactions, powerful decision support and leading-edge
network computing applications. The Oracle8 server is being shipped to more
than 170 beta program participants in 28 different countries who will use
Oracle8 to develop and test an array of applications on seven different
hardware platforms. "Oracle8 will provide customers with a painless,
evolutionary upgrade to take advantage of many new technology advances,
including very large database support, network computing scalability and new
object-relational functionality," said Jerry Held, senior vice president,
Oracle Server Technologies. "This is the largest beta program that Oracle has
ever undertaken, and we expect to ship Oracle8 to more than 7,000 Oracle
Alliance members and all Oracle Developer Program members in advance of
production availability. Customer feedback has been tremendous, with reports
of significantly higher availability, improved ease-of-use, and painless
migration of existing applications."
Oracle8 development is focused on two fronts: high-end performance,
scalability and availability for mission-critical applications of any size;
and object-relational integration to address mainstream business problems.
Initial shipments of Oracle8 software code started in August 1996 on Windows
NT and six major Unix platforms, with many customers installing Oracle8 on
multiple platforms to fully investigate its functionality. Participation in
phase one of the beta program included more than 60 customer sites and
120 partner organizations.
"Oracle's excellent technical support, training and early product
stability have clearly demonstrated Oracle's commitment to its partners
throughout the early beta process," said Scott Kane, senior vice president of
Platinum's database management tools group. "This effort has facilitated
Platinum's ability to deliver its systems and database management solutions
such as performance monitoring and database administration in a timely
fashion. When Oracle8 ships, Platinum will have solid, deliverable solutions
for its mutual Oracle customers."
Surveys of the beta program's participants show that 53 percent are
exploiting Oracle8's very large database, data warehousing and OLTP features,
while 47 percent are focused on adopting Oracle8's new object-relational
functionality. Customer projects in the beta program include high
availability systems designed to handle thousands of users as well as data
warehouses containing many terabytes of data.
"We're confident that Oracle8 will provide mainframe-caliber performance
on open platforms," said Brad Holcombe, Managing Partner, Technology in
Andersen Consulting's Worldwide Utilities Industry Program.
"We're using Oracle8 extensively to develop and test a new version of
Andersen's market leading CUSTOMER/1 application. As a participant in the
beta program, we're particularly enthusiastic about Oracle8's new partitioning
and backup and recovery capabilities."
In addition to beta testing, more than 700 customers, Oracle Alliance
members and Oracle consultants have been trained on new Oracle8 features. To
date, more than 1000 Oracle staff are trained to provide technical support,
sales support, and business and technology consulting services to assist
customers implementing new systems using Oracle8. By the time of production
availability, Oracle Worldwide Education will have more than 30 instructors
delivering Oracle8 training courses and seminars across geographic regions
worldwide, including San Francisco, Washington D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas,
London, Munich, Dusseldorf and Frankfurt. More than 3,500 customers and most
of Oracle's 26,000 staff will eventually receive training on Oracle8 features
and functionality.
To accelerate the adoption of Oracle8's object technology, Oracle has made
its "Sedona" object-oriented development environment available to a select
number of beta customers. Sedona will bring the benefits of component-based
development into mainstream corporate computing environments, enabling
developers to model, deploy and manage software components or "cartridges"
within Oracle's Network Computing Architecture.
"Sedona provides companies with the opportunity to visually model their
business, leveraging the features of Oracle8 as well as other object standards
such as the Object Management Group's CORBA and Microsoft's COM," said Mitch
Kramer, senior consultant with the Patricia Seybold Group. "Coupled with the
ability to manage cartridges within a team-based repository, Sedona provides
an essential solution for customers in the future."
New versions of Oracle's client/server and Web application development
tools, including Developer/2000 and Designer/2000, will be available to
leverage the scalability and robustness of Oracle8. Together with Sedona,
these tools will provide a complete application and component development
environment for Oracle8 and Network Computer Architecture.
"Component-based systems need to co-exist with traditional databases.
Oracle8 provides a smooth transition to an object-relational server," said Jon
Hopkins, director of object technology at Rational Software Corporation. "The
integration of Rational Rose with Oracle8 allows users to take an object model
of their enterprise and target components to their Oracle databases."
Oracle will announce additional product details and general availability
dates for Oracle8 and Sedona later this year.
Oracle Corporation is the world's largest supplier of software for
information management, and the world's second largest software company. With
annual revenues exceeding $4.8 billion, the company offers its database, tools
and application products along with related consulting, education and support
services, in more than 90 countries around the world.
For more information about Oracle, contact Oracle's headquarters at
415-506-7000. Oracle's World Wide Web address is (URL)
oracle.com.
Statements in this press release relating to Oracle8 contain
forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including the
timely release, undetected error or bugs, market acceptance, and other risks
detailed from time to time in Oracle Corporation's reports on file with the
SEC, including the report on Form 10-K for the year ended May 31, 1996 and the
subsequently filed reports on Form 10-Q.
NOTE: Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. Oracle7
and Oracle8 are trademarks of Oracle Corporation. All other products or
company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be
trademarks of their respective owners.
SOURCE Oracle Corp. |
