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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / SEPTEMBER 15, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 37
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Systems/Enterprise:
ORACLE APPLICATION SERVER 10g
SIMPLIFIES GRID COMPUTING
Oracle Corp announced Oracle Application Server 10g, the first middleware
offering that simplifies the management of applications running in a Grid
computing environment. The latest edition of Oracle's middleware product also
offers enhanced integration and Web services capabilities. Oracle Application
Server 10g will enable customers to more easily respond to changing business
requirements, such as integrating applications and Web services or increasing
computing resources within an enterprise Grid to process payroll at month's
end.
Enterprise Grid computing can dramatically reduce the time, labor and cost
of
IT management by pooling industry-standard servers, storage and software. As a
result, companies can use the power of their entire system, or computing Grid,
for several projects, rather than continuing to purchase more capacity for
separate projects. As part of Oracle's integrated Grid software
infrastructure, Oracle Application Server 10g allows organizations to run
existing applications and Web sites on enterprise Grids unchanged.
Manage Applications More Easily On Enterprise Grids
It can be expensive and difficult to add or balance existing computing
capacity and to provision and test middleware, which is server software that
runs Internet applications, Web services and Web sites. The new workload
management features in Oracle Application Server 10g are policy-based,
allowing IT administrators to easily optimize computing capacity by shifting
resources -- such as hardware, storage and software configurations -- as
needed.
Using Oracle Application Server 10g, administrators can adjust computing
capacity based on threshold metrics, such as server utilization rates or
end-user response times, or in response to scheduled events, such as payroll
processing at the end of the month or closing the books at the end of a
quarter. Companies can reduce system management costs and end users can
benefit from improved system performance.
"With Oracle 10g, we are able to better manage millions of images for our
constituents on-demand," said Jeremy Forman, computer systems analyst at the
New Mexico Department of Transportation. "With Oracle Application Server 10g's
new automation features, we are changing the way we administer our
applications. Many repetitive administrative tasks have been eliminated,
allowing the administrator to quickly and easily manage more and larger
applications and Web sites, providing us with significant cost savings,
improved performance and manageability."
Oracle Application Server 10g also provides new high availability
capabilities
that improve the reliability of applications running on clusters and
enterprise Grids. New features include the enhanced Fast Start Fault Recovery
Architecture and Failure Notification (FaN) that simplify communication
between the database and application server nodes to provide a coordinated
failover response when hardware or other system outages occur.
Customers Can Use IT Assets More Effectively
Traditional IT infrastructures leave organizations with "islands" of
computing
resources and software applications that are difficult to integrate. For
example, a company may want to integrate the data in their human resources and
payroll systems and deliver it to employees via a portal, but the applications
and data reside on different servers and may not be designed to work together.
Oracle Application Server 10g provides advanced integration capabilities that
allow companies to use one product to address application-to-application,
business-to-business and Web services integration. As a result, organizations
can create one company-wide data model that acts as a single hub of
information and reduces the cost of future integration projects. New
integration features in Oracle Application Server 10g include:
- Easy-to-use declarative tools and pre-built adapters for most applications
and data that eliminates the need for custom setup and programming
- Support for business-to-business integration so companies can securely
manage transactions with trading partners and suppliers
- Policy-based management that streamlines trading partner administration by
maintaining agreements, profiles and collaboration details
- New model-based, event-driven management tools that allow organizations to
more efficiently manage and monitor important business processes
- Support for a wide range of standards-based integration protocols -- such
as EDI, RosettaNet (high-tech manufacturing) and HL/7 (healthcare) -- so
organizations no longer need expensive, proprietary point-to-point integration
products that require a separate solution for each integration project.
Because these integration capabilities are built into Oracle Application
Server 10g, customers and system integrators can also leverage the product's
clustering, high availability and enterprise Grid computing features in new
integration deployments. Solution integrators can lower the cost of delivering
solutions and improve the quality of service by improving the integration of
their customers' systems.
"Companies are under enormous pressure to minimize costs wherever possible,
and part of the solution is to better leverage their existing computing
resources," said Bobby Soni, global integration services lead at BearingPoint
Inc, one of the world's largest business consulting and systems integration
firms. "The capabilities offered by Oracle's Application Server 10g can help
companies maximize their IT investments by building on a company's current
system to run additional applications."
Use Web Services With Oracle Grid Computing For Business Flexibility
For maximum flexibility in developing and deploying applications, customers
and partners can leverage both the Grid computing support and enhanced Web
services functionality in Oracle Application Server 10g. Grid computing
streamlines the addition and balancing of computing capacity, while Web
services make it easier to reuse and integrate applications.
Oracle's new middleware software provides a straightforward approach to
developing and managing Web services and composite applications, which are
applications that combine functionality from new and legacy applications. Full
support for the latest WS-I Web services standards and interoperability with
.Net Web services enable organizations to deploy and manage secure,
enterprise-class Web services. As a result, companies can deliver new services
to customers, employees and trading partners quickly.
"Oracle has always strived to keep its customers on the cutting edge. In
2000,
we were the first vendor to deliver an integrated application platform suite,
combining middleware capabilities such as J2EE, portal, wireless, caching, Web
services and business intelligence," said Charles Rozwat, executive vice
president of server technologies at Oracle Corporation. "As a result, our
customers and partners were able to save money and streamline business
processes. By making it easy to take advantage of Grid computing, Oracle
Application Server 10g takes middleware to the next level and enables
customers to lower costs and increase IT responsiveness."
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