A key ingredient to Commerce Anywhere is the integration of systems.  If you're going to provide customers abilities like "buy online, pick-up in the store" then you're going to have to connect several systems.  For those that choose all Oracle Retail applications, most of those integrations are already available, but the majority of retailers have heterogeneous environments that require many integrations. Those integrations can be categorized as bulk data, fire-and-forget (message-based), and request-response services.  Its last one I'd like to discuss a bit.

As part of the v14 release, Oracle Retail provides the Retail Service Backbone (RSB) to assist with the lifecycle of Web services.  The RSB is included with the RIB license and its use is optional.  The libraries and tools are built on top of the Oracle Service Bus, but using a different ESB isn't out of the question.  The RIB and RSB work together and share the use of consistent Retail Business Objects.

From the release notes, we see that the RSB contains the following components:

• Tools for generation of OSB projects with pre-built instrumentation
• Tools for automating full services lifecycle management
• Tools to manage service lifecycle phases (preparation, assembly, and deployment)
• Tools for generation and automation of web service security policies
• Centralized configuration management of all Oracle Retail services
• Enforcement of standardization and verification of Retail Enterprise services
• Configuration based extensible framework to enable customization
• Pre-configured instrumentation for alerts, SLA, logging, audit, and trace automatically built in to each integration flow
• Retail Integration Console (RIC) is a monitoring, diagnosis, and analysis tool

That last one, the RIC, is a very cool Web application used for monitoring the Web service integrations at the application level.  From the console, its easy to see how integrations are performing, detect exceptions, and drive into details for analysis and eventual diagnosis.  Here's a screenshot of the summary page:

The tabs across the top are Integration Summary, Integration Flows, Deployment Topology, Performance & Diagnostics, Historical Trends, and Integration Guide.  These tabs provide a comprehensive view of the integrations thus allowing administrators to be more proactive in avoiding issues and quicker to diagnose those that can't be avoided.

Delivering on the Commerce Anywhere promise starts with systems that are effectively exchanging data.

Social Marketing, the social enterprise, and the social cloud will be well represented by the Oracle Social team at this year’s SXSW in Austin. If you’re going, great! We’ll see you there. But even if you’re unable to attend, follow @oraclesocial like a hawk and you’ll get all the takeaways you need, right in the comfort of wherever you are.

Here’s what we’re doing:

ORACLE TEAM USA

You can meet and get your picture made with some of the crew that snagged victory from the jaws of defeat, winning the America’s Cup in the “Miracle on the Bay.” Members of Oracle Team USA like grinder Shannon Falcone will be at our Oracle Discovery Lounge at the Waller Creek Boathouse March 8 and 9 from 4-5p.

ORACLE DISCOVERY LOUNGE AT THE BOATHOUSE

And speaking of the Discovery Lounge, that will be Oracle’s headquarters at SXSW. Immerse yourself in innovation around the Social Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and the Internet of Things. These are the innovations rapidly changing today’s enterprise. The networking, food, music, happy hours, and demos run March 8-10, 11a-7p. Come find out just how social we can be!

BRILLIANT SESSIONS AT THE BOATHOUSE

Mar 8, 1p - The Right POEM Equation in Today’s Shifting Social Landscape.

Oracle Group VP Meg Bear, Kenshoo Social GM Sivan Metzger, Nanigan’s SVP Ben Tregoe, and SHIFT CEO James Borow cover the rising importance of social advertising to target and amplify content for higher engagement. Find out how to leverage paid, owned and earned.

Mar 8, 3p - Setting the Record Straight; Say Goodbye to Social ROI Myths

Oracle VP Erika Brookes, LEGO Director Lars Silberbauer, and Pernod Ricard’s Jeremie Moritz bust myths about social ROI and show how it can be approached in a unified, structured way. Also learn how to align social KPIs with business objectives.

Mar 8, 5p - Slamming Social Into High Gear; a GM Case Study on Social

GM Director of Social Media Communications Mary Henige, GM Social Center of Expertise lead Rebecca Harris, and Digiday’s John McDermont talk about how GM uses social to establish relationships before, during and after the sale. Hear about the new vehicle tech landscape, including self-driving cars, wearable tech, and infotainment.

Plus see modern marketing in action with Oracle Eloqua, and see how Java empowers and navigates the Internet of Things.

#idearally

The startup #IdeaRally is a physical & virtual gathering of entrepreneurs, technologists, media, industry leaders and startup buffs brainstorming around one of Chevrolet’s guiding principals, technology. What new possibilities do YOU think auto tech and things like Chevrolet’s new 4G connected cars present? Submit your ideas and RT the best ideas by following #idearally March 10 starting at 6p.

ACCELERATOR!

Beyond the Oracle Discovery Lounge, Oracle is proud to sponsor the Accelerator program, March 8-9 at the Startup Village. New, cutting edge technologies will be pitched to a live audience as well as a panel of judges, including Oracle Social Cloud’s Rahim Fazal. Which startups will emerge as the biggest thinkers of our time?

And somewhere in there we’ll try to grab a rib or brisket. Don’t forget, even if you aren’t going to SXSW, follow @oraclesocial and we’ll be your eyes and ears in Austin.

@mikestiles

We are pleased to announce that the following Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) patches were released on February 25, 2014. Specifically:

• Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) Bundle Patch 11.1.2.1.5
• Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) Bundle Patch 11.1.2.0.14

For more information visit:

This issue covers a broad range of resources and updates designed for the partner ecosystem:

• Oracle Applications Cloud Release 8
• OPN Certification branded merchandise
• Resell Oracle Big Data Appliance

The new updated and certified WebLogic installation template (release 2.7) that is in synch with the latest hardware and latest Oracle Database Appliance release (2.9) is now on OTN, available todownload.

For several month there have been some gaps in coverage between the ODA releases and the WebLogic wizard-driven installation templates for the Appliance. This is now aligned and the releases will be in sync from now on.

Be aware that sometimes the release numbers will be not the same, usually WebLogic will appear to lag behind. Never mind, it is agreed that the latest WebLogic release will always work with the latest ODA release from now on.

By Steve Viarengo

There was a time not too long ago where just about the only time the typical person used software was on the job. The choice to use the product was made for him or her by the IT department and really there was no frame of reference as to whether or not the product was easy to use and intuitive or poorly designed. If one had to read a manual or attend a course to learn how to use the system that is just what had to be done.

The world has changed. Business software users today are saturated with meaningful and constant software interactions outside of work in almost every aspect of their lives, from “one click” purchases online, to taking a picture with a smart phone instantly posting it to social media, to seeing charts with all their accounts and spending in one place whenever they want. None of these interactions required attending a training course or reading a user guide to accomplish. Today, business software solutions are benchmarked by users, whether consciously or not, against products that provide these kinds of frictionless consumer interactions. 

If you are a decision maker in your organization when it comes to buying software for the company or even just your department, the employees that end up using the solution you choose will be measuring the product you select against the types of software they use in their daily lives. Their acceptance and satisfaction with the software will ultimately allow you to achieve the business benefits that you are trying to achieve. In the case of Human Resource Management software, this is especially true since this type of solution will touch every employee, not just those in a particular department or function. The benefits to organizations for selecting consumer-like software are also clear. Solutions that have adopted a consumer friendly look and feel are not only more easily accepted by your employees, but can save significantly in training and ramp up time. 

For organizations without a deep bench of resources to manage a software rollout, this can be the difference between a successful implementation and one that fails to deliver the benefits expected. As you evaluate HCM solutions for your company, this is a critical element to keep in mind.

Steve is the Vice President of Product Management for Oracle Taleo Business edition Cloud Service where he is responsible for product functionality, roadmap, strategy and product marketing activities. He has close to 20 years of software experience focusing in product management, strategy and business operations working for large organizations, various startups as well as successfully starting his own company.  Prior to coming to Oracle he was the VP and General manager of the Sports market at the Active Network where he managed a division with over 30,000 SMB customers.

There are a lot of interesting nuggets to pull from the downfall of Mt. Gox, but the Christian Science Monitor sums it up under "What it All Means":

Mt. Gox serves as a reminder that you're not just buying Bitcoins; you're also involved in the company performing the exchange. There are no watchmen to answer to, and things can go downhill quickly if a breach happens. It's not an isolated incident, either: In 2012, the exchange site Bitcoinica was hacked for over $460,000 worth of Bitcoins, according to The Verge.

If you're not familiar with the story, Mt Gox (Picture Source: The building that houses the Mt. Gox offices in Tokyo. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED) was targeted by hackers who stole around $350 million in Bitcoins over a two year period and they have stopped exchanging bitcoins as of Tuesday.

Wired has a great write-up here on the exploit and alleged repercussions and predictions of the attack, some of which have already come true: bankruptcy. The hackers exploited a bug in Mt. Gox's website, but it's not clear exactly what they did at this point:

Now, according to the alleged leaked document, it looks like hackers had been exploiting that bug for two years, and even removing bitcoins from supposedly secure “cold” wallets that the company had stored offline. Typically, cold wallets are disconnected from the internet and cannot be emptied by online attackers. However, the “cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet,” the document states.

Wired is referring to this leaked document.  Analysis at the end of the document says "Expertise to find: Analysts, top class developers (crypto), IT security expert..." I'll say they need an IT security expert. 

There's more to learn on this one. 

By Dhiman Bhattacharjee

In the recently concluded Oracle’s 2^nd Annual Value Chain summit, Oracle Fusion Product Hub showcased the new capability of Product Hub for digital catalog publication. With this capability Product Hub customers can now create and manage their print, web, and mobile catalogs from a single application. Fusion Product Hub is the ideal publishing solution for multi-channel catalog requirements, combining product information management capabilities along with advanced publication features and tools ensuring that product catalogs published across all channels are consistent and error-free.

The digital catalog print solution has been developed along with a product hub partner named Silicon Publishing and uses their product called Silicon Paginator. Based out of San Francisco, Silicon Publishing is the leading provider of Adobe InDesign Server solutions. Their product Silicon Paginator, renders catalogs from various data sources and delivers high-quality print and mobile output. Silicon Paginator has now been integrated with Oracle Fusion Product Hub, allowing fully automated publishing from Product data Hub, using Adobe InDesign Server and the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. The diagram below shows the data flow for digital catalog publication using product hub.

The video below shows the workflow: how data from Product Hub is mapped to document object styles, producing ready-to-print output and iPad/Android applications. The Silicon Paginator product ingests Product Hub data, flows the data through InDesign templates according to rules, incorporates static matter (such as ads or static content) and automatically generates navigational tools such as tables of contents, indexes and tablet search functionality.

Here is link to the youtube video link:

http://youtu.be/FvnozqeWn3s.

Get the latest edition of our bi-monthly (that's every other month) Security Inside Out newsletter featuring both database security and identity management news. This month's articles:

SANS Study Explores Maturity of Security Strategies Among Healthcare Organizations

A new report from the SANS Institute, a leading security education and research organization, surveys real-world organizations to discover how the healthcare industry is adapting to this new security landscape. Find out how organizations like yours are responding to the new challenges of more-stringent regulations and new mobile and cloud technologies.

New Report Puts Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall to the Test

A new report from leading security organization SANS Institute finds that Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall successfully achieves three key security objectives: audit collection, SQL traffic monitoring, and security event reporting.

Key Cloud Security Paradigms and Oracle’s Identity Management Roadmap

Find out the most common approaches to achieving security in the cloud and whether using a third-party identity management solution is a good strategy. 

Read more here. 

We're excited to be rolling out a brand new webcast series focused on solutions around Oracle AppAdvantage. This series is designed to help you learn more about how companies are leveraging Oracle AppAdvantage to grow their businesses and reinvent the way they interact with their employees, customers and partners.  The first webcast in the series is an overview of Oracle AppAdvantage and a great way to get yourself introduced to this new Fusion Middleware based solution.  Takeaways from this webcast are hear how AppAdvantage can set your business apart from the competition by integrating your enterprise applications with best-of-breed applications and services, whether on-premise or in the cloud.  Let's not forget that we're in the midst of a mobile era and AppAdvantage drives business innovation by connecting people, information and applications anytime and anywhere.  To register for this webcast click here. 

Thank you to everyone who joined us at the Oracle Value Chain Summit 2014 in San Jose! Hallways were abuzz with new ideas, cool product stories, and reconnecting with colleagues.  We were reluctant to see it end, but the media has kept it going with photos, recaps, and insights.  Here's a round-up of all the commentary so far.

Photos - Attendees were pretty Twitter-happy at #OVCS this year!  Enjoy all the great photos shared during the week.
OVCS Photo Album (Facebook)

Summary - This IDC Manufacturing Insights Perspective summarizes the entire event, even including attendee feedback.
Perspective: Oracle Value Chain Summit (IDC)

Key Takeaways- Independent PLM consulting firm CIMdata shares their thoughts on key topics after attending the event.
CIMdata's Commentary on Oracle Value Chain Summit 2014 - Innovation Management, Customers, Product Value Chain, and more. (CIMdata)

Big Data - ARC posts an article in Forbes on key executive issues discussed at the Summit.
President of Oracle Speaks on Big Data at Oracle Supply Chain Conference (Forbes)

In Memory and Innovation Management - Supply Chain Management Review shares an article highlighting new product launches including Oracle Innovation Management, during the Summit.
Oracle In-Memory Cost Management Launched (SCMR)

Cloud, Innovation, Mobile, and Darned Spreadsheets - SupplyChainBrain summarizes the most talked about topics at the Summit in an article by Robert Bowman.
Notes from the Oracle Value Chain Summit (SupplyChainBrain)

PLM Perspective - Oracle's Shane Goodwin recounts in this blog entry a growing vibrancy in the Agile PLM community and how the enterprise solution has expanded to become, for many businesses, their go-to foundation for product development and innovation.
Impressions from OVCS 2014 - Agile PLM as a Platform (Oracle)

Executive Voice - Oracle's Rick Jewell concisely reviews the headlining topics covered throughout the Summit.
That's a Wrap for the 2nd Annual Oracle Value Chain Summit (Oracle)

I hope you enjoyed the reading!  And if you missed us in San Jose, I hope you'll consider joining us at the Oracle European Value Chain Summit in Amsterdam on March 18-19, 2014!

Engineered to be the highest performing and most available platform for running Oracle Database, the Oracle Exadata Database Machine X4-2 is the fifth generation database machine. It features the most advanced architecture, using industry-standard database servers, built-in management, intelligent storage servers, and a high speed InfiniBand network that interconnects servers and storage for faster data access and delivery.

There are a number of new innovations and enhancements in the latest release, delivering higher consolidation density, lower total cost of ownership and improved performance.

Greater Performance and Capacity

Designed to work together, Oracle Exadata releases have continued to build upon integrated hardware and software advancements, optimizations and performance that make it the best platform to run Oracle Database, consolidate both OLTP and analytic workloads, and deliver database as a service.

Key database optimizations include:

• More database query offload to storage can offload searches of LOBs
• Database optimized compression now includes Hybrid Columnar enhancements for transaction processing
• Database optimized PCI Flash enables ultra high speed flash compression (X4) at multi-million IOs/second, as well as caching for table scans and faster file initialization
• Database optimized QoS prioritizes CPU and IO use by multitenant pluggable database (12c)
• Database optimized availability allows for prioritized recovery of critical database files
• Database optimized messaging prioritization of critical database messages, including log writes and Oracle Real Application Clusters

Conclusion

Organizations are faced with an increasing need to process more and more data, and do it faster while their IT budgets are being squeezed. Examining the total cost of ownership for IT staff – as well as software and hardware – leads to choosing a common high performance, highly available infrastructure for deployments of all applications. By implementing Oracle Exadata into their IT infrastructure, organizations can not only accelerate database performance to accomplish a lot more in the same amount of time, manage scale and growth in incremental steps by consolidating deployments, and deliver mission-critical data protection and availability, and at the same time lower the overall cost of computing.

The choice is simple, make it Oracle.

Lindsey Pickle is Senior Director, Database & Engineered Systems Partner Enablement at Oracle. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of The VAR Guy’s annual sponsorship. Read all of Oracle’s guest blogs here.

Dave Shively, Oracle's Senior Director of Life & Annuity Policy Administration, discusses how insurers can approach consolidation of legacy systems:

Carriers are faced with a growing portfolio of legacy core applications segmented by business line and tied together through a complex network of systems interfaces running on a multitude of platforms.  This is leading to high costs for infrastructure, operations, maintenance, support, and build activities.  It also forces carriers to either employ a large workforce with very diverse skill sets or rely on third party service providers.  The need to support ever changing business requirements and to enable the business to enter new markets and launch new products continues but adding additional IT cost and complexity is not an option.

A number of carriers have found a way to address their short term need to support new products while at the same time beginning a journey to rationalizing their core system portfolio.  That solution is the Oracle Insurance Policy Administration (OIPA) platform.  Those who have been in the life insurance policy space for some time are probably familiar with the OIPA solution and its ability to support any type of individual life or annuity product regardless of complexity and the fact that new products or changes to existing products can be made in a matter of hours with OIPA.  What is new is the fact that Oracle has enhanced this solution to support Group lines of business.  Now a carrier can not only accelerate their time to market, they can also consolidate any type of business on to one modern platform.  For the first time, carriers can actually simplify their systems portfolio with the implementation of a new policy application rather than adding to an already complex web of interconnected legacy headache.

Does this sound too good to be true?  Don’t take my word for it; listen to the carriers that are in the process of taking this revolutionary step towards process and technological efficiency by watching our recent webcast or joining us in person at Oracle Industry Connect.

Oracle Industry Connect is a premier conference designed to promote innovation and transformation through open and provocative discussion within the Financial Services and Insurance communities. The event will take place March 25-26, 2014 in Boston and features sessions where you can talk to the leaders from the carriers who are embracing this innovation. Hear from the carriers themselves about how the OIPA platform is streamlining their business and technology operations. You’ll also have a unique opportunity to join your industry peers for in-depth discussions on trends, challenges and opportunities facing insurers today.

• Register Today for Oracle Industry Connect
  Note: there is no registration fee to attend this conference

If you are unable to attend Oracle Industry Connect, we encourage you to download and watch our recent webcast on Consolidating Individual and Group Business on a Single Platform. In the webcast, you can hear from industry analyst Chad Hersh about why carriers are finally starting to address their core systems issues as well as Olivier Lafontaine from Equisoft about how they are helping Jamaica-based carrier NCB realize the potential of this transformational technology. 

• Webcast On Demand: Consolidating Individual and Group Business on a Single Platform - It Can Be Done

Don’t forget to keep up with Oracle Insurance year-round:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube

OTN is always finding GREAT content to share!  Here is just a sampling from this past week...

Java Community -

Vert.x: A Project to Watch
Vert.x is one of the most popular Java projects on GitHub. Sometimes called "Node.js for the JVM," it is a ployglot event-drive app platform. It is 100% open source.

10 Examples of HotSpot JVM Options in Java
Developer Javin Paul provides examples of 10 different categories of JVM parameter which he finds useful and uses more frequently than others.

Learn about Lambdas at the Java 8 Day at EclipseCon
Alex Buckley, spec lead for Java and the JVM, is one of the many great speakers at Java 8 Day at EclipseCon. He'll speak about the Java SE 8 language changes and will take a detailed look at their use by the parallel streams libraries.

Friday Funny: List of Animals with Fraudulent Diplomas

Database Community

Big news: 3 new releases for Oracle Developers - Oracle APEX Listener is now Oracle REST Data Services.

Hey Big Data Fans: Got slides? Mark Hornick gives an overview of how to use Oracle R to unlock the value of Big Data, and the advantages of using R for Data Loading, Discovery and Data Prep.

Friday Funny from Laura Ramsey, OTN Developer community Manager:  Roland Smart, VP of OTN and LMGTFY expert, promotes his presentation at SXSW: http://rsmart.ly/1gCK5hz

Architect Community

Simplifying Enterprise Mobile Integration | Mala Ramakrishnan
"There are two ways to developing an enterprise mobile strategy with SOA -- controlling the end-to-end integration experience from the enterprise to the hand held, or exposing enterprise assets through APIs for third parties to build out mobile solutions," says Mala Ramakrishnan. This post kicks off a three-part series that looks at the role Oracle SOA Suite can play in Mobile Service Enablement and API Management.

Why use Groovy with WebCenter Sites? | Michael Sullivan
"Leveraging a Groovy element gives the developer all the advantages of cleanly packaging business logic in a JAVA syntax scripting language while maintaining the ability to publish and reload code changes dynamically," says solution architect MichealSullivan. Read his detailed post to learn how.

Podcast: Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Disruptive Tech - Part 1
In part one of this three-part program, Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra, Basheer Khan, and Floyd Teter discuss the importance of understanding the difference between technologies that disrupt and technologies that sustain innovation, and acting on that knowledge.

Friday Funny from OTN Architect Community Manager Bob Rhubart: A Brief History of Husbands

We are pleased to announce that MySQL Enterprise Monitor 3.0.7 is now available for download on the My Oracle Support (MOS) web site. It will also be available via the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud in about 1 week. This is a maintenance release that includes a few new features and fixes a number of bugs. You can find more information on the contents of this release in thechange log.

You will find binaries for the new release on My Oracle Support. Choose the "Patches & Updates" tab, and then choose the "Product or Family (Advanced Search)" side tab in the "Patch Search" portlet.

You will also find the binaries on the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud in approximately 1 week. Choose "MySQL Database" as the Product Pack and you will find the Enterprise Monitor along with other MySQL products.

Based on feedback from our customers, MySQL Enterprise Monitor (MEM) 3.0 offers many significant improvements over previous releases. Highlights include:

• Policy-based automatic scheduling of rules and event handling (including email notifications) make administration of scale-out easier and automatic
• Enhancements such as automatic discovery of MySQL instances, centralized agent configuration and multi-instance monitoring further improve ease of configuration and management
• The new cloud and virtualization-friendly, "agent-less" design allows remote monitoring of MySQL databases without the need for any remote agents
• Trends, projections and forecasting - Graphs and Event handlers inform you in advance of impending file system capacity problems
• Zero Configuration Query Analyzer - Works "out of the box" with MySQL 5.6 Performance_Schema (supported by 5.6.14 or later)
• False positives from flapping or spikes are avoided using exponential moving averages and other statistical techniques
• Advisors can analyze data across an entire group; for example, the Replication Configuration Advisor can scan an entire topology to find common configuration errors like duplicate server UUIDs or a slave whose version is less than its master's

More information on the contents of this release is available here:

• What's new in MySQL Enterprise Monitor 3.0?
• MySQL Enterprise Edition: Demos
• MySQL Enterprise Monitor Frequently Asked Questions
• MySQL Enterprise Monitor Change History

More information on MySQL Enterprise and the Enterprise Monitor can be found here:

• http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/
• http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/monitor.html
• http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/query.html
• http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?142

If you are not a MySQL Enterprise customer and want to try the Monitor and Query Analyzer using our 30-day free customer trial, go tohttp://www.mysql.com/trials, or contact Sales athttp://www.mysql.com/about/contact.

If you haven't looked at MEM recently, and especially MEM 3.0, please do so now and let us know what you think.

Thanks and Happy Monitoring!

- The MySQL Enterprise Tools Development Team