Oracle Gets to the Bottom Line of Collaboration

ORACLEWORLD, SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Nov. 12, 2002 -- Oracle's (Nasdaq: ORCL) second major keynote of its 2002 user conference started off yesterday with not just a bang, but also a kick, stomp, and clack of thousands of drum sticks. Attendees participated in a real-time lesson in collaborative rhythm prior to Chuck Rozwat, Oracle executive vice president of Server Technologies, taking the stage.

Rozwat's keynote, a spoof of the popular nighttime news magazine show Dateline, explored so-called "Collaboration Deficit Disorder," or C.D.D. Spoof aside, the keynote focused Oracle Collaboration Suite, which the company only recently introduced this summer, and on the productivity software suite's ability to lower total cost of ownership while improving end user productivity.

Rozwat explained that businesses are being paralyzed by the time it takes employees to find information, schedule meetings and coordinate via the variety of communication devices available today. Additionally, IT departments today are not able to keep up with end user and corporate demands, such as document retention policies, because of the complexity of today's departmental-only collaboration and email solutions. "Regardless if we take a look at this from an end user or an IT perspective, today's collaboration systems are adversely affecting the bottom line," said Rozwat.

To underscore his point, Rozwat brought up two customers who are implementing Oracle Collaboration Suite, Fujitsu Siemens Computers and Hutchison Priceline.

"With the amount of documents employees were attaching and storing to emails, we were reaching the limits of our previous email system," said Dr. Bernard Kosch of Fujitsu Siemens.

Kosch went on to say that the company has seen cost savings by lowering administration costs and productivity gains with the search and file sharing of Oracle Collaboration Suite. He noted that because the software suite is deployed and managed professional managed in a data center instead of within various departments, users could expect better reliability.

Rozwat demonstrated some of the new real-time collaboration features in Oracle Collaboration Suite Release 2, including shared online white boarding and instant messaging integrated together with fax, voice support, email and calendaring for further productivity gains.

Despite the continued improvements to Oracle's software, Rozwat added, "There is no additional training for end users who use Microsoft Outlook because Oracle Collaboration Suite works seamlessly with Microsoft's client," Rozwat added. "And because Oracle Collaboration Suite runs on the Oracle database, companies can leverage their previous investments in Oracle IT training."

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