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Oracle speeds up software portfolio with big data, mobile in mind

Also, as promised by Mark Hurd on Monday, Oracle introduced news for its mobile development framework.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor
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SAN FRANCISCO — The cloud has been front and center at Oracle OpenWorld 2014, and the tech giant fine-tuned its strategy on Tuesday morning along big data and mobile lines.

Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of product development at Oracle, informed keynote attendees that 87 percent of the world's population accesses the internet via mobile devices, which Kurian argued is driving many now-obvious changes.

Kurian said that Oracle's latest software updates revolve around the following three objectives: allowing users to manage structured and unstructured data together, providing visual analytics tools through relational databases, and improved analytics speed via in-memory technology.

"People want to be able to mobilize their IT infrastructure so that people can access these applications through their mobile devices," Kurian said.

Starting with big data, which the Exadata maker has been plugging away at this year through new Data-as-a-Service offerings like Oracle Big Data SQL, upgrades revolve around better visualizing analytics for influencing business decisions, such as multidimensional analysis. The Big Data Discovery, SQL, Hadoop, and cross-channel identity services, among others, are all available through the Oracle Analytics Cloud.

Additionally, all of Oracle's application business suites from E-Business to PeopleSoft have been accelerated for faster operation on the Oracle Database 12c.

Oracle boasted that its business apps can now see up to 1,000x faster performance on Oracle Database In-Memory. The JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Sales Order Management garnered the most-improved award with rates up to 1,700x faster performance for a sales order query.

Moving on to mobile, as promised by co-CEO Mark Hurd on Monday, Oracle unveiled a new direction for its mobile development framework through the Oracle Mobile Cloud service. Kurian described the Mobile Cloud as an end-to-end infrastructure for building apps connected to Oracle's software portfolio.

Developers were also treated to the debut of Oracle Alta UI, a new user interface design system is being aimed at developers for building standards-based interfaces for distribution across all delivery channels.

The system is also designed to bring developers deeper into the Oracle Cloud as a one-stop shop for all developer needs.

The Alta UI has direct links to the Oracle Cloud Portal, Developer Cloud, Documents Cloud, and Mobile Cloud as well as the latest versions of Oracle Fusion and mobile applications with the promise of even more integrations in the future.

Version 2.0 of the Oracle Mobile Application Framework 2.0 and Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) 12.1.3 and later now support Alta UI.

The roll-out of Oracle ERP Cloud 9 both simplified and expanded its mobile interface simultaneously being that real-time data has been reorganized to be more streamlined. Oracle also added a new "sunburst" view for interpreting this data.

Additional improvements within the ERP Cloud include new resume-based searches on top of even more deeper links to other Oracle services, such as Oracle Fusion Innovation Management for product development processes and Oracle Financial Accounting Hub Report Cloud for mobile reporting on Oracle E-Business Suite accounting data.

Oracle also appears to have education as a key bullet point on the long-term roadmap for ERP Cloud.

Key functionality targeting the higher education sector to support grants management and project-based funding. A new cloud-based student information system, dubbed Oracle Student Cloud, is also under development with a scheduled launch projected for 2015.

The release of Oracle Sales Cloud 9 has also been upgraded with mobile in mind, featuring new apps for Oracle Voice, Mobilytics, and Sales Cloud Call Report.

These additions, along with industry-specific enhancements for analytics (i.e., company and contact data from Dun and Bradstreet displayed in real-time), were especially emphasized as vital Sales Cloud updates leading up to the holiday season.

Image via Oracle

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