Oracle Corporation

From Oracle FAQ

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) is one of the largest software development companies in the world.

Contents 1 Company history 2 Headquarters 3 Product overview 4 Competitors 5 Oracle acquisitions

Company history

Oracle was established in 1977 and has offices in more than 145 countries around the world. As of 2005, its employee count was over 50,000 worldwide.

Larry Ellison (Lawrence J. Ellison) has served as Oracle's CEO for several years. Ellison served as the chairman of the board until his replacement by Jeff Henley in 2004. Ellison retains his role as CEO. Forbes magazine once judged Ellison the richest man in the world.

Ellison was inspired by the paper written by Edgar Codd on relational database systems named A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks. He had heard about the IBM System R database, also based on Codd's theories, and wanted Oracle to be compatible with it, but IBM stopped this by keeping the error codes for their DBMS secret. He founded Oracle in 1977 under the name Software Development Laboratories. In 1979 SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc. (RSI). In 1983, RSI was renamed Oracle Corporation to more closely align itself with its flagship product Oracle database with Howard Johns as senior programmer.

Headquarters

Oracle's HQ buildings are located in Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, California, USA. These buildings were featured in the 1999 film, the Bicentennial Man.

Product overview

Some of the software solutions they provide are:

• database management systems (Oracle Database, Oracle RDB, TimesTen, Berkeley DB, etc)
• tools for database development (Oracle Developer Suite - Forms, Reports, JDeveloper, etc)
• application server (OC4J, Portal, SSO, etc)
• enterprise resource planning software (ERP)
• customer relationship management software (CRM)
• supply chain planning software (SCM)

For a detailed list, see Oracle Product Set and Oracle Services.

Competitors

Oracle's main competitors in the database business are:

• Microsoft SQL Server
• IBM with DB2 and Informix
• Sybase with their Sybase System
• CA with Ingres
• Software AG with ADABAS

Open source databases (free, but normally way behind their commercial equivalents):

• MySQL
• PostgreSQL

Oracle's main competitors in the middleware/ application servers business are:

• IBM WebSphere
• BEA WebLogic

Oracle's main competitors in the applications business are:

• SAP R/3

Oracle acquisitions

Oracle recently acquired the following companies:

• Omniscience - November 1996 - Oracle Lite

• Darwin - June 1999 - Darwin, Datamining technology

• Steltor - June 2002 - Enterprise calendaring system

• Collaxa - June 2004 - Business Process Management. See BPEL and SOA Suite.

• PeopleSoft - January 2005 - Enterprise applications (competitor to E-Business Suite).

• Oblix - March 2005 - Identity management solutions. Also see Web Services Manager.

• Retek - April 2005 - retail solution, including back-office functionality for finance and human resources and extends to planning, merchandising, supply chain, and retail channels

• TripleHop - June 2005 - context-sensitive enterprise search products and technology.

• TimesTen - June 2005 - real-time in-memory database. See TimesTen.

• ProfitLogic - July 2005 - retail industry's most comprehensive software solution, helping create tightly integrated, customer- insight-driven retail enterprises

• Context Media - July 2005 - enterprise content integration (ECI) software

• i-flex - August 2005 - banking industry

• G-Log - September 2005 - Logistics Hub solution for global supply chain and logistics management

• Innobase - October 2005 - transactional open source database management system called InnoDB

• Thor Technologies - November 2005 - enterprise-wide user provisioning solution

• OctetString - November 2005 - virtual directory, identity and access management offerings

• TempoSoft - December 2005 - managing time and labour, absences, and scheduling to meet a forecasted workload demand

• 360Commerce - January 2006 - merchandising, supply chain, and optimization solutions, from the enterprise to the store

• Siebel - January 2006 - Enterprise applications (competitor to E-Business Suite).

• Sleepycat - February 2006 - Berkeley DB, open source database for developers of embedded applications

• HotSip - February 2006 - middleware and carrier-grade communications infrastructure

• Portal Software - April 2006 - end-to-end packaged enterprise software suite for the communications industry. See Oracle BRM.

• Net4Call - April 2006 - Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for the telecommunications industry

• Demantra - June 2006 - demand-driven planning solutions

• Telephony@Work - June 2006 - CRM applications provider to unify IP-based contact center technology and CRM software to deliver a complete "customer to agent" experience

• Sigma Dynamics - August 2006 - leverage the insight contained in both historical and real-time data sources to drive better decisions in practically any situation

• Sunopsis - October 2006 - high-performance, next-generation data integration capabilities. See Oracle Data Integrator

• MetaSolv Software - October 2006 - key business processes of the communications industry

• Stellent - November 2006 - content management solution

• SPL WorldGroup - November 2006 - packaged solution to meet the unique needs of the utilities industry

• Hyperion - March 2007 - enterprise performance management

• Tangosol - March 2007 - extreme transaction processing

• AppForge - April 2007 - mobile applications

• LODESTAR - April 2007 - utilities applications, meter data management and energy operation solutions

• Agile - May 2007 - Enterprise Product Life Cycle Management Software

• Bridgestream, Inc - September 2007 - Enterprise Role Management and role mining

• Interlace Systems - November 2007 - Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) software

• BEA Systems, Inc - January 2008 - Middleware provider (Tuxedo, Weblogic, etc)