Oracle

Last Updated: 10th March 2023
Analyst Coverage: Philip Howard and David Norfolk

Oracle Corporation is the third-largest software maker by revenue, after Microsoft and IBM. It is US-based but operates globally, in some 145 countries, and with more than 390,000 customers (including all of the Fortune 100).

It was formed in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates to sell its eponymous Relational DBMS (which is still the market leader). It has since expanded its scope of operation by aggressive acquisition, buying (for example) PeopleSoft/JD Edwards (2004); Siebel Systems (2006); Hyperion Solutions Corporation (2007); BEA Systems (2008); and Sun Microsystems (2010). With the SUN acquisition, it gained the position of lead JAVA developer, although JAVA still runs as an independent open-source project.

Oracle’s product portfolio now provides solutions including hardware (servers, storage and appliances); operating systems (Linux and Solaris); middleware (under the Fusion banner); identity management and security; DBMSs (including MySQL, TimesTen and the Exadata appliance, as well as Oracle); data warehousing and analytics; and, business applications (eg ERP, CRM and supply chain management, also to be integrated under the Fusion banner). Its breadth of offerings is beginning to rival that of IBM.

Company Info

Headquarters: 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, USA
Telephone: +1 650 506 7000

Oracle GoldenGate

Last Updated: 30th April 2013

What it does

While Oracle needs no introduction, GoldenGate Software was founded in 1995 to provide transactional data management solutions. It was acquired by Oracle in 2009 to support that company's fusion middleware platform.

Oracle GoldenGate, which is currently in version 11g R2, is a software application for real-time transactional change data capture, transformation and delivery with log-based, bi-directional data replication. While Oracle GoldenGate can be profitably used within a number of different use case one of its major strengths is in enabling zero-downtime migrations.

While its forté is zero-downtime migration, the guaranteed failback offered by Oracle GoldenGate is at least as important as the elimination of downtime itself, as a part of the migration landscape. It is, if you like, the equivalent of disaster recovery (with no loss of data and migration of user connections) within operational environments and to provide continuously available applications you need to be able to cater for both downtime (zero-downtime migration) and disaster (failback). In the increasingly real-time, 24 hour world that customers demand, migrating applications, databases and platforms may seem scarier than ever. Fortunately, Oracle GoldenGate's zero-downtime migration is available to take some of that fear away.

Markets and channels

In terms of industry sectors Oracle is, of course, all pervasive. Historically, GoldenGate was agnostic across database vendors but of course this is no longer true and the product has especially strong integration with the Oracle Database and MySQL although it, of course, still supports other popular databases. Nevertheless, it is likely that the emphasis of Oracle salespeople will be to focus on the existing client base rather than non-Oracle users.

Users

Customers that have used Oracle GoldenGate for data migrations include Fujitsu, Overstock.com, DirectTV and Swedbank amongst many others.

Technology

In practice, GoldenGate offers three different approaches to zero-downtime migration. In each case the idea is that you have two systems, running in parallel, with data incrementally migrating to the new system. The point at which you turn off the old system and run solely on the new one is entirely up to you, and this is regardless of which approach to zero-downtime you adopt. The first method support is so-called unidirectional migration, in which the target system is synchronised with the source but there is no bi-directional synchronisation; the second is an active-passive approach which is essentially the same as the unidirectional methodology except that downgrade logic is embedded in the model so that you can failback to your original source system in the event of a problem; and the third method is active-active in which the user population is distributed between the target and source systems simultaneously, which are synchronised in a bi-directional fashion, with both upgrade and downgrade logic being applied in flight.

GoldenGate Veridata is an optional add-on module that allows you to compare the before and after states of your databases.

Services

Oracle, of course, provides all the services one could wish for and it also has an extensive partner community that also provides relevant services.

Oracle SCM Solutions

Last Updated: 2nd October 2014

What it does

Oracle was founded in 1977 as a database and middleware software manufacturer. In 1986, Oracle started developing business applications and in the early 1990s, developed a complete enterprise resource planning (ERP) software system. Soon after, Oracle started adding integrated Supply Chain Management software modules. In the mid 2000s, Oracle acquired PeopleSoft, shortly after PeopleSoft acquired JD Edwards. Other SCM software-related acquisitions included Demantra and Retek. Oracle is the second largest SCM software vendor.

Oracle has multiple brands for ERP, CRM, PLM, and SCM with overlapping feature sets and software functionality.

Sales & Operation Planning
Oracle has positioned Demantra as their Sales and Operation Planning solution for the E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft ERP brands. Demantra automates the preparation for the monthly S&OP executive meeting, including consensus building, on demand plans, and supply plans. Upon approval, the plans are published and enabled for continuous monitoring and revisions.

Demand Management
Oracle has positioned Demantra as their Demand Management solution for the E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft ERP brands. Demantra forecasting allows for multiple models to be combined, based on probabilities of each model. The forecast dynamically adjusts to changes in trends and market conditions. Demantra forecast allows for causal factors and demand history as input.

Procurement
Oracle offers a number of solutions for procurement:

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Supply Management (Procurement);
JD Edwards World Distribution Management and Supplier Sel-service
Oracle E-Business Suite Advanced Procurement;
Oracle Fusion Procurement
PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management
Oracle Accelerate for midsize companies

Value Chain
Oracle offers a number of products as part of its value chain management solution:

Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration
Oracle Landed Cost Management
Oracle In-Memory Logistics Command Center
Oracle Inventory Management
Oracle Global Trade Management
Oracle Mobile Supply Chain (part of the Oracle E-Business Suite)
Oracle TMS
Oracle WMS;
Oracle Yard Management

Oracle Fusion SCM provides support for product master data management, costing, order orchestration, product availability,logistics, inventory management, light warehouse management capabilities and Agile PLM.

Markets and channels

Oracle has sales offices office all over the world. Africa is supported from Casablanca, Morocco for the north and Abidjan, Ivory Coast for West Africa. They have offices in South and Central America. In AsiaPacific they have offices in not only Australia, New Zealand, China and India, but also in Malaysia and the Philippines. In the Middle East, Oracle have offices in Emirates, Quatar, Kuwait and the Yemen. Offices in West European counties are in all the major countries.

Users

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customers include Doskocil, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, Intersil, New York City Housing Authority, Panasonic Factory Solutions, Pella Corporation, Schneider National

Oracle E-Business Suite customers include Datacard Group, Emerson,garmin, McLane Company, OOCEP, UTC

Oracle Fusion SCM customers include Red Robin and Land O’Lakes,

PeopleSoft customers include Lone Star College System, Grupo Nacional Provincial, Stanford Children’s Health, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation and Tervita Corporation.

Technology

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne offers a choice of databases, operating systems, and hardware. It contains the following SCm modules:

Supply Chain Execution (Logistics)
- Advanced Stock Valuation
- Apparel/Attribute Management
- Bulk Stock Inventory
- Inventory Management
- Product Variants
- Transportation Management
- Warehouse Management
Supply Management (Procurement)
- Advanced Pricing
- Agreement Management
- Buyer Workspace
- Operational Sourcing
- Procurement and Subcontract Management
- Product Variants
- Requisition Self Service
- Supplier Self Service
Value Chain Planning
- Advanced Planning Command Center
- Advanced Supply Chain Planning
- Collaborative Planning
- Demand Management
- Demand Signal Repository
- Global Order Promising
- Inventory Optimization
- Predictive Trade Planning and Optimization
- Production Scheduling
- Rapid Planning
- Real-Time Sales and Operations Planning
- Service Parts Planning
- Strategic Network Optimization
- Value Chain Planning In-Memory Applications

Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Fusion work on the Oracle platform only.

Oracle e-Business Suite contains the following SCM modules:

Advanced Procurement:
- iProcurement
- iSupplier Portal
- Payables
- Purchasing
- Purchasing Intelligence
- Sourcing
- Supplier Network
Value Chain Execution
- Global Trade Management
- Landed Cost Management
- Transportation Management
- Warehouse Management
- Mobile Supply Chain
- Inventory Management
Order Orchestration and Fulfillment
- Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration
- Order Management
- Advance Pricing
- Configurator
- Global Order Promising
Product Value Chain Management
- Agile Product Lifecycle Management
- Fusion Product Hub
- Product Data Quality
- Value Chain Planning
- Advanced Planning Command Center
- Advanced Supply Chain Planning
- Collaborative Planning
- Demantra
- Global Order Promising
- Inventory Optimization
- Predictive Trade Planning and Optimization
- Production Scheduling
- Rapid Planning
- Service Parts Planning
- Strategic Network Optimization
Business Intelligence and Analytics

PeopleSoft contains the following SCM modules:

Catalog Management
eProcurement
eSettlements
eSupplier Connection
Financials
Procurement and Spend Analytics
Purchasing
Services Procurement
Strategic Sourcing
Supplier Contract Management

Services

Oracle, of course, provides all the services one could wish for and it also has an extensive partner community that also provides relevant services.

Oracle Unified Information Management Platform

Last Updated: 3rd March 2021
Mutable Award: Gold 2021

What is it?

Fig 01 - Oracle data management in context

As far as Oracle’s data management solutions are concerned, these span a wide range of capabilities, as illustrated in Figure 1, which positions these relative to Oracle’s wider portfolio. However, as far as supporting the establishment of (cloud-based) data warehouses and data lakes are concerned, these cover the whole gamut of data integration, data profiling and cleansing (data quality), data governance, data privacy and metadata management (data catalogues).

As far as data integration is concerned, Oracle offers both Oracle Data Integrator Cloud Enterprise Edition, which is a conventional ETL/ELT tool, and Oracle GoldenGate, which provides change data capture. There is also a separate Oracle Data Integrator Cloud for Big Data offering. Oracle Data Warehouse Builder also includes ETL capabilities as well as supporting data profiling. For data profiling more generally the company offers Oracle Data Profiler, which works in conjunction with Oracle Enterprise Data Quality. For data governance, Oracle Enterprise Data Governance is specifically concerned with sensitive data rather than, as its name might suggest, data governance more generally. It works in conjunction with Oracle Data Redaction, which provides dynamic data masking (or, more accurately, redaction) in conjunction with the Oracle database. For data governance per se there is no specific offering but relevant features are provided through Oracle Enterprise Metadata Manager and Oracle Enterprise Data Quality. Finally, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Data Catalog is a no-charge capability provided within OCI.

What does it do?

Fig 02 - The Oracle Unified Information Management Platform

Figure 2 provides a more detailed view of Oracle’s relevant capabilities.

Oracle has been in the business of delivering data integration, data quality and associated technologies for many years and it offers all the sorts of features you would expect. However, there is a tendency to consider its tooling as more focused on Oracle environments than on supporting third parties. This is particularly notable in the newer products. For example, while the Data Catalog has the sorts of capabilities one would expect, it is limited to supporting Oracle databases (including MySQL), Hive and Kafka. That said, products such as GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator certainly support a broad range of environments and are definitely not limited to those of Oracle.

Going back to Oracle Data Catalog, this is not, in our opinion, an “enterprise” data catalogue: it is not a catalogue of catalogues. For that you would need to implement Oracle Enterprise Metadata Management (OEMM), which does have significant support for third party environments, though it does not support ODPi Egeria. Despite its name, this is as much a data governance solution (with features such as a business glossary, data lineage and so forth) as it is one for metadata management. Unfortunately, however, OEMM is only available on-premises.

It is also worth noting Oracle Solution Patterns. The company has identified some 20 common use cases and is developing and delivering these as relevant offerings. From the perspective of the current discussion the “Data Lake (Raw Data to Curated Information Object Storage or Hadoop)” is most pertinent and its worth commenting that Oracle sees a ladder of capabilities from raw data to curated data to curated information, with increasing refinement providing easier access to, and interpretation of, that information.

Finally, one particular feature that we would like to have seen is some sort of facility to automate the process of data subject access requests (DSARs) within the context of GDPR and other similar regulations.

Why should you care?

While you could argue about the features of Oracle’s solutions versus those of competitors (both for and against) the truth is that many of those rivals to do not have the completeness of vision that Oracle can provide. It doesn’t just provide the tools for creating and managing cloud and hybrid analytic environments but also the databases that underpin those analytics along with the capabilities that allow data scientists and others to build both machine learning and conventional analyses and visualisation of your data. The downside, of course, is that some functionality is optimised to run on Oracle databases, as opposed to representing more generic offerings. This also applies when it comes to understanding and exploring application data. The company offers significant capabilities when it comes to supporting its own applications and business models, but functionality to support comparable products from rival application providers is less evident.

The Bottom Line

We have to say that we find Oracle’s different data management options to be confusing. However, the company does offer a complete solution suite and if you are an Oracle user, in particular, you should certainly short-list Oracle for its data management capabilities; if you aren’t then you will probably need to look into its capabilities in more depth but in any case it remains a worthy contender.

Mutable Award: Gold 2021