Five Minute Briefing - Oracle
September 19, 2012
Published in conjunction with the Quest Oracle Community (Quest), this bi-weekly publication contains news, market research, and insight for the Oracle ecosystem, as well as Quest news and information. Subscribers also receive Quest ResearchWire, a bi-monthly research report for the Oracle community.
News Flashes
Oracle announced this week that it has entered into an agreement to acquire SelectMinds, a provider of cloud-based social talent sourcing and corporate alumni management applications. SelectMinds' applications enable recruiters, hiring managers and employees to leverage social connections to distribute job opportunities, source higher quality referrals, market their employment brand and manage corporate alumni relationships.
Oracle announced the availability of Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2, the latest enhancement to the world's most popular, open source, cross-platform virtualization software. Making it easier and more efficient to manage larger numbers of similar virtual machines, Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2's new VM Group feature enables grouping of VMs so that administrators or users can operate on any number of VMs all at once, through a graphical user interface, APIs, and command line tools. In addition, VMs that don't need user interaction can now be started within Oracle VM VirtualBox the same way as standard VMs. Virtual machines of all types can be set to start automatically after the host system is booted, allowing virtual machines to be managed similarly to other host services.
In recent years, the networks of developers, integrators, consultants, and manufacturers committed to supporting database systems have morphed from one-on-one partnerships into huge ecosystems in which they have become interdependent on one another, and are subject to cross-winds of trends and shifts that are shaping their networks. Nowhere is this more apparent than the huge ecosystem that has developed around Oracle. With Oracle's never-ending string of acquisitions, new functionality, and widespread adoption by enterprises, trends that shape this ecosystem are certain to have far-reaching effects on the rest of the IT world. Concerns that percolate through the ecosystem reflect — and influence — broad business concerns. New paradigms — from cloud computing to big data to competing on analytics — are taking root within the Oracle ecosystem long before anywhere else.
Think About It
The first computer program I ever wrote (in 1979, if you must know) was in the statistical package SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), and the second computer platform I used was SAS (Statistical Analysis System). Both of these systems are still around today—SPSS was acquired by IBM as part of its BI portfolio, and SAS is now the world's largest privately held software company. The longevity of these platforms—they have essentially outlived almost all contemporary software packages—speaks to the perennial importance of data analysis to computing.
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