INDUSTRY

Oracle executives Sergio Giacoletto, executive vice president, EMEA and Charles Phillips, president delivered the opening keynotes today at OpenWorld London to more than 5,500 attendees. Giacoletto first announced the results of the Oracle Grid Index that measures progress towards adoption of Grid-related technologies, while Phillips explained how Grid technology can help address emerging IT trends. He also announced the latest release of Oracle's E-Business Suite, 11i.10. The Oracle Grid Index identifies the rate of adoption and implementation of Enterprise Grid computing in Europe. "On a scale of 1 to 10, European companies are at 3.1," said Giacoletto. "In other words, European companies are 31% of the way on the path towards Grid computing. This is an encouraging sign at this early stage of the evolution towards the Grid." Additionally, Giacoletto noted that the Oracle Grid Index indicates that more than half of the companies surveyed have already finished or are in the process of standardising and consolidating key elements of their IT infrastructures -- the two critical first steps on the journey to Grid computing. The Grid Index was based on survey results from 603 Corporate IT management respondents from Benelux, France, Germany, Italy, the Nordics, Spain and the UK. Quocirca, a leader in Business and IT analysis in Europe, conducted the survey. During his keynote following Giacoletto, Oracle President Charles Phillips explained how Grid technology helps solves three trends confronting businesses today: the growing amount of information and limitations of microprocessor technology; greater demands for efficiency and standardisation in both applications and infrastructures; and the need to replace the plethora of traditional stovepipe applications with a central data model -- or what Oracle calls 'a single source of truth' -- in order for companies to achieve up to date and accurate information. "Grid technology is the only practical way to handle the challenges posed by these trends, which will only grow worse in the coming years," said Phillips. He went on to note that Grid technology can optimize all computer resources while providing greater efficiency and standardization. Also, according to Phillips, a growing difficulty for companies that use a number of applications is fragmented data and the inability to understand their customers. Phillips said, "Oracle's central data model for applications takes a big step forward with the release of Oracle E-Business Suite 11i.10. This release offers 2,100 new capabilities, including many new business intelligence features at dramatically lower cost. One half of these are industry specific and the rest are cross-industry capabilities. " Oracle OpenWorld London continues through Wednesday, September 8, 2004, at the ExCeL Centre, London.