INDUSTRY

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL), the world's largest enterprise software company, today announced that Texas Tech University, a four-year institution of higher learning in Lubbock, Texas, is live with Oracle9i Real Application Clusters on the Linux operating system. The University implemented Oracle's database clustering technology so that its information systems would be supported and protected by a highly reliable and secure platform. As a result of implementing the clustering technology, Texas Tech University has been able to maintain around-the-clock availability and expects to gain significant savings in maintenance time and costs. A state-funded university, Texas Tech needed a cost-effective, reliable and scalable database to store and run its network mission-critical applications and information technology (IT) systems, all of which are accessed from the university Web site, www.ttu.edu. The site receives between 12 and 15 hits per second and serves as the gateway for all IT services at the school, including the help desk, student, faculty and staff portal, and student calendar. Texas Tech selected Oracle9i Real Application Clusters to provide back-end support for these information systems because of the database's interoperability with multiple platforms, including Linux. The Oracle clustering technology provides the institution with a system that is always available, regardless of the time of day or services being performed behind the scenes. This enables end-users -- including 30,000 enrolled students, faculty, alumni and prospective students -- to access the site and retrieve accurate, up-to-date information in a timely manner. "We consider Oracle9i Real Application Clusters to be our insurance policy," said Brandon Labonte, director of software development at Texas Tech University. "Because we have a small IT staff, we needed to do more with less. With Oracle9i Real Application Cluster's redundancy and high performance, we no longer have to worry about our entire infrastructure going down. Our customers are prospective students and alumni, so if our systems go down, we can lose significant money and leads. Oracle's database clusters give us 24 by 7 availability." The scalability and functionality provided by Oracle's database clustering technology now allows Texas Tech staff to be more efficient with their time and efforts by eliminating the need for planned down time during scheduled system maintenance. Prior to implementing Oracle9i Real Application Clusters, members of the IT staff were required to conduct maintenance work during off hours, and in some cases come into the IT facility in the middle of the night to resolve issues. With Oracle9i Real Application Clusters, maintenance and technology upgrades are now conducted during working hours without interrupting daily business operations. In addition, staff members do not have to resolve issues during the middle of the night because if a node goes down, a second node can provide instant back up, therefore maintaining total availability for the more than 40 systems running. Not only do Oracle's database clusters help keep the university's Web site performance levels high, but they also allow the university to remain within its projected IT budget and save costs previously paid for after-hours maintenance. The Oracle9i Database also reduces the risk of lost grant leads and donations from the site being down. Texas Tech migrated to Oracle9i Real Application Clusters with the help of Oracle Support in 3 months, maintaining its Linux operating system without service interruption. In the future, the university plans to move its in- house developed human resources and planning applications to Oracle, as well as extend portals to local community colleges as a recruiting tool.