Oracle and Vodafone Mobilise The Enterprise Workforce(email this article)

PARIS, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ORACLEWORLD -- Oracle (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies) Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL - News) and Vodafone today announced a joint initiative to offer enterprise customers integrated mobility solutions based on Oracle® 10g and Vodafone Network Services. The initiative covers joint development work, marketing efforts and an intention to launch further products. The two companies will enable customers to offer field workers, such as sales staff or service engineers, mobile access to key business systems.

Oracle and Vodafone plan to jointly market and support these capabilities to enterprise customers to enable mobile access to business applications and data. Currently, pilot customers in health care, government, utilities and media industries are performing final trials before general availability, currently planned for November 2003.

Scottish Water plans to use the joint offering to connect the company's call centres directly with its field engineers across Scotland to allow on-the-spot scheduling of service calls through Oracle TeleServices and Oracle Field Service applications. A number of enterprises including Equity Technology (Sweden), ID Systeme (Germany), Franhofer and Damstadt Echo (Germany) have also signed up for the Oracle 10g wireless proposition with Vodafone.

"Increasing productivity through mobilising software applications is one of the key growth opportunities for Vodafone," said Peter Bamford, Group Marketing Officer at Vodafone Group. "We are pleased to be working with Oracle as one of our partners in addressing this opportunity. Oracle has a strong mobile technology foundation and extensive portfolio of applications that enable mobile access to back end systems. With this joint proposition we have been able to reduce complexity, with an end-to-end solution based on open standards."

"Mobile workforces equipped with real-time access to relevant company information can do their jobs more efficiently and effectively, offering better customer service," he continued. "This improves business profitability and customer loyalty, which are important goals in today's competitive marketplace. Vodafone will be promoting this as part of its enterprise business proposition."

As well as providing the mobile-enabling middleware, Oracle has also provided mobile access to Oracle Collaboration Suite, with tools such as e-mail, calendar, voicemail, faxes and files; as well as key aspects of the Oracle E-Business Suite and its integrated set of business applications.

"Mobility is becoming critical for the enterprise market," said Sergio Giacoletto, executive vice president, Oracle EMEA. "The workforce is becoming increasingly mobile and, to remain productive, employees need instant access to relevant, accurate and up-to-date corporate information. Working with Vodafone, we can provide this as a global proposition, starting today with functions already available."

Vodafone's Network Services and the Oracle 10g product family will also enable developers easily and quickly to create and extend current and future Oracle-based applications to be accessible by mobile devices. Vodafone Network Services application programming interfaces (APIs) are embedded into Oracle 10g Application Server. Oracle and Vodafone also offer a support programme for developers, providing white papers, toolkits and e-mail support.

"Oracle sees great value in the growing alliance with Vodafone," said Jacob Christfort, vice president and chief technology officer for Oracle's Mobile Products & Services Division. "Oracle has already developed specific SMS, LBS, and MMS drivers to Vodafone's API gateways within Oracle9i Application Server Wireless. This means that all applications that run on the Oracle Application Server, including Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Collaboration Suite and bespoke applications, will come pre-enabled for Vodafone's Network Services. This reduces the complexity of deploying mobile enterprise applications and can dramatically reduce the cost and time for enterprises to implement mobile access to back-end systems."

About Vodafone

Vodafone provides a full range of mobile telecommunications services, including voice and data communications. Vodafone has equity interests in 26 countries and Partner Networks in a further nine countries, serving over 120 million proportionate customers. Vodafone is a truly global organisation, recognised worldwide for its quality of service and product innovation.

About Oracle Corporation

Oracle is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.

Trademark

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

   Notes to Editors

   Details of mobilised software capabilities:

   Oracle Collaboration Suite:
   -- As part of the initiative, Oracle and Vodafone can offer reduced costs
      and improved functions for email and calendar, both for companies with
      their own e-mail systems and smaller businesses that use shared
      services.  The offering is a fixed-price, financed, programme providing
      proven cost reduction on standard office tools.  Oracle and Vodafone
      will offer enterprises mobile access to e-mail, calendar and files,
      which can be accessed through web browsers on a variety of devices,
      from a standard PC, through a handheld computer to a smartphone.

   Oracle E-Business Suite
   -- The wireless capability in Oracle Application Server 10g enables mobile
      access to the Oracle E-Business Suite of applications. Examples are:
      offering alerts when financial sub-accounts move out-of-range; and
      using a quick parts look-up service works from any location by
      interrogating the main company application.  Mobile devices can access
      key parts of the Oracle E-Business Suite, such as Mobile Field Service
      and iProcurement, as well.

   The most exciting offering is to large and small businesses alike:
   -- Any employee who needs access to information, or who supplies
      information to the company while on the road, can have simple access to
      business applications, bypassing the traditional complexities of
      username, password and learning curve.  By using simple SMS, the
      employee can ask a question (for example, "How much is in stock?," or
      "I need to order 7 units of this part.").  By directing the SMS to a
      pre-defined 5-digit telephone number (the same number in any country in
      the world), Vodafone and Oracle will return an SMS to the employee in
      30 seconds with the appropriate response (in stock, out of stock, the
      price, etc.).
   -- If an employee is mobile and needs to make a choice, process a
      transaction or find where someone is located, Vodafone and Oracle can
      display a small, relevant field, even on the simplest mobile handset,
      displaying alternatives and enabling choice through a 'click' on a WAP
      screen.  This service works on all Oracle applications, as well as the
      applications of any vendor on the market.


Businesses wanting access to these benefits will need to sign a commercial data communications contract with Vodafone.