Oracle announces significant uptake of its outsourcing services in EMEA

Oracle Corporation, the world`s largest enterprise software company, today announced that an increasing proportion of its customers in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region are choosing to outsource the management of their Oracle database or applications software to Oracle or an Oracle partner, rather than look after it themselves.

To date, 110 organisations in EMEA have chosen one of three outsourcing models offered by Oracle, citing significant cost savings, better service and faster implementation times as the main reasons for the decision. Oracle sees this move towards outsourcing as an important growth area in the months and years to come.

Oracle has been developing its outsourcing services over the past three years, and is now in a position to offer every one of its customers a choice of three new models of software delivery and management. These models are offered as alternatives to a "traditional" implementation whereby the customer installs and manages the software itself. The three models are referred to by Oracle as "At Oracle", "At Customer" and "At Partner" deployments of the software.

In the "At Oracle" model, Oracle installs the software in its data centre in California, where it is managed by Oracle professionals. The customer accesses the software via a secure Internet connection.

In the "At Customer" model, the customer installs the software on its premises, but it is managed remotely by Oracle professionals who have access rights to it.

In the "At Partner" model, the customer chooses to house its software in a local data centre run by a third-party organisation. The third-party manages the hardware and network connections, while Oracle professionals manage the software. The customer accesses the software via a secure Internet connection. Examples of approved "At Partner" partners include BT Ignite Content Hosting and Telenor Nextra.

There are many benefits to software outsourcing, but the three most often cited are significant cost savings, better service and faster implementation times. All three benefits are readily appreciated by companies looking to save money but still wanting to invest in the latest business technologies. For example, Apotek1, a pharmacy chain in Norway, estimates that it will save 40% on its annual training budget by using an online Oracle training software which is deployed in the Oracle data centre under the "At Oracle" model. British American Group, a UK-based holding company, was up and running on an "At Oracle" deployment of Oracle Financials in just 68 days. The outsourced options help reduce the high cost of support associated with skilled staff and the time associated with fault diagnosis and rectification, and leave Oracle customers to focus on their core competencies and strategic business issues.

"Uptake of our outsourcing services is accelerating because the benefits are becoming very clear," said Barry Goodwin, vice president, Oracle Outsourcing, Europe, Middle East and Africa. "Some of our customers are seeing dramatic reductions of up to 92% on their IT costs, because they`re no longer paying systems integrators to install and customise the software, or DBAs to look after it, or having to buy hardware and infrastructure. With Oracle providing the administration and maintenance of the systems, customers are able to receive better service, faster implementation times and lower and more predictable IT costs."

Below is an outline of key outsourcing services delivered by Oracle, with EMEA customer examples:

E-Business Suite Outsourcing refers to the outsourcing of the Oracle E-Business Suite, the industry`s first integrated suite of Internet business applications automating critical front and back office business processes including customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), Financials and Human Resources (HR). There are 22 Oracle customers in EMEA enjoying the cost and time benefits of outsourced Oracle E-Business Suite applications, including Apotek1 (Norway), British American Group (UK), Statens Vegvesen (Norway), Tropicana (Belgium) and Vodafone (UK).

British American Group is an investment holding company with interests ranging from financial services, media and hospitality to property development, professional education and consulting and healthcare management services. It selected an outsourced "At Oracle" solution, which spans financial accounting, supply chain management and project management, to support its operations in eight countries over four continents. Oracle Financials went live just 68 days after signing.

"Thanks to Oracle`s solution, the key benefits of group consolidation can be achieved through a single set of applications, across all our offices, in a matter of days," said David Connoley, programme manager for British American Group.

Apotek1 is the market leading pharmacy chain in the newly deregulated Norwegian market. The company has a 40% marketshare and sales of pharmaceuticals and health-related products amount to approximately US$0.5 billion per year. Apotek1 invested in Oracle iLearning to deliver online training courses to 1,300 employees working in its pharmacy outlets throughout Norway. Online courses available to employees include product training, such as how to sell Nicorette anti-smoking patches.

"Apotek1`s staff are spread far and wide throughout Norway, and bringing them to a central training location, or sending trainers to them, would be time consuming and costly for all concerned," said a spokesperson for Apotek1. "We therefore looked for an online learning system so that our staff could learn over the Internet. Oracle had the most advanced product on the market, and was able to host the software itself, so it was cost-effective for us. We estimate that we will save 40% of our annual training budget using Oracle iLearning."

Number of customers in EMEA: 88

Oracle Technology Outsourcing extends Oracle`s service and support expertise to its industry-leading technology products - Oracle9i Database and Oracle9i Application Server. It gives customers the opportunity to outsource the day-to-day management of their Oracle database to Oracle, which after all has the requisite specialist skills to relieve its customers of this resource-intensive, specialist and non-core activity. This means that customers receive expert technology management and can save on IT costs because they do not have to invest in hardware or support skills themselves.

Eighty-eight companies in the EMEA region have opted to outsource their database administration to Oracle in this way. The management is done via an "At Customer" model, meaning that the customers keep the databases on their premises but they are managed remotely by Oracle`s own database administrators (DBAs) via the Internet. Organisations benefiting from this arrangement include Alumafel (Spain), the British Library (UK), Natref (South Africa) and Symbian (UK).

Natref, jointly owned by Sasol Mining and Total SA, is a crude oil refinery which has established itself as a pacesetter refinery in South Africa. Its white product yield from crude oil ranks it among the best in the world. It has recently completed an expansion project to increase its refining capacity from 86 000 to 107 000 barrels of crude oil per day.

Natref has chosen to outsource its entire DBA function to Oracle specialists at Oracle`s remote monitoring centre in Johannesburg. The shortage of skilled DBAs was a key motivating factor behind this option. "By providing us with an outsourced service that is directly linked to our systems and monitored on a round-the-clock basis, Oracle`s response time is rapid - helping ensure that problems are resolved before they impact on the refining or business processes. Moreover, Natref need not be concerned with keeping abreast of technology, but can rather focus its attention on its core business activities," said Natref`s IT Manager, Riana Els.

Number of individual registrants in EMEA: 5 000+

Oracle has a number of on-demand software applications which are available on the oracle.com web site for individuals to use. These include applications for sales force automation (sales.oracle.com), support (support.oracle.com) and procurement (sourcing.oracle.com). EMEA companies using these applications include Abobase Systems (Estonia), Actano (Germany), Dako (Germany), Littlewoods Retail Ltd (UK), PricewaterhouseCoopers Global (Belgium) and Strategy Partners (France).

In a trial of Sourcing.oracle.com, Littlewoods Retail Ltd achieved 24 per cent savings on procurement of indirect goods and significantly shortened its procurement timescales. Because sourcing.oracle.com is offered as an on-demand service, the trial could be undertaken with minimal upfront costs in weeks rather than months, allowing the success and return on investment of the project to be evaluated as it progressed. The trial was so successful that Littlewoods has now chosen Oracle Sourcing as its enterprise-wide e-procurement software.

David Hallet, CIO, Littlewoods Retail Ltd, said, "Littlewoods Retail spends around lb320 million a year on purchasing indirect goods - a significant amount that we believe can be reduced through use of online auctions and exchange technology. Oracle has demonstrated through its successful track record of working with other customers that it is the right partner for us to work with on this project, whilst the cost savings, superior features functionality and decreased procurement timescales demonstrated in the pilot convinced us that Oracle`s solution will deliver benefits that really fit in with our strategy of `best value` - for shareholders and customers."