Early Adopters Give Oracle9i Database High Marks

With more than 350 partners and customers participating in the Oracle9i Database Beta Program, Oracle Corp, one of the largest providers of software and services for e-business, announced that customer and partner response to Oracle9i continues to be overwhelmingly positive. The database powerhouse offers the industry's only complete and simple infrastructure for Internet computing and, with Oracle9i Database, Oracle will continue to reduce platform cost and complexity.

"Oracle9i Database is a powerful technology that will enable enterprises to deploy the next generation of e-business applications," said Doug Turner, vice president of Product Management, Compuware Corporation. "Our partnership with Oracle will enable our enterprise customers to develop and deploy e-business applications utilizing the full power and functionality of Oracle's new platform."

"Oracle must have beaten this thing to death because the bugs that you generally hear about with beta software just aren't there," said Dan Vlamis, CEO Vlamis Software. "I've worked with a lot of Beta software and this is one of the best."

With the shipment of Oracle9i Database due in June, early adopters in the beta program provided insight on new product features and functionality and also deployment plans. Of the 350 beta program participants, 56 percent are customers, 23 percent are Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), 13 percent plan to host the platform and 12 percent are systems integrators. The majority (55 percent) of the participants indicated that they plan to deploy Oracle9i Database simultaneously to its availability, or within three months. Additionally, 57 percent of the beta participants consider the development platform, high availability and the unparalleled scalability of Oracle9i Real Applications Clusters to be the most important features of the database. Real Application Clusters, which debuts for the first time in Oracle9i, increase both transaction availability and scalability without ever having to change the application or partition the data.

"Scalability is the core attribute of database platforms in the e-business world," said Carlos Versteele, global Oracle practice leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers. "I believe the scalability, performance, and manageability of Oracle9i can add valuable elements to our database systems, such as collaborative business-to-business processes, customer-focused applications, self-service, and continuous decision support."

Oracle9i Database also has fully integrated sophisticated data analysis capabilities. With Oracle9i Advanced Analytic Services, Oracle embeds a powerful OnLine Analytical Processing (OLAP) and data mining infrastructure for customers and partners to build business intelligence applications. Oracle9i Advanced Analytic Services eliminate the need for customers to extract data from the data warehouse and to then process it in specialized, analytical servers. By offering more functionality in the Oracle9i Database, customers and partners can derive accurate and timely business intelligence with less technical complexity and investment.

"At Lowestfare.com, we are striving to grow our top line by increasing the value of each customer transaction," said Andy Cohen, chief technology officer Lowestfare.com. "Lowestfare.com realizes that in order to stay competitive in the online travel industry, we will need to be able to sell our prospects and customers more than discount airline tickets as we move toward our goal of becoming a 'One Stop Shop' for travel. Oracle9i's data mining and personalization products help us offer personalized products and services and increase customer satisfaction."

About Oracle

Oracle Corporation provides the software that powers the Internet. For more information about Oracle please call 650-506-7000.

Contact Letty Ledbetter, 650-506-8071, letty.ledbetter@oracle.com of Oracle Corporation.