Oracle Openworld 2013: Oracle Customers Continue To Invest In Big Data

Oracle OpenWorld 2013: Oracle customers continue to invest in big data
Oracle OpenWorld 2013: Oracle customers continue to invest in big data
This article is part of an Essential Guide, our editor-selected collection of our best articles, videos and other content on this topic. Explore more in this guide:
1. – OpenWorld 2013: Read more in this section
View all sections in this guide
Airbus, Thomson Reuters and the New York Stock Exchange were among the Oracle customers touting their successes with big data at the OpenWorld keynote on online Monday.
While Larry Ellison had the job of announcing the new Oracle in-memory database in the opening keynote, president Mark Hurd spoke to existing Oracle customers about their challenges around big data .
Big data is a running theme during the user conference in San Francisco this week.
Oracle president, Mark Hurd said: “The winners will be those who can take this data modernise and innovate.”
Airbus, Thompson Reuters and the New York Stock Exchange, have all deployed big data analytics to help make their businesses more effective.
Airbus
The aircraft manufacturer has used Oracle’s analytics tools to monitor sensor data during the construction and manufacture of new aircraft.
CEO of Airbus, Fabrice Brégier explained via a video that it takes a year from when an aircraft comes out of engineering to be delivered to the end customer. And during this year of testing, data is analysed from the aircraft’s 100,000 sensors. Following a test flight, it typically took airbus six days to gather all the information and analyse it before another test flight can take place. But using Oracle’s analytics this time frame has been reduced to a single day.
Thomson Reuters
Mark Bluhm, senior vice president, responsible for global datacentre operations at Thomson Reuters , said: “We consider ourselves the Google for professionals. We’ve been in the massive data business for a long time. “But big data is about understanding that data.”
He described the importance of data analytics, using a storm in the South Pacific as an example. He said that the company needs to understand what effect the storm could have on oil prices, and how late deliveries due to storms might affect this. “By having the analytics upfront, suddenly your customers stop becoming victims, and start becoming opportunists.”
As a customer using Oracle’s Exadata product, Thomson Reuters also uses data analytics internally for its sales and marketing.
He said that the company’s relationship with Oracle has worked well. Oracle sits on Thomson Reuters’ advisory board, and attends architecture meetings.
“What we do is really hard, but the tools given by Oracle are very powerful. You have to put the time in and it turns into a collaborative environment,” Bluhm said.
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange – NYSE Euronext – sends 185,000 messages per second. It produces 2TB of data every day and processes 2.5 trillion transactions every day. Originally NYSE Euronext operated 10-12 datacentres, but its IT architectures was not well integrated according to Duncan Niederauer, CEO of NYSE Euronext.
The company embarked on two big investments on datacentres in Jersey and outside London . Using the mantra “you need to spend money to save money”, he said that once this infrastructure was in place, the company had a single platform and architecture which has enabled it to cut technology costs by nearly $200m per year.
 “Oracle is in place throughout our company,” Niederauer said.

For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240206000/Oracle-OpenWorld-2013-Oracle-customers-continue-to-invest-in-big-data

British Startups Don’t Get The ‘respect’ Of Silicon Valley

British startups don’t get the ‘respect’ of Silicon Valley
News
Tweet
There may be a burgeoning technology scene in the UK , but without offices in the US, new companies will struggle to get their foot in the door.
This was the belief of Shahbaz Ali, CEO of Tarmin, who after studying and living in the UK, founded his storage software company in Essex.
“We started off in a bedroom as most humble beginnings are…  [and] when we opened the office it was in Ongar, a nice village just outside of Epping Forrest,” he said.
“They had a very interesting innovation centre [and] Essex Council [offered a lot of] support for business planning, fundraising and investment. I think Essex Council did a fantastic job to help growth.”
But despite his praise for the support he received in the UK, Ali believed he had to set up offices in the US to be seen as a serious technology company.
“We basically realised that when we were selling in the UK, going to a leading bank, for example, then saying we were a UK organisation… it has a psychological [effect],” he said.
“Although I don’t really like to admit it, if you say you are British, they don’t actually give you the respect that you get from being a Silicon Valley or Boston-based startup.”
More on Silicon Valley
Management: Silicon Valley’s secrets
Ali blamed this attitude on the amount of cash floating around the technology hubs in the US, meaning it was much easier for new firms to find investors.
“There has been more innovation coming from Silicon Valley and Boston , partly because there is a lot of view website funding momentum there,” he added. “You have got to admit that basically in these areas companies get $50m, $60m, even $100m of funding just like that in the tech sector, whereas with British start-ups, if they get $5m it is a big thing.”
As a result, Ali decided to place his company headquarters in Boston, surrounded by a talent pool of graduates coming out of one of the several highly rated universities in the area and existing employees from tech companies across New England.
“I think we basically had to move to Boston [for our] headquarters to firstly recruit the US teams and penetrate the US space, but also to address the issue we had in Europe,” he said.
But, if Ali was to embark on another start-up venture, he would return to Europe to kick things off.
“If I want to do my next startup it will be in Europe and it will be in the UK,” he said. “If you think of the cost associated with engineering as well as business development in the US, it is [much] higher and the thing is even in this country, if you want to hire a very smart team it is not easy. It took me quite a long while despite the fact I have a good track record.”
“I think there is a huge amount of talent in London. If you think about London, it is an amazing town, you have actually got a culture there that is international, truly international, and that culture and kind of environment actually creates and fosters innovation way faster. I am already on the board of two startups in London helping them at no cost and that is because I want to see some eco system coming from there to create some world class companies and I think that we can.”
Ali concluded: “You can bugger off easily to Silicon Valley but the thing is if you don’t get the respect at home, you are not going to get it anywhere else.”

For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240206132/British-start-ups-dont-get-the-respect-of-Silicon-Valley