Software giant Oracle Corp., today announced a significant pan-European partnership as
UK-based BT Ignite Content
Hosting, a provider of integrated hosting solutions will become the first European
partner to deliver on Oracle’s E-Business Suite Online Any Place strategy.
BT Ignite’s extensive European network of Internet Data Centres, will make Oracle’s
E-Business technologies available to organizations across Europe. With businesses no
longer needing to install or configure a software, Oracle’s European E-Business Suite
customers can go live in ten days.
By teaming up with BT Ignite, Oracle says it’s sharing its ‘Software as a Service’ vision and is looking to achieve the same success in Europe it has in the US. Oracle has over 125 American customers using its hosted services. “From today, European organizations no longer have to rely as heavily on implementation consultants, search for scarce IT staff, or manage software upgrades and integration,” said Sergio Giacoletto, Executive Vice President, Europe Middle East and Africa, Oracle Corp. “They can quite simply access all their business systems via the Internet,” he says.
He believes the model of online hosted services will change the way Oracle’s customers
receive its new products and services: “The next few years will see Oracle delivering the
majority of its technology to customers as an online service, either from its own US data
centre or through partners such as BT Ignite,” he says.
This aims to benefit businesses by reduced IT overheads and deployment times to
increases return on investment. The Oracle software platform will be managed and
supported by Oracle, with hardware and network management provided by BT Ignite
Content Hosting.
“Oracle’s ‘Any Place’ strategy of enabling customers to have their business applications managed and hosted at a location that suits them, fits tightly with our own business strategy of the future success of the hosting model,” explains Vernon Irvin, President BT Ignite Content Hosting. “It is not the technology behind hosted software services that people should focus on, but the business benefits that they immediately offer,” he says.
A recent report from analyst firm Datamonitor estimates the hosted market in Europe
will grow with a compound annual growth rate of 107 per cent from $266 million in
2001 to $4,884 million in 2005. The announcement will put both Oracle and BT Ignite
in the driving seat for hosted E-Business applications in the European market.
