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BEST PRACTICES PROGRAM

Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 USA Worldwide Inquiries Phone +1.650.506.7000 +1.800.ORACLE1 oracle.com

THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF IT IN DRIVING CORPORATE SUCCESS Introduction


Oracle has achieved amazing business results through business process improvement and leveraging our own software. The Oracle Transformation started in 1999, when Oracle announced plans to implement a Global Single Instance (GSI) of the E-Business Suite applications to run its worldwide operations. As the company reaped benefits in efficiency and cost savings, the transformation served as a guide for and a fellowship with customers that were also challenged with the effects of doing business globally and integrating acquisitions quickly and cost-effectively. The GSI project was completed in 2004 and consolidated over 70 separate financial instances into one. From 2004 until January 2008, Oracle ran our E-Business Suite in the GSI model at a cost savings of between US$1 billion and US$2 billion dollars annually in the first few years and achieving closer to a US$3 billion dollar savings in the last year. In January 2008, Oracle successfully executed a three-pronged project which involved upgrading our existing GSI instance from Oracle E-Business Suite 11i to Oracle E-Business Suite 12, implementing a new Siebel CRM 8.0 global CRM instance, and implementing a new global corporate data warehouse leveraging Oracle Business Intelligence. Oracles upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite 12 was straightforward, with the notable exceptionthat we split the CRM function out from the instance. We kept our ERP functions running on the E-Business Suite and moved our CRM function to a new Siebel instance. Although the company could have continued to run exclusively on Oracle E-Business Suite applications, it chose to take advantage of its flagship Siebel CRM product. Today, all the lead processing, partner management, opportunity management, sales forecasting, territory management, campaign management, and marketing are done with Oracles Siebel products. When an opportunity becomes a quote, a contract, or an order, it flows into Oracle E-Business Suite functional applications, where it joins the rest of Oracles global enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, including the general ledger.

Bret Fuller

Although Oracles E-Business Suite and Siebel CRM functionality were similar, Oracle chose to run the Siebel products. This decision drove global process standardization across the sales, marketing, and partner organizations, allowing Oracle to eliminate a number of systems that had been maintained despite the push toward process simplification and standardization. Oracles internal implementation is the worlds largest implementation of Siebel CRM 8 to date. As well, Oracles internal implementation of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications 7.9.1 for Siebel CRM 8 content and the July 2008 implementation of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications 7.9.4 for Oracle E-Business Suite 12 ERP content is the worlds largest implementation to date. In this way, Oracle is gaining valuable insights that allow it to truly understand its customers needs and collaborate with them as they move forward in their own business evolutions. Oracle Business Intelligence Suite (OBI) is used by the Siebel CRM system for reporting, and Oracle has leveraged the business intelligence implementation required by the CRM system to create a single, global platform for the corporate data warehouse and extended the data warehouse to include ERP data from the Oracle E-Business Suite. Within Oracle, IT plays a critical role in Oracles product development cycle. We are an early adopter of our products, taking new releases of Oracles Applications, Application Server, and Database and implementing them, and their new functions (within Oracle) before our customers do, in order to validate them. IT, in conjunction with our internal business and development partners, has developed and improved many internal IT processes over time. These processes allow us to move and improve at an unbelievable rate. These processes have helped us to become a true world-class IT operation. This brochure will give you an overview of what Oracle has accomplished as a Corporation and how we actually accomplished it. We gain significant experience when we use our own software to run our business. In addition when we share best practices and the lessons we have learned, our customers benefit with increased returns on their Oracle investments. We believe this information will help you maximize your return on the investment you have made in Oracle products. Finally, we always welcome feedback from fellow customers. Please do not hesitate to contact us with questions or input at Oracle-at-Oracle_ww@oracle.com. We hope that you will be able to leverage much of the information in this second formal edition of Oracle@Oracle! Sincerely,

Bret Fuller Senior Vice President, Oracle@Oracle Best Practices Program, Oracle Corporation

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LIST OF TOPICS
Strategic Role of IT ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................4 Best Practices ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................4 Contact Email Address at Oracle .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................5 Oracle@Oracle ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................5 How IT is Organized ...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................6 IT Roles .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................6 IT Priorities ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................7 Early Adopter Role ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................7 Global Single Instance (GSI) ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................9 Consolidation Story (ERP)....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................9 Why Consolidate .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................9 Consolidation Types .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................9 Oracle Pre Consolidation (ERP)....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 The GSI Consolidation Program ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Oracle Post Consolidation (ERP) ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 Benefits of Consolidation (ERP) ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11 Visibility, Accountability, Security ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 12 Keys to Success (ERP) .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 12 Why Implement Siebel CRM .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 13 Business Benefits (CRM) ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Governance and Best Practices (CRM) ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15 Keys to Success (CRM) ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 16 Approach to Enterprise Reporting..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 17 Pre and Post Implementation (Reporting) ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 17 Transparency & Collaboration .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 18 Roles & Responsibilities (Reporting) ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 18 Key Elements of Enterprise Reporting .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 19 Key Business Drivers for Enterprise Reporting .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 19 Architecture (ERP) ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 20 Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 21 Architecture (CRM).............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 22 Architecture (Corporate Data Warehouse) .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 23 Change Management ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 24 Support Policy......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 24 Capacity Planning ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 25 Load Balancing & Failover ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 25 Performance Management .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 25 Regulatory Compliance ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 26 Compliance Approach .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 26 Mergers & Acquisitions ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 27 Recommendations for M&A ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 28 Acquired Companies ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 28 Partnering with the Business ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 29 Global Process Owner........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 29 Program & Project Management....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 29 Project Types ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 29 Project Methodology ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 30 Sarbanes-Oxley....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 30 Enterprise Planning ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 31 Keys to Success (Planning) ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 32

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THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF IT IN DRIVING CORPORATE SUCCESS Best Practices from Oracle IT
Todays business world is an ever-changing environment of increasing complexity and challenges, requiring corporations to build agility and flexibility into their IT infrastructure to swiftly adapt to changes in the marketplace. Information Technology in general and Enterprise Applications in particular, are major keys to a companys success. Oracle Corporation has achieved enormous benefits with Enterprise Applications. Oracles IT division is responsible for running Oracles internal business applications and is a key component in driving success throughout Oracle. Oracle@Oracle summarizes Oracle Corporations experience from its internal deployment of its own products. It is intended to help customers maximize the value of their investment in Oracle products. ITs key initiatives include the consolidation of systems, standardization of business processes, the move to shared services, and security and corporate compliance. These initiatives are delivered within an environment that constantly demands that IT do more with less. With the recent 2008 implementation of Oracles Siebel CRM suite, Oracle has moved toward more of a best of breed approach within IT and our experiences of implementing our products becomes even more pertinent to a wider range of our customers. Oracle is a truly global company with global business units operating across more than 70 subsidiaries and we operate global infrastructure to support our operations, including local legal considerations. Oracle started the globalization process over 14 years ago and has accumulated a variety of proven best practices during this period. The Oracle@Oracle series of articles illustrates how IT operates and executes its role within Oracle in working with the business units to make Oracle a world-class company, providing the best return to the Corporation and ensuring that Oracle is ready for any set of challenges. We believe this experience will assist Oracles customers to improve their operations and successfully compete in todays challenging business world. This brochure includes: About Oracle@Oracle. The role of the Oracle@Oracle Best Practices program, the role IT plays, how IT is organized, and ITs priorities within Oracle. ITs Early Adopter Role. ITs role with Oracle Product Development (Applications, Application Server, and Database) managing upgrades and releases. The Global Single Instance Philosophy. The philosophy and approach to consolidation, simplification and standardization within Oracle. The Oracle Global Consolidation Story. How Oracle achieved moving to a Global Single Instance, which resulted in a true information system and significant savings. The Siebel CRM Implementation at Oracle. How Oracle implemented the Siebel CRM suite and moved to global processes for Sales, Marketing and Alliances & Channels. Enterprise Reporting at Oracle. How Oracle implemented a Global Data Warehouse to support consolidated Enterprise-wide reporting and provide a single cohesive business view to support decision-making. Oracles Architecture. How Oracle has architected its own production instances to support use of its own products and the business continuity and disaster recovery practices.

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Operational Best Practices within Oracle IT. How Oracles operations and processes support the usage of its own products. This includes Change Management, IT Support Policies, Capacity Planning, Load Balancing & Failover and Performance Management. Corporate Governance and Compliance. How IT addressed Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and how our standardization of processes helped achieve compliance. Handling Mergers and Acquisitions. How IT approaches the integration of acquired companies and how our consolidation has simplified this task. Partnering with the Business. How IT works and prioritizes with the business - the Global Process Owner (GPO)/Global Solution Owner (GSO) model. Program and Project Management. The IT methodology to manage divisional projects and programs. This section includes examples of how new products are implemented and details experiences with specific projects.

More Information
Contact Oracle-at-Oracle_ww@oracle.com for more information about Oracle@Oracle best practices.

ABOUT ORACLE@ORACLE
The Oracle@Oracle Best Practices group has been established to put dedicated resources into promoting what Oracle has undertaken internally in implementing its own products. This includes sharing best practices, strategies, the benefits achieved and the key success factors from the implementation and upgrade experience we have gained within our internal IT functions. The objective is to bring experience and insight to the customer influencing process by supporting the sales, marketing and consulting cycles, by bringing Oracles customers in direct contact with the employees who have implemented Oracles products, and using this knowledge to help them with their own implementation or upgrade programs.

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ABOUT IT WITHIN ORACLE How We Are Organized


Information Technology within Oracle is organized within three distinct groups. Applications IT (AIT). Implements and supports Oracles application solutions that allow Oracle to run its business. The solution is chiefly comprised of the Oracle E-Business Suite and the Oracle Siebel CRM Suite, along with limited extensions and bespoke applications and third-party software. All of our applications run on Oracle Fusion Midldleware and Oracles Database. Global IT (GIT). Responsible for providing the infrastructure, networks, desktops and Global Helpdesk required for Oracle to run its business. This includes the award winning Tier IV Data Centers that provide the availability, security and performance for Oracle and its hosted customers. Product Development IT (PDIT). Implements and supports Oracles email, calendar and conferencing application solutions that allow Oracle to communicate. This includes Oracle Beehive, which provides enterprise class messaging and collaboration applications. The rationale behind the IT structure within Oracle is for each IT group to work closely within its parent organization to leverage our experience and to improve the customer experience. AIT and PDIT are within Product Development to work closely with development to enhance our applications products for our customers. GIT is positioned within Support for the Synergies with the On-Demand hosting provision that the Support organizations provide to Oracle customers.

IT Roles
In supporting Oracle, IT performs a number of different roles: We deliver business solutions to our business partners across Oracle. We also enable and drive business process improvements by partnering with the Business and Development groups and by executing directives from Executive Management. We are an early adopter of Oracles products, taking new releases of Oracles Applications, Applications Server, and Database and implementing them within Oracle to improve the products for our customers. We ensure that Oracle complies with its Corporate Governance and security obligations. We support Corporate Initiatives and Mergers and Acquisitions. We showcase Oracles Products for our customers via the Oracle@Oracle Best Practices program to leverage our internal experience for our customers. We continually aim to consolidate and simplify operations and instances across Oracle and maximize the return to Oracle across all Lines of Business (LOBs).

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IT Priorities
1. Ongoing Business and Production Support. Ensuring Oracles business can operate as effectively as possible, utilizing the application solutions to fulfill their business objectives and obligations. Production support includes the management of day-to-day service requests, as well as proactive system maintenance and improvements. Corporate Governance, Compliance, and Security. Ensuring Oracle application environments are managed in accordance with our documented controls and processes to meet our obligations for SOX, for our Internal and External Auditors, and for other governance related groups, such as our Global Information Security Division. Mergers and Acquisitions Support. Partnering with the Corporate Development Division to ensure that we swiftly integrate acquired companies into Oracle to meet tax and legal guidelines. Our mission is to integrate all acquired entities into Oracles global operations as quickly and seamlessly as possible. Quality Assurance/Feedback/Early Adopter for Development. Our goal is to implement relevant new product releases and functionality immediately upon release, to ensure that the products and functionality are used in our production environment before they are used in any customer production environment. We leverage the early adopter program to resolve potential issues with the Development organizations before they have the opportunity to affect our customers. Applications IT and Product Development IT report into Oracles Product Development organization, which supports formal feedback on our products directly into the development groups responsible for building products. The early adopter role involves implementing new products, new releases of existing products, new features, patch sets, security updates, and bug fixes. Project and Process Work. We work with our internal business partners to provide them with solutions to support the attainment of their business objectives. In addition, we prioritize our work across the different business groups within Oracle to provide the largest Return on Investment (ROI) to Oracle, as a whole.

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ITS EARLY ADOPTER ROLE As outlined in IT Priority 4, at Oracle, the IT Division is an integral part of the Product Development Division. We work closely with the product engineers to ensure that the released products are of the highest possible quality before Oracle Customers implement them. We do this in the following ways: 1. Sharing Instances. Being a large multi-national company that runs on a Global Single Instance model, we have the data and environment that provides a very effective proving ground for our products. Large simulated test environments will never be able to completely simulate production data that has existed for many years with a variety of complex transactions. For significant releases, we use a copy of our production environment, work with Product Development, perform numerous upgrade and product tests to ensure that new versions of our products are easy to upgrade to, and will work well in our customers environments. Running Business Scenarios. We partner with the Product Development groups to test our business scenarios on the upgraded environments to verify that the new functionality of the applications/database has not unexpectedly affected how we ran the applications on a prior release. We also use these tests to verify that there isnt any performance degregation or other issues with the database version we are currently using. Any issues found are addressed to ensure that our customers have an excellent ownership experience with the new release.

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An example of how we operate can be illustrated with the release of version 11i.10 of the E-Business Suite. The release was made available on November 1, 2004. Within seven weeks of the release, we had upgraded our production Global Single Instance and were running our global operations on the new release. In parallel with the applications upgrade, we also upgraded our GSI instance to the 10G version of the database. Despite the aggressive schedule, all project dates were met on time and without any disruption to Oracles business operations.

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At Oracle, as an Enterprise Information company we stay as current as possible with the latest versions of software. This not only allows us to ensure that the releases we provide to our customers are verified in our own production environment, but it also ensures that we are able to receive the benefits of leveraging the full breath of the functionality. Finally, by keeping current, we are in a much better position to receive the best support possible from Oracle. Oracle recommends that customers keep current in terms of the versions of Oracle software they are running. In general, this means that customers should be running one of the latest two releases of any given software. We leverage the experience we gain to improve the product and the upgrade experience. We also use this knowledge to assist with improving our customers ability to take the latest releases to upgrade their own environments. In addition, our aggressive approach to implementing new releases of our software allows us to set expectations with the Oracle business units. They know that they will receive the latest product features on a regular cycle and can work with IT to ensure that they can leverage the new features of each release or patch set as quickly as possible. This helps improve the agility of their business and their responsiveness to changes in the marketplace. In many companies, even software companies, the IT function does not regularly upgrade to the latest releases of their enterprise software solutions. This means that they periodically have a large and costly multi-month or multi-year project to move from one software release to the next. In these cases, not only are the benefits listed above not achieved, there is also discontinuity in the business and a slowness to adapt systems and business processes to the needs of the company. It also increases the tendency to make custom fixes to the code due to the long wait between new releases. This in turn then makes the upgrades more costly to progress since the custom fixes have to be modified to be upgraded, which in turn leads to increased support and maintenance costs.

Being within Product Development allows us to leverage the experience we gained, not only to improve the product and the upgrade, but also to use this knowledge to assist with improving our customers user experience.

At Oracle we look to implement the latest releases when they are ready and plan for these up to a year in advance, pending confirmation of release dates. We handle this not only at the Application product level, but also in terms of releases to the Application Server and the Database products. This provides us with a regular schedule of improvements to our production systems and a very active showcase for our products to our customers. Application IT (AIT) has been performing applications upgrades across Oracle for many years and now has a refined model and approach for each upgrade [see the Program and Project Management section]. The approach provides multiple benefits to Oracle, including: 1. 2. 3. Repeatable Process. Having a repeatable process has allowed our business users to become familiar with the process, their expectations have been set and they are in aligned with IT. Upgrades Are Delivered On Time. A repeatable process coordinated with the business users ensures that upgrades are delivered on time. Managed Risk and Issues. Our repeatable process also allows us to minimize the risk of issues and hence improve the quality of the delivered release. Similarly, we look to patch our environments on a regular basis and have a set pattern of releases (we call them bundles) on a more granular level. This schedule avoids our quarter end periods where our environments are frozen for audit control purposes. We plan our outages to take into account as many of the scheduling aspects of our company as possible to minimize the downtime to our business on a global basis.

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THE GLOBAL SINGLE INSTANCE PHILOSOPHY


Although Oracle has now become somewhat of a best of breed IT company and moved from a global single instance (GSI) of the Oracle E-Business Suite, to separate instances for the ERP applications on the E-Business Suite and CRM applications on the Siebel CRM Suite. This still reconciles with Oracles philosophy on the benefits of a single consolidated instance and does not contravene the principle behind the GSI. Oracle has Global Single Instances by function and/or product line. We have separate instances for Email, ERP systems (on the E-Business Suite), CRM Systems (on Oracles Siebel products) and for our external Support systems. The ERP and CRM instances could have continued to run exclusively on the E-Business Suite, however Oracle chose to promote its flagship Siebel CRM product and also to showcase the upgrade path from Oracles ERP and CRM applications to Fusion. The benefits and advantages to Oracle from consolidation as outlined in the following section mean that wherever possible Oracle seeks to consolidate instances globally.

THE ORACLE GLOBAL CONSOLIDATION STORY


Just prior to 2000, Oracle embarked on a journey to consolidate all its production Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship (CRM) systems to a Global Single Instance (GSI). Oracles old model of separate, geographically based systems simply could not provide the Corporation with the information it needed to run its business. For example, it was not possible to determine how many people are employed by Oracle or understand how much of what product Oracle sold without waiting for a period to close and consolidating the information. Today, we have real time access to answer these and many other questions immediately.

Why Consolidate and Go Global?

The key underlying value of consolidation is the Information. It is also about improving service and reducing costs (hardware, facilities and headcount costs), but essentially the key driver is information, gaining real time access to information, improving the quality of the information, and the availability and access to the information. A corporation in todays marketplace cannot underestimate the value of accurate, consistent, timely and meaningful information.

Consolidation Types

There are basically four levels, or types, of consolidation. Additional benefits are achieved with each additional level of consolidation. Oracle encourages its customers to consolidate as much as possible for their business. 1. Data Center (Hardware and System Services) Level. Consolidating separate database instances into a single Data Center (either regional or global), as well as consolidating servers and moving from multiple domains to a single domain. The key benefits of this level are reduced facility and headcount costs for systems administration, along with better system service and availability. This level allows superior Data Center services at a significantly reduced cost. The Software and Database Level. Once Data Center operations have consolidated, the instances (DBs) and applications in that Data Center can be consolidated. The key benefits of this level are improved access and better information from your data. The Business Process Level. Consolidating to a single global set of business processes across the business globally. Agreeing upon global processes allows you to consolidate the systems involved with those processes into a combined instance. The key benefits of this level are accurate comparisons of data across all lines of business, reduced processing and transaction costs, and an increased ability to leverage best practices across the company. The Shared Services and Process Administration Level. Once global processes have been established, you can implement the final level of consolidation. This is consolidating the services to manage and control the business processes. The key benefits of this level are a further

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reduction of resource and facility costs, but most importantly it allows for better and more controlled execution and support of those services. With fewer resources you will attain more focus and better execution. From our Oracle experience, we would recommend consolidating as much as possible to obtain the maximum return for your Corporation.

Oracle: Pre Consolidation

At the start of the Consolidation Program, Oracle looked significantly different to how it does today. We were a country/regional centric Corporation that had multiple Data Centers, multiple databases and multiple environments to support the production instances. We had a variety of applications deployed on a variety of platforms and operating systems. We also had inconsistent usage of the applications, different business practices overseen by multiple IT support groups and our emphasis was transaction-based, as opposed to information-based systems. In summary, our data was completely fragmented and it was almost impossible to obtain accurate, consistent, timely, and meaningful information.

The GSI Consolidation Program


When Oracle started its Global Single Instance (GSI) Consolidation Program, it had more than 65 instances and we increased this to more than 70 instances by creating five regional instances based on character sets, as Oracle had not delivered our current Unicode solution at that time. We created two instances in Europe (Western European and Eastern European), one for the Americas, one for Asia Pacific, and one for Latin America. We adopted the regional instance approach so that we could fully utilize multiple consolidation windows on a regional basis and perform consolidations in the regions in parallel, rather than sequentially. We avoided significant Data Migrations during the entire fourth quarter and during each quarter-end month of Oracles Financial Reporting periods. This reduced the number of available slots we could utilize for Data Migrations. By January 2001 we had reduced the number of instances to 20 and by January 2002 further reduced this to 10 instances. We had consolidated to three regional instances by January 2003 and achieved a single ERP instance in January 2004. We then combined our global ERP and CRM instances and achieved our goal of a Global Single Instance in October 2004. Since then we have migrated a multitude of acquired companys data into this instance, including PeopleSoft, Siebel, Hyperion and BEA, to name a few.

Oracle: Post Consolidation


At the conclusion of Oracles Consolidation Program in 2004, the Oracle IT landscape looked very different. We had a primary Data Center in Austin, Texas, with a remote Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Data Center in Colorado Springs. We had a Global Single Instance, with a significantly reduced number of supporting environments, all controlled to the same standards and with the same processes. The instance was running the Oracle E-Business Suite (both ERP and CRM) on a single technology stack, supported by a single IT group (distributed across a number of countries around the globe). We had all applications running for all countries to the same set of business processes with a single applications setup. The business processes and transaction processing were supported by regional Shared Service Centers. We now had a consolidated global information system, whereas before, we had fragmented transactional systems. This ensured that Oracle had the information necessary for quick and efficient decision-making. We no longer had fragmented data, rather a full Global Information System providing better information for decision making with accurate, consistent, timely, and meaningful information.

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Oracles Accomplishments
BENEFITS OF CONSOLIDATION Moving to a consolidated model has yielded Oracle multiple benefits: 1. Using the Full Potential of the Applications. Moving everybody to a standard set of processes and supporting applications infrastructure allows the full potential of the Oracle E-Business Suite to be utilized in all countries, for all LOBs and all employees. New functionality is turned on for all employees in all countries simultaneously and can be of immediate use and benefit. More Responsive Business. A consolidated model supports a more responsive business, allowing Oracle to make changes to their business processes simultaneously, on a global basis. This creates increased agility in the business as each change in business processes on the single instance is available to all employees globally at the same time. Global Information System. Having all corporate data in the one instance provides accurate, timely, consistent and meaningful data and, as a result, improved decision making for the Corporation. Infrastructure Savings. Significant savings were made in reducing and consolidating environments from the hundreds of environments before the consolidation to the few required supporting a single instance. Simpler Support and Maintenance. Fewer environments require less upgrades and patching to keep them all synchronized and less interfacesleading to simpler support and maintenance. Improved Service. Consolidation of business processes leads to consistency in processing and hence efficiency gains, which in turn lead to improved levels of service. Self-Service. Self-service allows the most interested person in any given transaction (the requester) to enter the data themselves, thereby ensuring increased accuracy. Self-service applications update the data in real time providing timely information, as opposed to manual processing with its inherent delays and propensity for mistakes. Single Source of Data. Data consolidated in one instance provides a single source of data that only has to be maintained in one place. Single Login Access. A single instance allows a single login access as opposed to multiple login accesses required across multiple instances.

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10. Corporate Governance and Compliance. A standard set of business processes across the Corporation allows for more responsive and timely changes for corporate governance and compliance. 11. Mergers and Acquisitions. A standard set of business processes on a consolidated environment also facilitates the speed and simplicity of Systems Integration between merged and acquired companies. 12. Standardization of Processes. Standardization of processes provides reduced processing and, per transaction costs, the ability to leverage best practices from different groups and regions; better (smarter) information comparing similar data; better support across common processes, and simplification through standardization. 13. Systems Security. Fewer control points in a consolidated environment leads to better control; less to monitor means more detailed monitoring; fewer systems means fewer people to maintain and give access; a single set of technology exists to support and leverage; one system is less expensive and complex for disaster recovery. The bottom line is that improved control, improved monitoring, simplified infrastructure and less exposure all lead to improved security. 14. Shared Service Centers. Shared Service Centers (SSC) provide increased efficiency, control, and quality; a blend of centralization and decentralization; centralized control of key areas (Accounting); focused expert professionals delivering higher quality services at lower cost; elimination of redundant structures; economies of scale and a move to low-cost cities, states, or countries.

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Note: Oracle currently performs a number of functions at its Shared Service Centers, including: Tactical Purchasing, Accounts Payable, Order Administration, Accounts Receivable, Cash Management, Revenue Accounting, Revenue Recognition, General Accounting, Collections and Data Librarians - Customer Data. We embarked on a journey to consolidate all our production ERP and CRM systems. Our old model of separate geographically based systems simply could not provide the corporation with the information we needed to run our business.

Visibility, Accountability, and Security


The previous benefits provide a significant business advantage for Oracle, where visibility, accountability and security are at a premium. Oracle is accountable to shareholders and the public, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Board of Directors, our employees, as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other regulatory agencies. Having implemented standard processes and shared services, we have increased our visibility into operations. Oracles consolidation allows it to reduce its exposure and ensure the minimum disruption and risk to business operations.

Keys to Success
Throughout the whole Consolidation Program, AIT sought to continuously improve its model and approach towards consolidation. As a result, AIT was able to document its performance and leverage this to make improvements. The early consolidation projects were used as prototypes, which led to the rapid development of a repeatable program of quality projects, continually meeting aggressive schedules. The following summary is a list of some of the keys to success that Oracle identified throughout the Consolidation Program. We believe these key points will help our customers facing similar challenges in attaining the significant benefits of consolidation. 1. Obtain and Leverage Executive Management Commitment. This is essential for swift prioritization and decision-making. A Steering group should be created to ensure that IT and Business priorities are aligned and open issues are closed as soon as possible. At Oracle, we removed the global IT costs from the local cost structure to ensure local management commitment to the Consolidation Program. In addition, it is critical to have a structure to allow quick decisions to be made. A bad decision can be corrected; a delay or no decision simply adds time and costs to the project without any benefit. Do not allow a management by committee mentality to enter into the project. Create a Realistic Plan. At Oracle, we built flexibility into the plan to minimize the chance of any delay and to ensure we progressed quickly to our goal of a Global Single Instance. We grouped similar countries into a single project to ensure a swift implementation. We consolidated initially to regional instances, allowing us to run consolidations in parallel across multiple countries and regions, to maximize the windows of opportunity to migrate data into the Global Single Instance. We excluded the introduction of new functionality into the consolidation project when necessary to ensure the critical path only included essential tasks. We migrated all data in an instance at the time of migration, performing data cleansing either in the original instance or as a post consolidation task. We did not perform data cleansing during the migration in order to reduce complexity and risk. We involved users early in the testing process and had a clear communication plan to set expectations. Simplify and Consolidate as Much as Possible. At Oracle we looked to consolidate as much as possible, moving to global business processes and shared services to provide increasing returns to Oracle, rather than the one off costs of a technical server consolidation. We also looked to utilize tools like Unicode to handle multi-character set issues and to simplify operations as much as possible. Organize Globally or Centrally. We setup and utilized the Global Process Owner (GPO) model [see the section: Partnering with the Business] as a Global Decision making forum which significantly reduced local issues with processes and local statutory requirements. This minimized any regional obstructions and allowed us to focus on progressing the program. It was essential for us to define the global business process footprint in partnership with the business. This allowed us to maximize the return to Oracle while minimizing the number of local country exceptions to the global footprint. This was one of the keys to obtaining a truly global information system with meaningful and non-fragmented data.

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Automate and Centralize Business Processes. It is important to ensure that end-to-end Business Flows are documented as part of the global footprint and there is integration across all the applications in use. All key applications should be included in the scope of the footprint (e.g. HR). It is also vital for swift progress, to ensure that business processes are changed to fit the applications. Adding enhancements to the applications and development phases to the critical path, rather than modifying the business processes, will significantly increase the schedule for the whole Consolidation Program. At Oracle, we also documented, within the global footprint, the local / central split of responsibilities between the local country and the Shared Service Center (SSC). We then added simulation testing to the implementation phase to ensure that there was no breakage in the processes between the SSC and local country business. Move to a Shared Service Model. It is always difficult to ensure that standard processes are maintained once implemented. However, implementing a SSC model means that a single centrally located team in the SSC can perform the global processes for multiple countries, reducing the opportunity for exceptions or bad practices arising within one country. The SSC can police the standard processes and help mitigate any issues. We also appointed Country Controllers within the SSC. This Account Manager role significantly helped the transition from the local country to the SSC by focusing on resolving any issues that were identified during the transition. Deploy Standard, Out of the Box Products. At Oracle, we mostly deployed out of the box products, resisting changes to the applications. This minimized the amount of support and maintenance on the consolidated environment and allowed us to easily upgrade to new releases without having to redo a large number of customizations. Leverage Self-Service. The introduction of self-service applications significantly simplifies a number of business flows. Moving to a selfservice model has reduced transactional costs, improved turnaround times, and improved the quality of data. Dont Underestimate the Hardest Part - Managing the Change. At Oracle, we are used to change, but even so, we spent the first few weeks of each country project ensuring that the scope was defined and management and user expectations were set at the appropriate level. As part of this process, the SSC and local organization changes were reviewed, as well as the program schedule. Managing change is a vital factor for all the components of the Consolidation Program. In a multi-national Consolidation Program there are many challenges and change is inherent in all of them never underestimate the impact on your plans and ultimately your goals.

6.

7.

8. 9.

THE SIEBEL CRM IMPLEMENTATION AT ORACLE Why Implement Siebel CRM?


When Oracle acquired Siebel Systems in 2006, we had the unique opportunity to leverage the best of our application suites for internal use. Our executive team decided to implement Siebel CRM for Sales, Marketing, and Alliances & Channels in order to improve global processes and to showcase our flagship CRM product alongside the E-Business Suite for Enterprise Resource Planning. This decision drove global process standardization across all lines of business, allowing Oracle to eliminate a number of disparate sales and marketing systems that had been maintained on a regional or group basis, despite the push toward process simplification and standardization. Adopting our own best-in-class CRM solution has allowed us to: Establish a set of globally consistent, efficient, streamlined and scalable customer facing processes from campaign to opportunity to quote integration Leverage the best practices available in our standard products while minimizing customizations Eliminate custom applications and centralize customer data to improve integrity, completeness and overall data quality Deliver business intelligence built on a single source of truth for pipeline, forecast and campaign data Build a compelling story about the breadth and depth of Oracle offerings and the ability of our teams to deliver a fully integrated portfolio of business applications, integrated together by leveraging Oracles Application Integration Architecture (AIA) technology

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Business Benefits
Prior to the commencement of the program, Oracles multiple sales organizations were following different sales methodologies in a number of areas. In addition, there were a number of disparate custom applications and point solutions that were used by the Sales and Marketing organizations to run their business. Moving to the Siebel CRM ecosystem has significantly improved Oracles ability to manage customer interactions: 1. Sales. Oracle now has one common set of global processes to manage leads and opportunities. Oracle has significantly improved and streamlined our sales processes, and there is now better communication between Marketing and Sales, ensuring high quality information at every point in the cycle. Marketing. The program introduced streamlined lead flow and response processing, which led to decreased marketing campaign costs, improved marketing related data quality, and improved budgeting and spend analysis on marketing campaigns. Alliances & Channels. Partner opportunity management has been enhanced and automated more fully. This in turn has allowed us to refocus interaction center representatives toward more strategic and value added activities. Business Intelligence. Oracle has moved to an analytics solution that provides account, contact, opportunity management and forecasting data in a single system using global processes, thus enabling deeper insight into individual and group campaign effectiveness and pipeline health via business analytics. [Oracles Business Intelligence (OBI) implementation is covered in more detail in the next section.] Cost Structure. Leveraging Linux hardware and Oracles Grid and RAC capabilities gives us excellent scalability at a very low cost. Additionally, being virtually a vanillia implementation of the Siebel solution reduces future maintenance and upgrade costs.

2. 3. 4.

5.

The Siebel CRM Implementation Program


Oracles internal implementation is the worlds largest deployment of Siebel CRM 8 to date, with 27,000 sales and marketing internal users and 12,000 partners globally. The scope of the program includes: Today, all campaign management, lead processing, opportunity management, sales forecasting, partner management, and territory management across all lines of business are done with Oracles Siebel products. When an opportunity becomes a quote, a contract, or an order, it flows into the Oracle E-Business Suite applications. Enabling integrated business processes that flow seamlessly between Siebel CRM and the Oracle E-Business Suite calls for state-of-the-art application

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integration, which for our implementation means using the Siebel EAI framework, Oracle Fusion Middleware and the BPEL Process Manager, to deploy a robust set of web services. It provides the foundation that keeps data synchronized and allows for an integrated business process between opportunity management processes in Siebel CRM, with quote and order management processes in the Oracle E-Business Suite. An integral part of the Global CRM ecosystem is the deployment of an Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) platform (formerly Siebel Analytics) and CRM Analytics Applications for reporting and BI. Our CRM Analytics infrastructure includes 50 subject area. This enables users to build dashboards and reports from a single source of truth and has paved the way for the Corporate Warehouse. Sales Analytics delivers role-based intelligence for sales reps, sales managers and executives on pipeline and forecast and allows performance tracking against quota, budget and revenue. Marketing Analytics enables the creation of precise customer segments for effective campaigns and visibility into campaign results and ROI. We also recently implemented Oracles Siebel Universal Content Management (UCM) application to consolidate disparate data quality management point solutions with a centralized, standard Master Data Management (MDM) application.

Project Governance and Implementation Best Practices


The project to implement global CRM at Oracle took 18 months from kickoff to deployment. The key milestones included business process reengineering, requirements, solution design, conference room pilot, health checkpoints, integration testing, end-to-end solution review, UAT, and production transition activities. A big bang deployment was considered the best approach from a cost- risk perspective. This project was executed using the standard AIT Project Methodology which is covered in a later section of this document. The governance model entailed a formalized Program Office, Steering Committee and Implementation Team, and was backed with Executive sponsorship. Five major project streams were created each with separate process tracks. Each stream followed a triangular management model consisting of a Project Manager, a Business Process Owner and an IT Solution Owner. Each process track within a project stream had an IT Solution Lead and a Business Analyst Lead to enable process coordination with an extended team of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and regional resources.

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The guiding principles for the project and for the subsequent improvement cycles include business process globalization, application consolidation / data centralization, implementation of the native product, and keeping reporting integral to the overall solution. The project used an iterative solution development methodology an agile approach of multiple design iterations that engaged business, functional, development, and testing teams concurrently, thereby enabling rapid feedback cycles, incremental wins and sustained commitment. The multi-phased testing approach starting at solution development and continuing through the final user acceptance ensured individual streams met business requirements and integrated well before production transition. The project redefined and communicated the methodology, entrance and exit criteria at each project stage to keep the approach fresh and aligned with the current state. Post production, a robust support model was put in place for the first 6 weeks post go live, including regional command centers, global IT/Business chat rooms, highly focused issue tracking and management using E-Business Suite Service Request Management, and frequent update packs.

Keys to Success
Oracle continues to evaluate its programs to ensure that the keys to success within a program are reviewed and factored into future programs. We believe the following points will help our customers facing similar challenges to attain significant benefits from running similar programs: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Establish Governance and Roles. The key to a successful program is to have a structure in place to ensure effective management and clarity of roles and responsibilities. Define the Ecosystem and Guiding Principles. Ensure that the future state ecosystem has been defined and all activities are aligned with the guiding principles. Constantly Communicate Strategy and Plans. It is essential to ensure that everybody involved with the program is aware of the approach, plan and progress, and any changes in these. This requires continuous communication. Keep Transparency. Always ensure that those involved with the program understand that transparency is key to setting customer expectations and avoiding any miscommunications. Empower Teams and Ensure Accountability. Build and enable a structure and engagement model that empowers the team members and ensure that they are accountable for their actions and are focused on the program delivery. Ensure Ownership of Cross Line-of-Business Issues. Each issue needs an owner, particularly when the issue crosses lines-of-business. It is essential that the ownership is unequivocal and that all integration points where ownership could be ambiguous are clarified and reviewed on a regular basis. Early Focus on Performance and Scalability. Often these are left out or addressed at the end of the program. With any significant changes to the technology, it is imperative to focus on performance and scalability during all phases of the project. Analytics Core Reports. To manage scope and change, consider deployment of only the key core reports in the initial rollout and keep focus on reporting enablers -- analytics infrastructure, transactional systems, and data quality. Incremental Wins Are Important. Incremental wins are a key means to showing progress and ensuring continuous buy-in to the program and sustained motivation.

7. 8. 9.

10. Avoid Excessive Meetings. With such large involvement across a global project, it is essential that meetings are of a manageable length. Very long conferences end up being counter-productive and create diminishing rate of return. 11. Maximize Synergies. Ensure you know when and how to use various resources on each team to maximize synergies, and reduce timeframes and risks.

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12. Measurement & Documentation. Failing to document progress at an early stage will only create a much larger hurdle to clear as the initiative progresses towards completion. As a result of the implementation program we have a unified foundation and consistent, end-to-end Campaign to Opportunity to Quote Integration processes, enabling improved execution and management of the business.

ENTERPRISE REPORTING AT ORACLE Approach and Strategy


One of the key objectives for Oracles consolidation program was to consolidate the corporations fragmented financial data onto a single instance where it could be utilized as global information, which would provide consistent, accurate, meaningful and timely information to the Corporation. Once the consolidated instances were in place the challenge was to provide the next phase and to leverage this global information to support decision-making by providing a single cohesive business view. The strategies to address this were to upgrade the ERP instance to E-Business Suite Release 12; deploy a separate Siebel CRM instance for Sales, Consulting and Marketing; replace the legacy support system with Siebel Support and to implement a Single Enterprise Data Warehouse (Corporate Data Warehouse CDW). The Enterprise Reporting Strategy was to provide intelligence to everyone within the corporation, to provide operationally actionable information in context to 80,000 information worker employees. This included a Single Corporate Repository with secure, unified data definitions and an enterprise view from financial reporting through to detailed reporting. The approach was to install business stewardship for reporting, which would enable prioritization by data stewards and ensure security, allow content sharing, and adoption and enablement of reporting.

Pre and Post Implementation


Business Intelligence at Oracle was transformed. Prior to the implementation, information and historical data trends were available to analysts only who used numerous analytic tools for reporting. After the implementation, intelligence is available to everyone. A secure, unified enterprise view is in place, which offers real-time predictive data. The Operational Business Intelligence is within the transaction systems. Enterprise-wide governance has replaced disparate business processes and pre-built analytics solutions with an ad-hoc query infrastructure are available. This allows insight-driven strategic decision-making and business process optimization. The result is the largest current deployment of Siebel CRM 8.0 Analytics worldwide, the largest deployment of EBS Release 12 Analytics worldwide and the largest deployment of Travel and Entertainment Expense Analytics worldwide.

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The architecture was configured to extract, transform and load (ETL) data from the production instances to the Global Corporate Warehouse (GCW). The data sources include the Global Instances of the E-Business Suite (GSI), Siebel CRM (GCM), Siebel Service, Planning & Budgeting and other external data sources such as Dun & Bradstreet (D&B). Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI) Applications reside on the GCW with the pre- packaged Data Warehouse schema, content and dashboards.

Transparency and Collaboration


As a result of the implementation of the Global Corporate Warehouse (GCW), Enterprise Reporting is treated as a strategic corporate asset. The Lines of Business (LOB) within Oracle and AIT co-developed the Analytics strategy. An Enterprise Reporting Steering Committee (ERSC) was set up to represent the business units and IT and this group was empowered to prioritize the project workload. The program included very active business participation and ownership, with the ERSC enforcing the governance model for a successful implementation. Transparency and collaboration was key for the success of the program.

Roles & Responsibilities


Roles and Responsibilities were clarified at the onset of the program. The LOBs are responsible for the leadership of the Enterprise Reporting Steering Committee, which governs the prioritization process and the functional wish list. The business appointed Data Stewards to build and maintain the dashboards. The business was also responsible for the adoption and uptake of the solution, first line support, security, and administration access. IT was responsible for the architecture, technical and operational governance, and the infrastructure. AIT was also responsible for the technical roadmap and Data Warehouse Operations, as well as the content and certification for business super-users, adoption planning and development support.

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Key Business Roles were setup to support the warehouse. A Subject Area Program Manager was responsible for the success of each subject area. A Fact / Dimension Owner was identified to approve dimensions, populate the dictionary, prioritize fixes, approve solutions and certify facts and dimensions. Business Super Users were identified to build reports, catalog entries, perform system testing, and provide end user support and document requirements.

Key Elements of Enterprise Reporting


To ensure success for similar programs the following should be factored into the solution: Be clear and transparent. Ensure that the Business Intelligence strategy, governance model, prioritization process and roles, processes and plans are all defined, visible and communicated widely. Specific Strategy for Analytics Processes. Have a single set of enterprise-class global processes and ensure a single global data reconciliation process is in place. Oracle Staffing. Align all resources to the common goal and ensure the team is built on an inclusive basis rather than a competitive basis.

The result was a paradigm shift at Oracle with aligned decision making across Oracle, based on a single cohesive business view with strategic opportunities, execution plans and shared metrics. Oracle had global blended reporting. Every line-of-business in every region had intelligence that could be analyzed on the same dimensions e.g. time, geography, industry, product, sales channel. Transparent data quality led to improved data quality. Enterprise Reporting is a strategic asset of the corporation.

Key Business Drivers

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ORACLES ARCHITECTURE
Oracle has similar architectures in place to support its different production instances.

The Global Single Instance (GSI) for ERP Systems


The GSIAP architecture consists of pools of Linux mid tier Application Servers allocated to specific internal and external URLs. When a user accesses one of the URLs, BigIP performs load balancing and assigns the connection to one of the 39 mid tiers in the pool. The R12 Oracle Applications Code tree (APPL_TOP) is shared across all the mid tiers using NetApps technology. The user session is then directed to one of the instances which reside on a 4-node F25K Sun Solaris cluster with the database residing on EMC SAN storage.

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Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

The remaining server capacity is allocated to a second domain to run multiple test databases. Less processing capacity is usually required for testing, although, if required, the full test capacity can be dedicated to a single environment to perform high volume load testing activities. Test databases are full-size copies of the production database, but copied from the the DR standby database, as a method to regularly verify the standby database.

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The DR standby database storage is physcially segregated from the test database storage. Synchronization of changes to the operating system and hardware are handled manually, and database changes are handled through Dataguard using physical replication.

In the event of disasterous loss of production service in Austin, most test environments in Colorado Springs are shutdown, the database server domains are reconfigured to allocate most of the capacity to the standby domain, outstanding archive logs are applied to the standby database, and production processing is initiated on the standby environment. For the middle tier application servers, the test machines are repurposed to DR via a remount of the shared application and IAS code. NetApps SnapMirror is used to keep the production and standby application code synchronized, while the BigIP Load Balancer and DNS is synchronized manually.

Global CRM Instance


The CRM OLTP production environment (GCM) consists of 21 Dell middle tiers using Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL). The Siebel components in use are spread across these servers, according to usage, and whether they are accessing internal or external urls. The database configuration consists of 4 x Dell 6950 database servers using RAC technology and 64 bit Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL). User access is distributed by BigIP in two stages: Web Server (iAS) sessions are directed to the appropriate MT pool for the particular functionality required. Big IP is then used by the Siebel Server to evenly distribute the load between the servers in these pools. GCM is closely integrated with the Global Corporate Warehouse (GCW). Standard ETL processes from the GCM environment populate the Corporate Warehouse with denormalized data for improved reporting performance. Custom ETL processes populate GCW from other LOB environments including Finance.

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Global Corporate Warehouse Instance


The Corporate Warehouse production environment (GCW) consists of 4 x Dell 6950 database servers using RAC technology and 64 bit Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL). The middle tier configuration consists of 10 x Linux middle tiers using Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL). BigIP provides initial load balancing for OBIEE across the Web Servers. The Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) Cluster Controller load balances the actual data queries across the OBI servers. Where users log into Siebel CRM and request specific OBIEE reports and dashboards that exist in the Warehouse they are automatically routed to this content on the Warehouse. There are also several Dell 1850s running MS Windows 2003 to run Siebel tools and the OBIEE Administration tools.

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OPERATIONAL BEST PRACTICES WITHIN ORACLE IT


At an operational level, there are other Best Practices used within Oracle IT. Here are a few notes on some selected topics.

Change Management
Oracle IT has documented processes for change management in line with compliance requirements for Sarbanes Oxley (SOX). All application changes (both technical and functional) require approval by the application owner within IT and the business owner(s) of any impacted areas. Exceptions to the process need submission to IT senior management for review of the risks and impact of the exception before they are approved. Examples of change management best practices are: All change requests must follow the path through the following environments: Build/Test > UAT > Staging > Production The person who tests the change cannot also be the approver All code must be retrieved from Source Control and not from a test system New functionality is regression tested on the UAT environment and all changes are regression tested on the Staging environment Any unplanned downtime on any environment requires IT senior management approval

All changes are made in a measured fashion and are tested for functionality and performance impact before deployment and all changes are recorded as an audit trail. Change Management requests are managed via defined and published patching windows. Wherever possible application roll-up patch sets are used to minimize outages. New functionality is only released during a single patching window each quarter that is published months in advance. This allows Oracle to manage expectations and the work and testing schedule for the whole year. Cloning for environment management includes using the Disaster Recovery as the source for cloning refreshes. Oracle uses proprietary cloning and scrambles data on key environments. Cloning methods take copies from production utilizing scripts to transform raw-to-cooked data files where needed. Copies of the application code and iAS code (OracleHome) utilize NetApps SnapMirror. Oracle use full size copies of the production environment for test environments and use Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM), Site Scope, LoadRunner and proprietary systems during the process.

Support Policy
The general policy is that AIT provides 5x16 (day x hour) support for Applications that have sufficient global coverage. Applications deemed as critical will follow an exception policy greater than 5x16 and may extend to 7x24. Support coverage will vary due to the business cycles and we expect 24 hour coverage over the close period. Some applications that are not required to be supported in all timezones may receive 5x8 coverage. The infrastructure (hardware, DB, storage, etc.) is all supported 7x24. Business Super User roles are in place to expedite issue resolution by being the 1st level support for the business community. The Business Super User is a critical participant in the flow of supporting Oracle Applications, which in turn supports Oracle Corporations success. The Super User triages all service requests before they are delivered to IT. A Global Helpesk is in place to handle self service application and desktop support which do not follow the Super User model. This is a central helpdesk manned 7x24 which will handle first line support, log the service request and pass to the appropriate group including appropriate escalations. Service Requests are categorized into the following and response levels are in place for best practice and monitored closely: Severity 1 (P1): Failure or severe degradation of service, such that time critical work cannot be completed, AND which impacts multiple users for their primary business function or has a legal or considerable revenue impact on Oracle or threatens month end close.

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Severity 2 (P2): Significant business impact. Used to denote faults which affect more than one business user and which has a major impact on the clients ability to conduct business. A single user issue may also be a P2 if it prevents them performing their primary business function. Severity 3 (P3): Restricted business impact. Usually denotes that the problem is restricted to one user, or if more than one, that a workaround is available allowing the client to continue to make use of the service. Severity 4 (P4): Low business impact normally applied to requests for information, or account requests. In this category, there is no discernible impact on the client's ability to conduct business.

Capacity Planning
Capacity Planning is not an exact science due to differing hardware configurations for source environments. Oracle has different types of servers, storage and usages statistics. There are good information sources to help guide decisions. Oracle gathers long-term database usage statistics for all source environments via Autotmatic Workload Respository (AWR) reports. Logical I/O is a good metric of application load. We use sar to determine server load. There is a good correlation between logical I/O and CPU usage. We adjust the load figures for different capacity servers. For the middle tiers we work out the ratio of users per server for specific functional areas e.g. forms, Self Service Web Applications (SSWA) and add capacity to accommodate increases in load. Different time zones usually have different peak and quiet periods over the course of a 24 hour period. We consider periods of peak load over the course of the whole year to cover factors such as fiscal close and any seasonal increases. We also draw up a contingency plan and review if there is specific functionality that is not needed during periods of heavy load. With Linux, the reallocation of Middle Tier resources is very straightforward and inexpensive.

Load Balancing and Failover


Oracle reviews how the load is balanced for the batch applications. Concurrent Manager Queues are defined for critical, non-critical and system required workload. Queues are allocated and managed based on load and capacity. Reviews are conducted regularly to segregate critical and non critical workload. The fill-over is setup in the current environment for batch and on-line users using parallel concurrent processing setup with failover to one hot spare.

Performance Management
Production monitoring and support is provided 24x7 for all problems reported by users, for issues discovered during interactive monitoring and for problems reported automatically by monitoring tools. Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) 10G is the primary tool for metrics collection and performance alerts. There is no window for overnight processing. Any badly running code can impact every user on the system, so AWR reports are used to look for the worst performing SQLs/Regressions. Custom applications must be fully tested for functionality and performance impact. Oracle deploys resource limits and profiles for support staff and defines profiles for specific user roles. There are set session limits for each of these. For concurrent managers, Oracle defines queues for quick/low load requests (quick wins). For long running/high load jobs, the number running in parallel is limited to control the load across the system. Discoverer jobs are monitored for high load and Oracle frequently run jobs to get these converted to run as concurrent requests. Load tests are always performed before deployment on production, especially for new applications or database versions, for major patch sets and any migrations. Custom batch load kit is used for repeatable tests. Loadrunnner and Winrunner are used for like for like tests on different builds and configurations. Wherever possible, users are encouraged to participate in tests. We strongly recommend that everything is tested and tuned before deployment on production systems.

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CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND COMPLIANCE Addressing Increased Regulatory Compliance Costs


The Enron and WorldCom scandals have resulted in a renewed focus on compliance and regulation. To improve the investors confidence in the capital markets subsequent to these scandals, there has been a raft of regulatory acts introduced to enforce governance and control. Oracle, like other global firms, faces a multitude of regulatory compliance programs that it needs to comply with, including SOX, European Union data privacy rules, and California SB1386 (to name a few). Accepting that the regulatory acts are here to stay, firms subsequently have started to look at ways to alleviate this increasing cost burden, in a move to provide sustainability for their compliance program management.

Oracles Internal Compliance Approach


Faced with the growing costs associated with meeting these regulations as discrete projects, Oracle has looked at improving efficiencies within its operations, including the IT infrastructure, to provide sustainability to this growing list of regulatory demands. Oracles response to resolving this has centered on addressing three key factors impacting the operational sustainability of compliance programsManagement, Organizational Design, and IT Infrastructure. The following are factors that the Oracle business and IT have put in place to facilitate compliance: Process Standardization. To manage the requirements related to financial reporting and disclosure, Oracles move to global standard processes (for its financial processing) served as a key component. By ensuring everyone works off the same set of business processes for a given business function, Oracle achieved consistency in operations and removed the risks related to inconsistent processes in the areas related to the companys financial reporting. Process Execution via Shared Service Centers. Oracle Shared Centers are responsible for executing Oracles global financial processes, providing efficiency and consistency in the financial operations. It also means that we perform our SOX 404-related testing in one place. IT Infrastructure. Much of our infrastructure is based on the COBIT framework with a focus on access control, segregation of duties, and change management. We also focused on improving our testing controls and leveraging what we learned during our first year of complying with SOX. We also implemented Oracle Internal Controls Manager (ICM, a COBIT/ITIL certified solution) to help manage a number of our internal controls. Education and Feedback. IT provides constant training for our employees on the underlying requirements of compliance needs, and their corresponding impact on day-to-day process management. Organization Structure. The following organization structures were put in place to facilitate compliance: The Business Practices Group (under the Chief Financial Officer) responsible for defining the best practices for Oracle business process. This group is separate from Finance Operations (who manage the execution of financial process and reporting). The Intrnal Audit Team is also separate from the Financial Team. This Internal Audit Team has an independent view of our processes and reports their findings directly to the Audit Committee. The Centralized Compliance Unit within the Finance organization, which co-ordinates the overall SOX program for Oracle. This group coordinates with a number of internal groups, including IT. They also report their findings to the Audit Committee. The AIT Compliance Group is a dedicated group we have setup to liaise with the internal and external auditors. They are responsible for SOX Compliance and for the Internal Management Testing (IMT) across AIT and other groups.

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The AIT Planning & Operations Teams. In order to mitigate any potential exposure of controls impacting our production environments, AIT created an operations team for each AIT Group to provide a gateway for change management. This group verifies that all changes to any of our IT environments comply with our documented controls.

Oracle and IT have used this approach to successfully comply with its audit obligations with minimal disruption or additional work. Being on a Global Single Instance and using a global set of business processes for all countries, has significantly enhanced Oracles ability to meet regulatory controls, while minimizing the cost of compliance.

HANDLING MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS


Over the last few years, Oracle has been involved in a number of acquisitions. Oracles standard approach to Mergers and Acquisitions is the Absorption model, where the acquired company is moved to Oracles infrastructure and processes. This allows Oracle to integrate the acquired entity in the shortest timeline with minimum disruption.

Oracles Approach to Achieving Rapid Integration


In order to rapidly integrate acquired companies, Oracle follows a standard procedure, which has been developed based on prior acquisitions. Oracle carefully selects its acquisitions to compliment and strengthen its existing product suite. Once acquisition plans are in place, it reviews the tax and legal considerations in order to rapidly combine legal entities for all acquired company subsidiaries globally. Communication is vital for rapid progress and Oracle has established a network of contacts for M&As across all lines of business. Oracle has established a comprehensive approach to contact and communicate with the customer base of the acquired company, to ensure that they understand the strategy behind the acquisition and to ensure that any questions they may have are answered. Oracle has migrated the acquired companies data to the appropriate Global Single Instance (ERP-EBS, CRM-Siebel). The approach to migration is to have a consistent set of data migrated for all countries within each of the acquired companies. The minimal amount of data is moved, including: Consulting Projects Education Enrollments HR Installed Base Products/Pricing Support Contracts Sales Territories

Existing applications training and orientation programs enable consistent training for all new hires and enables rapid integration of all aspects of the acquired company into Oracle.

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Oracle IT Recommendations for an Effective M&A Approach


Oracle has been able to establish a fast and effective approach for integrating acquired companies based on the following keys to success: Global Processes and Global Instances Facilitate Rapid Absorption. Oracle has standard business processes in operation across all of its subsidiaries on our Global Instances. This facilitates rapid absorption of the acquired companys processes and data to Oracles infrastructure and processes. These processes are documented with a comprehensive set of templates and checklists to ensure they can utilized for the acquired company. Well Defined and Repeatable Process for M&A Activity. AIT has established a small dedicated M&A team with the ability to engage key IT resources rapidly as required. A forum exists for IT groups to coordinate their plans and to interface with acquired IT and business groups to agree ownership of tasks and activities early in the M&A lifecycle. This includes people integration, data migration, data retention, legacy system access, ensuring existing license obligations are met, that applications backups and final shutdown of identified applications are in place and to ensure that hardware relocation and decommission is managed and approved. Regular and Consistent Communications. In a rapid integration environment, with all lines of business and countries involved, it is vital that communications are pitched at the right level through an established network of key contacts. Disposition plans are well understood and agreed by all parties in advance. Getting the latest developments is crucial for a swift and simple integration. Keep it Simple. M&As are, by their very nature, complex with considerations involving Legal, Tax and other key business units. In order to rapidly adsorb the acquired companies, it is essential to minimize disruption to both companies and their customers and to minimize the data migrations and changes to processes. All of these factors plus a continuous framework for process improvement have led to a very successful integration approach. PeopleSoft was acquired in January 2005 and fully integrated on Oracle processes with their entire core data migrated into Oracles Global Single Instance, for all countries (except Japan which is a separate listed company) by July 2005. Siebel Systems was acquired in January 2006 and was fully integrated into Oracle, using Oracle business processes and applications by June 2006. Both were large acquisitions and both were fully integrated within months of the change of control date using the approach and environments laid out in this section. Their own applications could then be dispositioned in line with data retention requirements for Tax and Legal considerations.

Acquired Companies
Oracle has acquired a number of other companies since 2005. The following are an example of some of the acquired companies. All have been adsorbed and fully integrated into Oracle within months: FY2005: 4 Acquisitions including PeopleSoft FY2006: 15 Acquisitions including Siebel FY2007: 15 Acquisitions including Hyperion and Portal FY2008: 15 Acquisitions including Agile and BEA FY2009: 2 Acquisitions as of printing, Skywire and ClearApp For a full list of publically announced acquisitions, see http://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisition.html.

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PARTNERING WITH THE BUSINESS


One of the defining moments during Oracles Consolidation Program was when the Oracle Business embraced moving to a global model, thus opening the door for a true global partnership and alignment of priorities between AIT and its business customers. In the global model, the country and regional functions moved reporting lines from the country/regional management model direct to the global reporting line. As part of this process a number of roles were created to better determine the business processes, requirements, and operational procedures for the global function. The main role was that of the Global Process Owner (GPO). The GPO is a person within the business responsible for defining a specific business process (such as Order to Cash, Procure to Pay, and General Accounting). The GPO is also responsible for working with AIT to define the business process flow, to resolve any exceptions raised to the standard business process footprint and for prioritization within their process area. Divisional Process Owners (DPO) for each region within Oracle were established to assist the GPOs with this role to ensure any regional exceptions are identified and addressed. AIT established a partner organization to align with the GPO model and created Global Solution Owners (GSO) to mirror the Business Process Organization. These GSOs are responsible for defining, implementing and supporting the global solution (application and processes) that support the requirements of the global business, as determined by the combined team. Additionally, Steering Committees have been established for program leadership, escalation and issue resolution, communication, and progress review. Steering groups have been established for each LOB within Oracle and continue to meet regularly today. The Steering committees helped significantly with the Consolidation Program and they continue to play a valuable role today.

PROGRAM AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT


Oracles AIT Division has run numerous key programs and projects within Oracle over the last 10 years. These include a number of Oracles largest and most ambitious projects. The Oracle Billion Dollar Story is the story of the initial savings Oracle Corporation achieved through consolidation, standard processes, self-service and the move to shared services. Today the annual savings is closer to a Three Billion Dollar Story. There were many projects that together tell the story. To manage the various projects, AIT created a dedicated team of Project and Program Managers. The members of this team were the key Project Managers responsible for hundreds of IT projects over a period of years. This group was utilized on the key Divisional and LOB applications projects in Oracle.

Project Types
AIT is involved in a number of different types of projects, which include: Consolidations. An example would be the Global Single Instance program that was completed at the end of 2004. The consolidations typically span across multiple LOBs and may entail systems, process consolidation, and centralization of operations into Shared Service Centers. Integrations. Moving newly acquired companies into Oracle. These can vary considerably from the larger PeopleSoft and Siebel acquisitions to acquisitions involving a handful of people. Upgrades. One of AITs key roles is to be an early adopter of our products and provide feedback to development. For example, in 2005 we upgraded to release 11i.10 of the E-Business Suite and 10G of Oracles database product seven weeks after release 11i.10 was released to customers. We aggressively upgrade to new versions of our products for a number of reasons. However, the primary reasons are to be the first to run any new version of our products to help feedback issues to Product Development and therefore to improve the customer experience, as well as taking advantage of the new functionality for Oracle. New Releases. These projects are simply a larger version of upgrades and we do these projects for the same benefits we achieve with upgrades. LOB Projects. These are projects that we execute to bring a specific benefit to a particular line of business. We perform hundreds of these over the course of a year. We use the same methodology and approach on these projects as we do on the larger divisional projects.

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Major versus Standard Projects


Standard Projects

AITs projects are split into two main groups: Standard Projects and Major Projects.

Standard projects are projects such as product enhancements, country or product rollouts, and individual LOB projects that are non-invasive in nature. They typically will not have a significant cross LOB impact or risk and can share a test environment with other standard projects. These projects follow standard Development, Test, and UAT environment flows, and do not merit a specific review of the environments. If they miss a patching window for any of the environments in route to production, then they simply are included in the next available patching window when they are ready. Major Projects Major projects are typically large projects or upgrades and they affect multiple lines of business. After these major projects, we always refresh our core test environments to ensure they are all aligned. In AITs approach to managing projects, the key deliverables and the approvals required are identical, regardless of the type of the project. Dividing projects into Standard and Major helps coordination across the AIT teams (e.g. Environment Planning Services and the Planning & Operations Groups) to plan for and manage high volumes of system changes simultaneously.

AIT Project Methodology


The roots of our project methodology came from Oracle Consulting. They developed an implementation methodology called AIM (Application Implementation Methodology). Over the years we have cut down and modified their approach to meet our internal organization requirements. Our approach is to continually improve our processes by leveraging what we have learned from past projects and ensure that our experience is taken into account on future projects. Within AIT, we have created a dedicated process owner for our project management approach. We also hold regular forums to ensure a consistent approach to project management across AIT.

Consistency Combined with Flexibility


The key objective of the AIT methodology is to ensure consistency, accuracy, and repeatability. We also want to ensure that the Project Managers have the flexibility to run their project in an appropriate manner, in accordance with the factors specific to their project. This is very important as AIT projects are run significantly faster than in a typical company.

Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance
Compliance is integral to our methodology and we identify a subset of AITs projects as Control Projects in order to facilitate this process. These projects have additional mandatory deliverables. The definition of a control project is Any project that could potentially impact the integrity of our financial reporting or any project selected by the AIT Management team that has a broad scope or is considered critical to the companys success. All of our key processes are documented, ensuring full visibility and accountability for auditing.

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Status Reporting

We use an automated reporting tool that utilizes our Projects repository for all key communications regarding the status of AIT projects. Status reports are sent out weekly to an audience appropriate to the given project. Communication is a key component of any project. It is vital that the right level of information is provided to the key stakeholders involved in a project.

Project Phases
1.

A typical project has the following phases. The purpose of the phases is to ensure that projects are delivered with quality and on time. Initiation. All projects requests must be defined and must go through a prioritization and approval process. Each project needs to be assessed for impact across all the impacted IT groups to ensure that it can be adequately resourced. At the initiation stage, projects are setup in the project repository so they can be tracked and allocated environments and resources. Roadmap. Once approved a project is added to the Roadmap of for the next year. It is then formally tracked and monitored by the Program Management Office. Scoping and Planning. A Project Manager is assigned as soon as a project is approved and prioritized. The Project Manager is responsible for project resourcing, as well as initiating further impact reviews. Typical deliverables at this stage include the Scope, Objectives and Approach document, the Work Plan, and the Roles and Responsibilities document. Development. Develop, Build, and Test. Depending on the type of the project and the amount of code changes required, a separate testing round in a development environment may be applicable for some or all applications within the scope of the project. Any significant scope changes at this stage of the project require updates to the scope document. Other deliverables at this stage include set up documents and updated test scripts. Solution Verification. This is one of the most important phases of any project. At the end of this phase, the business users are requesed to provide feedback to help determine if the project is ready to move into production. Deployment. The deployment to production is always an important period for any project. To avoid any critical issues during the transition, a detailed Transition Plan is created to track all the necessary steps required to move the project into production. It also serves as a communication tool to provide a detailed status on a daily basis. We use regularly updated status lines, as well as updates on the AIT website for the more significant projects where large user groups are affected by the transition. Post Production. Projects typically remain active for one month after go live in order to track any post-production issues. During this period, we also perform a Post Implementation Review to formally learn from the experiences we have gained.

2. 3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

Dedicated Enterprise Planning Team


In AIT we have established a dedicated Enterprise Planning Team. This team is responsible for overseeing Program Management and Planning for AIT and ensuring the project roadmap is properly planned, prioritized, approved and resourced. The team is also responsible for the methodology and business processes for planning across AIT. This team includes some of the most experienced Project Managers within IT and they are usually responsible for running AIT Divisional projects, as well as other LOB Projects. The group also acts as a Center of Excellence for Project Management, helping other Project Managers by offering a mentoring service and training to Project Managers in other groups within AIT. One of the aims of the group is to improve Project Management across AIT and ensure projects are managed in a consistent and successful way. Being independent from other groups in AIT allows Project Managers in this group to specifically focus on ensuring that cross-functional interdependencies are addressed. The impacts on groups that are outside of the immediate scope of the project are also taken into consideration.

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Keys to Success
There are a number of reasons why this group has been able to successfully deliver a high volume of significant projects over the last few years. Some of these projects are unique in the industry due to the broadness of their scope, time scales, the data volumes, or the number of users impacted. These reasons include: Senior Management Buy In. From the early days of the Consolidation Program it was recognized that Senior Management buy in is essential for any significant initiative to have a chance for success. All of our individual projects have been, and continue to be part of a strategic goal and plan, and as such are supported by the Management team at the appropriate level. Ownership. It is essential to ensure ownership and accountability is agreed in advance and at the right level. Decision making and escalation channels need to be clearly laid out at the start of the project, not later when issues may be raised. Management Focus for the Key Initiatives. Within AIT, there is a weekly meeting that provides the AIT Management team with updates on key AIT projects. This forum provides an excellent way to enhance communications and decision-making between the project team and the Management team. Regular updates to Senior Management have also helped reduce escalations on major projects, as issues can be raised to management an early stage. Prioritization. AIT has put significant effort in ensuring that the projects are prioritized across all LOBs and that these priorities are communicated throughout the company. AIT Structure Mirrors the Business Structure. Organizational alignment between AIT and the various LOBs ensures that everyone understands and is working on the same set of priorities. GPO / GSO - Decisions at the Right Level. The introduction of Global Process Owners within the business and Global Solution Owners within AIT has ensured that the individuals that make decisions at the process flow level have enough detailed knowledge of their area globally to make the right decisions. Documented Processes. These are key to our ability to consistently and repeatably test the impact changes may have on our systems and processes. Clear ownership assigned by prior agreement from documented processes helps decision-making when exceptions to the standard are handled. Communication. Focused communication ensuring the right information gets to the right people, at the right level and at the right time, is essential for a successful delivery. Early business engagement (also in system testing) ensures no last minute surprises. Planning. Flexibility needs to be built into the plan with the minimum number of activities aligned to the critical path for each project, to reduce the risk of the project slipping its dates. The transition plan needs to be a validated and a repeatable plan with a sufficient amount of test cycles, started early in the project. Issues Handling. Constant review of activities on the projects critical path (and scope control). For example, if there is an issue (such as loss of an environment or loss of a key user), does this impact the critical path and, if so, how can we recover and do we need to alter the plan? In these cases a change management plan should be an integral part of the project plan. Learning from Mistakes. A lot of what we do in AIT is based on years of experience, not just of the individuals involved, but also the experience of the organization collectively. Post Implementation Reviews are taken seriously to ensure a culture of continuous improvement is in place.

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SUMMARY By sharing case studies and best practices outlined by Oracles AIT Division and leveraging our experience, we believe other companies can take advantage of what we have learned to make improvements to their own operations, improve productivity and experience significant savings. One of our key goals is to be a showcase implementation for Oracles applications and products. We are committed to the success of Oracles customers and can provide follow-up services in conjunction with the Oracle Customer Visitors Center (CVC) Program so that customers can benefit from our knowledge and experience. If you have any questions about Oracles internal deployment of applications and products (Oracle@Oracle) please contact Oracle-at-Oracle_ww@oracle.com.

Copyright 2008 Oracle. All Rights Reserved. Published in the U.S.A. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor is it subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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