New details emerge about Oracle’s Social Network

Further details on the new Oracle software Social Network came to light Thursday after the start of the product during OpenWorld conference earlier this month.

Oracle Social Network is part of the new range of corporate public cloud. It is considered a high-profile competitors operating from rivals like Salesforce.com Chatter and arrangement of the company specializing in social network provider in the market.

OSN is “part of a commitment to the audience much broader platform of” family-driven Oracle WebCenter technology, with the other pillars including websites, portals and content, said Andy Kershaw, Director senior product management, in a webcast Thursday.

Firms use collaboration tools today in a “very isolated” so he says. For example, start a conversation in an instant messaging program, but a party that can speak later by e-mail and someone who saved instead of a document in another system response.

“It will be incredibly difficult to understand over time how this decision was taken or the decision to share with others,” he said.

SVO solves the problem by bringing real-time communication, content sharing, integration with other enterprise applications, the flow of activity and search tools, he said.

Overall, the goal is to provide a social network, “without a huge amount of noise,” said Kershaw. “The greatest fear of all executive implementation is a social network that involves a lot of non-productive create noise. “

SVO will be available later in the calendar year 2012, Oracle said during the webcast. The cloud version will come later, first, to a question on the site.

The two options are generally similar, but there are some differences. “There are some features that make more sense on the site,” said Kershaw. “The tight integration with telephony makes more sense than in the cloud.”

OSN was first made available by the merger of new Oracle applications, but can be “absolutely” used by itself, and integrates with other applications and processes, Oracle said. OSN is a point that “sociability” of other enterprise applications, said Kershaw.

However, it is only compatible with Oracle databases.

In addition, users will be able to SVO without throwing their favorite tools to be adopted for cooperation, according to Kershaw.

“Today, Outlook is still the collaboration client of choice for many, many companies,” he said. “We have a very sophisticated integration with Outlook that you fully and completely to work from Oracle Social Network can,” he said.

Customers can also expect mobile applications for Android and Apple iPad and iPhone, he said.

One observer suggested a look at the OSN measured market opportunities.

“Since most buyers will be existing customers, social needs, which anchored at the process level, to succeed,” said Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research, via e-mail. “As Oracle says that type of integration, activation appears to be superficial. On the positive side, Oracle customers expect enterprise functionality such as security, scalability and the integration. “

OSN is the last time the market was aimed Oracle Collaboration comes after InterOffice, Oracle Collaboration Suite and Beehive.

Beehive received a particularly high profile launch at Oracle OpenWorld conference in 2008, but since then seemed to gain some ground on the market.

Some users of products recently about his future in an official forum for Oracle speculated whether a version 2.1 available should not.

A spokeswoman for Oracle declined to comment to comment on this perspective.

Although not “Beehive in the cloud,” OSN use certain technology works Beehive, Oracle confirmed during the webcast. But officials did not respond to a question whether OSN replace Beehive.