Companies looking to rapidly and successfully deploy an Oracle Exalogic
solution can take advantage of Oracle Exalogic Start-Up Pack, a suite of
services and expertise that maximizes the value of an Oracle Exalogic
technology investment. The Oracle Exalogic Start-Up Pack includes five
core services from Oracle Consulting and Oracle Advanced Customer
Services, including
Oracle Exalogic Start-Up Advisory Service •
Oracle Exalogic Production Support Readiness •
Oracle Exalogic Installation Service •
Oracle Exalogic Configuration Service•
Oracle Exalogic Quarterly Patch Deployment Service •
For more information about the Oracle Exalogic Start-Up Pack, contact
your local Oracle Consulting or Oracle Advanced Customer Services representative at 1.800.ORACLE1, or via e-mail at acsdirect_us@oracle.com. To
read more about the Oracle Exalogic Start-Up Pack, see bit.ly/iKmP5N.
a roadmap for achieving our transformational goals.”
“We couldn’t have made as clear a business case without the
Oracle Consulting teams, including the Oracle Enterprise Architecture
development program, Oracle Advanced Customer Services, and the
Oracle Insight program,” adds Brewer. “They determined what we had
and how to reframe it in our new reference architecture.”
This reference architecture now serves as a blueprint for devel-
oping individual business solutions and deploying new applications,
whether packaged or built from scratch. According to Smith, PHH
used to be a big advocate of acquiring best-of-breed software from
many different vendors, which led to its current predicament.
“We always sought to find the best product for each set of business needs, which meant we would have to spend a substantial
amount of time and effort to integrate those products into our
I T environment,” Smith says. “When we laid out our vision for a
Common Technology Platform, we knew that we wanted to strategically align ourselves with a technology provider that could offer us
the entire technology stack. Rather than manually piecing together
our Common Technology Platform, and then dealing with all of the
vendor finger-pointing when something goes wrong, we decided to
standardize on Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, and the entire Oracle
technology stack. Oracle leads the industry in multiple categories, so
it was a logical move to forge an Oracle partnership.”
ROLLING OU T THE APPS
PHH took possession of its Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata
engineered systems in April 2011 and is currently executing its
plan to create a shared services environment. Ultimately, PHH’s
new Oracle Exalogic system will host the entire Oracle Fusion
Middleware stack including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle SOA
Suite, Oracle Coherence, Oracle Business Process Management,
Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Packs,
Oracle Tuxedo, Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite,
Oracle WebCenter, and Oracle Data Integration Suite. PHH also
plans to run OLAP analytics against its Oracle Essbase database and
to deploy Oracle Hyperion forecasting and planning applications in
this new environment.
In addition, PHH is migrating data from Sybase and IBM DB2
databases and standardizing on Oracle Database 11g on Oracle
Exadata. Brewer believes that having one consolidated database will
improve operational efficiency and deliver more-accurate information to the various functional areas, not only for reporting and forecasting but also for predictive analysis. “We see a great opportunity
to use our customer data for cross-selling and up-selling between
the two lines of business,” he notes.
Although the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud implementation is
still in its early stages, Brewer believes that Oracle Exalogic will
enable PHH to deliver a more cohesive experience for customers by
eliminating demand for high-end desktop systems and offering self-service capabilities via thin clients, mobile devices, and standards-based Web portals.
For example, for PHH Mortgage customers, the company handles
daily reporting on the status of each loan and manages the steps in
the loan review and approval process. Brewer’s team is developing
mobile applications in conjunction with Oracle WebCenter that will
let clients access this information through smartphones and tablets.
“Financial advisors often interact with their clients after hours or
in the field, and it will be helpful to be able to grab this information
from any location,” he notes.
For PHH Arval customers, the company is developing analytic
applications to predict when it is time for vehicle maintenance and
to automatically send alerts to each driver via e-mail or instant
messaging. Customers can use Oracle WebCenter Real-Time
Collaboration to open channels of communication through instant
messaging clients, mobile devices, and standard Web browsers.
“One of the tenets of our technology strategy is not only to
combine our two divisions but to create a consistent look and feel for
users, both internal and external,” Brewer concludes. “Standardizing
on Oracle Exalogic and many other Oracle products will enable us to
build consistency within the middleware tier, giving us a common
look and feel for reporting, ad hoc analysis, scorecards, and many
other functions.”
David Baum ( david@dbaumcomm.com) is a freelance business writer
based in Santa Barbara, California.
NEXT STEPS
LEARN more about
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud
oracle.com/us/products/middleware/exalogic
Oracle Exadata Database Machine
oracle.com/us/products/database/exadata
Oracle Insight
oracle.com/us/corporate/insight
Oracle Consulting Enterprise Architecture Services
oracle.com/us/products/consulting/enterprise-architecture-services
VIE W 3-D demos
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud
bit.ly/leB TiU
Oracle Exadata Database Machine
bit.ly/kgOHuQ
