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Kohl's previously announced that it will relaunch Kohls.com on an e-commerce platform from Oracle Corp. this summer. It will also test a mobile payment acceptance technology in stores later this year. In 2012, Kohl's generated $1.43 billion in sales on the web, up 41.6% from $1.01 billion in 2011. It is No. 28 in Internet Retailer's Top 500 Guide. "We have made significant investments in our IT and omnichannel initiatives to ensure we have the platforms, technology and tools to allow customers to shop when they want and from where they want," Mansell says.

...Web traffic reached 30 times its normal volume immediately after Hurricane Sandy, says Red Cross vice president of information technology Suzanne Hall. By the time the ensuing telethon kicked into action, there were moments when the organization was processing up to 75,000 donations simultaneously through its website, a rate of up to 22 transactions per second. "A lot of the times, we'll geo-target the site so that they can immediately see what might be relevant to them," says American Red Cross vp of marketing Craig Oldham. During the height of a disaster, the Red Cross may change personalization rules and content every hour. 

To keep pace with strong and consistent online growth, American Apparel has replaced an internally-built infrastructure with Oracle ATG Web Commerce, "to get the scalability we need," stated Stacey Shulman, CIO of American Apparel, "as well as an agile platform for providing better service to our customers."

With several hundred web sites for its local chapters migrated to a single e-commerce platform in 2012, the American Red Cross put the new site to the test during Hurricane Sandy last October. "Sandy was our first big crisis on the new site, and the site's performance exceeded our expectations," says Craig Oldham, the charity's vice president of digital strategy

"When large scale disasters happen, it can trigger web site volumes on a scale similar to what retailers experience on Black Friday," said Craig Oldham, VP of Digital Strategy for American Red Cross, in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. 

In a fall 2011 poll of more than 3,100 consumers in 15 countries, Oracle Retail found that 57% of respondents find Live Help on a web site more important than Ratings & Reviews or personalized offers. "One of the key learnings we found from this survey is the value consumers place on live help services," noted Kelly O'Neil, Product Strategy Director, Oracle Retail.

Oracle launched a complete commerce solution that allows retailers to provide a consistent customer experience across the web, contact center, mobile devices, social media and retail stores

To give Latin American consumers a more sophisticated and faster experience when shopping for shoes online,  Netshoes in 2010 relaunched all of its web stores using an e-commerce platform from Oracle Corp. that features advanced site search and rich media, personalized product recommendations, customer ratings and reviews

The September 5 edition of Campus Technology includes the following article highlighting cloud solutions at multiple universities including Boise State University, University of Washington and the E. Philip Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology. The article highlights that Boise State University implemented Oracle PeopleSoft Human Capital Management, PeopleSoft Financials and PeopleSoft Student Administration, to make the institution-wide move to cloud services. The article notes that this move is part of the university's Roadmap Project, a three-year program slated to run through spring 2014 that includes - in addition to an internal private cloud with virtual servers and storage - expanding the university's data warehouse and use of business intelligence; developing an individualized, unified Web experience; improving and streamlining identity management and security; and expanding and improving document management. The article includes comment by Max Davis-Johnson, associate vice president of information technology, Boise State University, who noted that Oracle's PeopleSoft suite allows the university to tie together cloud services and partners to the university's enterprise systems confidently and securely, no matter where or who they are.

The February 1 edition of University Business includes the following article highlighting applications for higher education.  The article discusses George Fox University's jump to the mobile space.  The article includes comment by Greg Smith, chief technology officer, George Fox University, who notes that the university developed a web-based mobile portal to host its applications.

"This is a great article and research piece that Oracle are carrying out. I'm looking forward to Mike Websters speech Digital Natives Tim Berners-Lee launched the first World Wide Web server and browser in 1990. It opened for commercial use in 1991. In 1994 German company Intershop pioneered the online shopping system and Amazon followed hot on their heels in 1995."

"Tim Berners-Lee launched the first World Wide Web server and browser in 1990. It opened for commercial use in 1991. In 1994 German company Intershop pioneered the online shopping system and Amazon followed hot on their heels in 1995. "

How are customers using the Web to make their buying choices? That's the key question in a new report from Oracle

The September 1 issue of Destination CRM included an article highlighting how colleges and universities are not taking full advantage of CRM technology. The article improving student experience and retaining current students as reasons for deployment, but few schools are using CRM to do this. The article includes comment from Joe Burkhart, Director of Higher Education Solutions, Oracle who notes that schools are looking at taking care of existing students - from the admissions office to financial aid to dining halls. Further, the article discusses the growing use of technologies like live chat and web self-service. Of note, the article discusses how DeVry University uses Oracle's RightNow cloud solutions to provide current and prospective students with fast, accurate answers to their questions. It includes comment from Dave Trafton, DeVry's online student service manager, who notes that Oracle RightNow has helped the school become more responsive to student needs. The article also includes comment from David Richter, U.S. Sales Director for Higher Education Service Automation, Oracle who notes that only a handful of schools currently marry student data with their CRM systems.

"Oracle Commerce allows Stage Stores to deliver on its "commerce anywhere" promise by improving the customer experience across all devices, offering more personalized recommendations and delivering more effective product cross-sells and up-sells. Guided search capabilities help ensure consumers receive relevant and accurate search results and enables Stage Stores to highlight relevant products and promotions."

"Oracle Commerce allows Stage Stores to deliver on its "commerce anywhere" promise by improving the customer experience across all devices, offering more personalized recommendations and delivering more effective product cross-sells and up-sells. Guided search capabilities help ensure consumers receive relevant and accurate search results and enables Stage Stores to highlight relevant products and promotions."

...A good example of a core project Wolfe started was the re-architecture of the company's front-end Oracle ATG e-commerce platform to the Amazon Web Service (AWS) public cloud. This was key to enhancing customer experience across Shop Direct's retail websites, with availability the main area of focus. The retailer's entire e-commerce infrastructure now sits on the cloud - including ATG and Oracle's enterprise data discovery platform Endeca, as well as the AWS-provided Elastic Load Balancing and Relational Database services, which now support Shop Direct's database. "The migration was a good example of that drive to get service under control, and since our shop is always open, availability is critical to us and therefore the first thing to tackle," says Wolfe.

Toys said it will be using Oracle ATG e-commerce software to build its new Web platform. The decision "tells me they're looking to increase the percentage of business they do online," said Paula Rosenblum,managing partner at RSR Research, a research and consulting firm that specializes in retail technology. GSI, and now eBay Enterprises, typically don't handle operations for the largest retailers, she said. Rosenblum said she is surprised Toys hadn't moved in this direction already. "Given that they've been under attack by Amazon and WalMart both, you would think they would have done this sooner," she said.

The retail chain will build a new online retail platform using software from Oracle after years of outsourcing web sales to GSI Commerce, now eBay Enterprise. It's the latest in a series of retail chains taking control of their own e-commerce destiny.