Oracle Media Resource

The June 26 edition of Education Dive includes the following article featuring an interview with Dr. Sasi Pillay, CIO and associate vice president at the University of Wisconsin (UW). In the article, Dr. Pillay discusses how UW is using Oracle solutions, such as PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, to recruit students. With the ability to mine social media, Oracle helps UW target and recruit cohorts of students.

On the back end, there is another large implementation - the company's core trading platform will be the Oracle Retail Suite, which will include sub-products Retail Merchandising System, Retail Sales Audit and RPM for database monitoring. "[With the Oracle systems] it's all about controls, stability, joining up - the usual things. We've got lots of heritage systems. So the idea is to get a back end that's solid, secure, reliable and less complex than other technologies we currently have," says Haywood.

Oracle Hospitality HITEC Booth #1011 As hotels and restaurants employ mobile, social, and informational tools to connect with guests, they require a new type of "engagement" device at the point of service (POS). To meet this need, Oracle has introduced Oracle's MICROS Workstation 6 with a fresh, modern design that provides hospitality and select retail venues with a next-generation POS terminal that works in concert with mobile, cloud, and social media to deliver consistent, integrated content across multiple sources.

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.

Oracle is enabling retailers to fulfill orders in the cloud with two new product releases on the Oracle Supply Chain Management Cloud platform.

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.

Oracle is focusing squarely on retail agility with the latest additions to its comprehensive set of retail cloud solutions. ..."Retailers can react to the market a lot faster," said David Dorf, senior director of product strategy at Oracle Retail, during a phone briefing with Chain Store Age. "Retailers do not have to focus on mundane IT tasks, but the retail business itself. They can also obtain access to more features and functions faster, with automatic upgrades in the cloud."

With the addition of Oracle Retail Insights and Oracle Retail Science, Oracle is now a "one-stop cloud shop"; with 17 different software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud offerings available for large and mid-size retailers, explained David Dorf, Senior Director of Solutions Management in an exclusive interview with Retail TouchPoints. ..."The SaaS offerings are much more affordable for mid-tier retailers, in part because they are paying for what they use," Dorf noted. "We are now able to avail cloud science to smaller retailers."

The dawn of cloud-based retail as a service (RaaS) platforms, such as Oracle's new suite of Oracle Retail cloud services, enables retailers to use the cloud to manage everything from inventory and e-commerce to customer engagement and order fulfillment.

"...We're really marrying up purchase behavior within the stores, purchase behavior in the digital channels and other external information to put together more relevant assortments. It's a great partnership between our merchants and our e-commerce business to bring it to life."

Hosted cloud computing is becoming an increasingly hot market. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which recently launched a major Indian initiative in Alibaba's backyard, maintains a dominant position. Oracle has released a slew of more than 24 new additions to the Oracle Cloud Platform. Also Google is entering a new partnership that will base the next generation of JDA Software Group of cloud-based omnichannel and supply chain solutions on the public Google Cloud Platform.