Responding to continued growth in clinical trials as well as the increasing linkages across life sciences, diagnostics and healthcare, Oracle has announced the formation of a new Global Business Unit focused on software applications for the health sciences industry. Neil de Crescenzo has been named Senior Vice President and General Manager for the business unit.

-- The Oracle Health Sciences Global Business Unit will build on Oracle's proven track record in the sector. Today, 20 of the 20 top pharmas and 14 of the 15 top U.S. hospitals run Oracle.

-- The Oracle Health Sciences Global Business Unit will help health sciences organizations discover, develop and successfully market innovative products and services to prevent and cure disease, enhance quality of life and meet their shareholder and stakeholder expectations.

-- Oracle today offers the sector's most comprehensive suite of software applications for clinical development. These products can be deployed individually or together and include Oracle Clinical, Oracle Remote Data Capture, Oracle Thesaurus Management System, Oracle Adverse Event Reporting System, Oracle Life Sciences Data Hub and Oracle's Siebel Clinical Trial Management System.

-- Oracle's application platform for health sciences helps companies bring together all the critical aspects of the clinical development, safety and pharmacovigilance processes into a single, open platform built on state-of-the-art technology.

-- Oracle's clinical applications provide a streamlined system for managing large volumes of patient data collected during clinical trials. They offer features for modeling any kind of clinical study, automatically storing components for reuse in a flexible global library.

-- The company also offers Oracle Healthcare Transaction Base, which helps healthcare companies simultaneously improve patient care and control costs by providing a foundation for interoperability and integration of existing and new systems.

"Accenture believes the industry needs to move to a more integrated set of clinical capabilities to realize the strategic value of the data available to support research and development," said Arjun Bedi, Global Lead of Accenture's Health & Life Sciences R&D practice. "We welcome efforts like Oracle's to bring together and enhance the necessary components to enable such a capability. With our range of services and the right software components, we can help our clients realize more business value from their R&D investments."

"There is a dramatic transformation taking place today in life sciences, diagnostics and healthcare in order to accelerate insights for better health. The creation of the Oracle Health Sciences Global Business Unit signals Oracle's commitment to this important sector and our focus on delivering value to health sciences organizations by offering them a comprehensive set of capabilities and superior ownership experience," said Neil de Crescenzo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Health Sciences Global Business Unit.

Supporting Resources

Oracle in Health Sciences http://www.oracle.com/industries/health_sciences/index.html

Oracle Clinical Applications http://www.oracle.com/industries/life_sciences/clinical.html

Oracle Life Sciences Applications Receive Positive Rating from Leading Analyst Firm http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2008_mar/lsamarketscope.html

Oracle Life Sciences Customer Success http://www.oracle.com/customers/industries/lifesciences.html

Oracle Healthcare Transaction Base http://www.oracle.com/industries/healthcare/htb.html

About Oracle

Oracle is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.

Convergys Corporation, a global leader in relationship management, has announced the appointment of Mike Betzer as Senior Vice President, Relationship Technology Management (RTM). He will report to Dave Dougherty, president and CEO of Convergys.

In this leadership role, Betzer will be responsible for the overall success and continued growth of RTM. He will oversee the creation of strategic business plans, delivery of solutions and services to Convergys clients, implementation of existing technologies into solutions for new industries and markets, and the development of new Convergys relationship management solutions such as Convergys' recently announced Multichannel Automation Solutions portfolio.

According to Betzer, this portfolio effectively combines consulting services, best-of-breed technologies, professional services, and flexible delivery models across live agent and self-service, and exemplifies Convergys' unique ability to bring together a comprehensive set of solutions and services to solve key business challenges for our clients.

Betzer brings more than 20 years experience in the RTM space having most recently held the Vice President, Customer Relationship Management Strategy role at Oracle. Betzer had overall responsibility for Customer Relationship Management product strategy for Siebel when it was acquired by Oracle, and for Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, and Oracle Fusion product lines.

Prior to this role, Betzer served as vice president of product management with overall responsibility for contact centers, service, field service, help desk, knowledge management, mobile, wireless, handheld devices, computer telephony integration (CTI) and software as a service (Saas) products for Siebel and the Oracle E-Business Suite product families.

In 1999, Betzer founded Ineto Services, a provider of hosted intelligent routing software for incoming calls, voicemail, IVR, and chat. Ineto was acquired by Siebel in 2004.

Prior to his roles at Ineto and Siebel, Betzer spent 14 years in telecommunications serving in sales and operations positions including vice president of information technologies and vice president of operations with MCI. He also spent two years as vice president of sales for Pioneer Technologies.

Betzer holds a bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Northern Iowa and a master's of business administration in telecommunications from St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas.

About Convergys

Convergys Corporation is a global leader in relationship management. We provide solutions that drive more value from the relationships our clients have with their customers and employees. Convergys turns these everyday interactions into a source of profit and strategic advantage for our clients. For 25 years, our unique combination of domain expertise, operational excellence, and innovative technologies has delivered process improvement and actionable business insight to clients that now span more than 70 countries and 35 languages.

Convergys is a member of the S&P 500 and has been voted a Fortune Most Admired Company for eight consecutive years. We have approximately 75,000 employees in 85 customer contact centers and other facilities in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and our global headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio.

For more information, visit www.convergys.com

Technology services leader EDS announced that it has appointed Randy J. Hendricks as senior vice president of Applications Services and Systems Integration, effective June 16. He will report directly to Charlie Feld, the organization's senior executive vice president.

Hendricks, 51, will lead all aspects of EDS' nearly $7 billion applications business. He will work closely with Feld to accelerate EDS' growth and investments in high-end, industry applications development and consulting.

Additionally, Hendricks will help expand EDS' current global applications practices - including SAP, Oracle and global testing. He will also drive delivery of end-to-end consulting and systems integration capabilities to clients worldwide.

"Randy brings nearly three decades of deep IT services and consulting experience in the financial services industry and government sector to EDS," said Feld.

"His broad industry expertise, combined with his in-depth systems integration knowledge, will be instrumental as we help our clients modernize their global business processes. I look forward to working with Randy as EDS aggressively competes in a global market estimated at $250 billion."

Hendricks joins EDS from Unisys Corporation. As corporate executive vice president and president of Global Industries, he was responsible for driving sales, business development and delivery for the company's worldwide financial services, commercial and public sector businesses.

Previously, Hendricks served as corporate senior vice president and president of Unisys Global Outsourcing and Infrastructure Services. Under his leadership, Unisys' outsourcing operations expanded to become the company's largest services division. Hendricks earlier led the Unisys Public Sector practice in 26 countries in which the company does business in the EMEA and Asia Pacific regions.

Before joining Unisys in 2002, Hendricks served as president and CEO of Digite, a Silicon Valley based technology firm that develops integrated applications for software lifecycle management.

Previously, Hendricks spent more than 10 years with Andersen Consulting, serving in senior partner positions in the firm's government and higher education consulting practices.

Hendricks earned a bachelor of science degree in industrial administration from Iowa State University.

Accenture has opened a new delivery centre in Monterrey, Mexico, with the goal to improve its systems integration and outsourcing business in North America and expand its Global Delivery Network.

This is Accenture's sixth delivery centre in Central and South America. It had previously opened two centres in Brazil, Argentina and another one in Mexico.

The company's Global Delivery Network now counts 51 centres employing 76,000 professionals.

The experts employed at the Accenture centre in Monterrey share knowledge, experience, practices and architectures with delivery centres across the globe in order to deliver technology consulting, application development and maintenance, systems integration and testing services to clients in various industry sectors.

The Monterrey centre supports a wide range of platforms and technologies: SAP, Oracle, JAVA/J2EE, Microsoft.Net and mainframe among others.

Keith Haviland, senior managing director at Accenture’s Delivery Centre Network for Technology, says:

“The ability to serve the needs of our clients using a global capability is a key feature of Accenture’s global sourcing approach. We bring together the right mix of people, skills and common standards to provide our clients with price-competitive and cost-effective solutions and services. Our global network offers the flexibility of multiple locations for the integrated delivery of services to clients.”

The Aberdeen Group, the leading research and market intelligence company in the technology sector, has released its Annual State of the Market Report.

This year, the report includes the list of the top 100 organizations – hardware, software and service providers – whose contribution to the business community has excelled in recent years.

The report also pinpoints the top criteria businesses use when choosing technology solutions: total cost of ownership (43%), product functionality (42%), vendor stability (24%), market specific knowledge and experience (24%), domain or industry expertise (22%) and reputation (21%).

Microsoft, Oracle and SAP took the leading spots on the list of the top technology vendors. They were followed by other prominent global technology providers like IBM, Dell, HP, Cisco and others.

The IT services sector is well represented in the Top 100 with technology companies like Accenture (#25), EDS (#36), Tata Consulting (#43), Infosys (#56) and Capgemini (#79).

The report is based on five years of research and a survey of 4,645 respondents. In 2008 alone, the Aberdeen Group will conduct more than 240 benchmark studies. 90 percent of the Fortune 500 and 75 percent of the Global 500 companies rely on the Group's research.

 

Here are the top 25 technology vendors for 2008:

 

1. Microsoft

2. Oracle

3. SAP

4. IBM

5. Cisco

6. Hewlett Packard

7. Dell

8. Salesforce.com

9. EMC

10. Sun Microsystems

11. Google

12. RIM (Blackberry)

13. Siemens

14. Adobe

15. AT&T

16. Apple

17. Sage

18. Infor

19. Nortel

20. Avaya

21. Red Hat

22. Motorola

23. Verizon Wireless

24. Dassault

25. Accenture

 

For the full list, go here.  

Fortune Magazine will release the annual list of the 500 top ranking and most profitable companies in the world on May 5.

The top 10 technology companies that made this year's Fortune 500 list based on total revenue in 2007 are:

1. Hewlett-Packard ($104.3 billion)

2. IBM ($98.8 billion)

3. Dell ($61.1 billion)

4. Microsoft ($51.1 billion)

5. Intel ($38.3 billion)

6. Motorola ($36.6 billion)

7. Cisco Systems ($34.9 billion)

8. Apple ($24.0 billion)

9. Electronic Data Systems ($22.1 billion)

10. Oracle ($17.9 billion)

 

The top 10 most profitable companies in the technology sector are:

1. Microsoft ($14.1 billion)

2. IBM ($10.4 billion)

3. Cisco Systems ($7.3 billion)

4. Hewlett-Packard ($7.3 billion)

5. Intel ($7.0 billion)

6. Oracle ($4.3 billion)

7. Google ($4.2 billion)

8. Apple ($3.5 billion)

9. Qualcomm ($3.3 billion)

10. Dell ($2.9 billion)

 

The top 10 companies on the 2008 Fortune 500 list are:

1. Wal-Mart Stores

2. Exxon Mobil

3. Chevron

4. General Motors

5. ConocoPhillips

6. General Electric

7. Ford Motor

8. Citigroup

9. Bank of America

10. AT&T

In a new report titled “Forrester Wave ™: Oracle Implementation Providers, Q1 2008,” independent analyst Forrester Research has named advisory firm Deloitte a market leader for Oracle implementation services and commended Deloitte member firms for their “overall implementation capability and strategy.”

Forrester analysts used 109 criteria to evaluate the world’s leading Oracle implementation providers.

The report states: “Deloitte scored extremely well in the higher value portions of the implementation life cycle as well as on industry breadth and depth.”

Forrester has also singled out Deloitte for the company’s commitment to its clients: Deloitte was one of the three Oracle providers to earn a perfect score for client satisfaction.

Nidal Haddad, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Oracle alliance leader, said:

“Deloitte is committed to providing innovative ideas and solutions to their clients’ most difficult problems. And to make this a reality, Deloitte is focused on attracting and retaining the best and brightest business and technology practitioners.”

“Ultimately,” he added, “Deloitte consultants view client success as the only true performance measure.”

Karen Mazer, U.S. national Oracle service line leader at Deloitte, said:

“Deloitte delivers business value to clients through process and technology transformation enabled by Oracle solutions. Deloitte teams draw on multiple disciplines to drive the innovation that clients demand. Business process, technology, industry, change management, tax and risk practitioners come together to help clients achieve tangible positive business outcome.”

Stef Oud, Oracle service line leader for EMEA at Deloitte Netherlands, said:

“As an organization, we continue to develop business solutions that are both distinctive and executable. Deloitte’s insights are drawn from a broad range of functional and technical disciplines. The focus is on finding the right answers to real problems – tailored to each client’s unique needs.”

Find the latest Deloitte and Oracle jobs on the TopITconsultant.com job board.

IBM and Oracle are teaming up to produce specialized, easy-to-use enterprise application solutions for their midmarket customers.

The new project will be developed by the IBM Oracle Consulting Practice, the branch of IBM that already implements Oracle solutions for its clients. The two companies have collaborated many times, but this is their first joint project that is aimed at the midmarket and at delivering the much needed functionality to midsize businesses.

Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang says: "In companies of 1,000 employees or less, IBM has made significant inroads from a hardware perspective, but IBM Global Services has been more focused on the high end of enterprise consulting and rarely focuses on the midmarket."

The first Oracle-based application to come out of the project will be the IBM Express Industrial Manufacturing Solution for Oracle Accelerate. It will be followed by several other solutions for Oracle Accelerate for high technology businesses.

The applications will be developed and implemented by IBM and they will run on the company's hardware. Other than being easier to use, they will also be simpler to implement and maintain.

Brian Mitchell, Global and Americas Oracle Leader at IBM Global Business Services, says: 

"This agreement represents an important milestone in IBM's continuing commitment to deliver targeted industry solutions to our valued midsize clients. We look forward to teaming with Oracle to bring innovative business solutions to this important joint client base."

Consulting firm Accenture has agreed to acquire Sopia Corporation, a privately held Tokyo-based consultancy that specializes in Oracle systems integration. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

With the acquisition, Accenture is hoping to expand its range of Oracle services in Japan and be able to better respond to a growing demand for ERP services in the country.

Founded in 1984, the Japanese consulting firm is well known for its expertise in Oracle solutions and supply chain management.

Sopia Corporation, a recognized strategic Oracle partner in Japan, will now become part of the Accenture Systems Integration and Technology organisation. The consultancy will continue to serve their clients in Japan.

"This acquisition will enable Accenture to expand its systems integration capabilities in Japan. Japanese clients will benefit from Accenture’s business and industry consulting capabilities, industrialized delivery methodologies and global reach, and Sopia’s skills across the entire Oracle suite and supply chain management software packages," said Karl-Heinz Floether, Group Chief Executive of Systems Integration, Technology & Delivery at Accenture.

The acquisition is expected to close within 30 days.

 

Apply for the latest IT consulting jobs at Accenture on our IT consulting job board.  

Consulting firm Accenture has been named a leading Oracle implementation provider in a study conducted by the independent technology and market research company Forrester Research.

Accenture was one of the 13 leading systems integrators included in the evaluation titled: "The ForresterTM Wave: Oracle Implementation Providers, Q1 2008.”

Accenture had the top scores in each of the three ''sectors'' of the evaluation: current offering, strategy and market presence. The consultancy also had the highest number of top scores for other criteria, such as global presence, overall vision and discrete product capabilities.

There were 107 criteria used in the evaluation, covering everything from process and strategy consulting, low cost technical implementation work, training, knowledge transfer, thought leadership and presence on the market of Oracle implementation services.

The Forrester report states: “Accenture leads in overall capability and dominates in terms of practice size. Accenture stands out from the pack with strong skills across all phases of the implementation life cycle, strong worldwide presence, and continued aggressive practice R&D and growth.”

Jim Hayes, Accenture’s managing director for the company’s global Oracle practice, commented:

“Accenture’s fundamental focus is high performance, and I believe our ability to help clients achieve business value with Oracle solution is unmatched in the industry. This recognition from Forrester underlines the commitment our people have to successfully deliver large-scale, complex, transformation projects to our clients.”