Oracle Press Release

Leading Technology Vendors Announce New Specification Designed to Ease Management of Applications Across Public and Private Clouds

First Platform-as-a-Service Management API Specification to be Submitted to OASIS to Develop Industry Standard

Redwood Shores, Calif. – August 30, 2012

News Facts

Leading technology vendors, including CloudBees, Cloudsoft Corporation, Huawei, Oracle, Rackspace, Red Hat, and Software AG, today announced Cloud Application Management for Platforms (CAMP), a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) management Application Programming Interface (API) specification.

Designed for managing both public and private cloud applications, including packaging and deployment of the applications, CAMP will be submitted to Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for development of an industry standard, in an effort to help ensure interoperability for deploying and managing applications across cloud environments.

As the first effort to standardize a PaaS management interface, CAMP is intended to provide a common basis for developing multi-cloud management tools as well as offering cloud providers and consumers a REST-based approach to application management.

CAMP provides a common development vocabulary and API that can work across multiple clouds without excessive adaptation and is compatible with PaaS-aware and PaaS-unaware application development environments, both offline and in the cloud.

Common use cases for CAMP include moving an on-premise application to the cloud (private or public) as well as redeployment of such applications across cloud platforms from multiple vendors. CAMP reduces the effort to move applications between clouds and provides service assurance through interoperability.

Supporting Quotes

“Even though the PaaS marketplace is in its infancy, and vendors like CloudBees are driving innovation incredibly rapidly, customers are already concerned about lock-in and demanding interoperability. CAMP is an important first step toward that important goal,” said Steven Harris, senior vice president of products, CloudBees Inc.

“Hybrid and multi-cloud environments are emerging as the norm for the enterprise with PaaS trending rapidly as the natural entry point. CAMP will accelerate this trend as cloud-agnostic application management is key to cloud interoperability at this level,” said Duncan Johnston-Watt, CEO, Cloudsoft Corporation.

“Oracle’s commitment to driving industry standards that are crucial to our customers’ cloud environments, and to adopting these standards in Oracle products, is demonstrated by our CAMP collaboration. CAMP defines a simple API that enables customers to have an interoperable solution across multiple vendors’ offerings, manage application lifecycles easily, and move applications between clouds," said Don Deutsch, vice president, Chief Standards Officer, Oracle.

"Rackspace wants clouds to be open to give customers freedom and choice. CAMP offers a way to enable application portability between public and private clouds, and even between cloud service providers offering similar Platform-as-a-Service solutions," said Adrian Otto, senior technology strategist, Rackspace.

"Red Hat has long believed in collaboration with the industry and open source community to drive the delivery of compelling technology to meet the needs of developers and enterprises around the world, and our participation in CAMP is another proof point," said Mark Little, senior director of Engineering, Middleware at Red Hat. "Platform-as-a-Service offerings like Red Hat's OpenShift offer developers an easy on-ramp to developing applications. A specification like CAMP represents a considerable step towards lowering the barrier of entry new developers perceive when it comes to migrate their workloads to PaaS."

Software AG is at the forefront of leading industry standards, recognizing the need for interoperable and portable solutions for our customers. Thus far, cloud standards have been limited to the infrastructure (IaaS) space. As an interoperable standard for management of applications on hosted platforms (PaaS), the CAMP specification takes it to the next level in the cloud space. We are pleased to have collaborated in this work and look forward to the CAMP specification in an OASIS TC in the future," said Hans-Christoph Rohland, Senior Vice President - Research & Development, Software AG.

Supporting Resources

CAMP website

About Oracle

Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center.  For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com

Social Media Boot Camp for Business

IBM Launches Global Boot Camps to Help Small and Midsize Businesses Build Social Media Skills

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ARMONK, N.Y. - 29 Feb 2012: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the expansion of a global skills initiative to educate clients and business partners on social media tools and techniques to showcase expertise and create new business opportunities. To join in the conversation around IBM's Social Media Boot Camps, visit LinkedIn.

With today's news, IBM is further investing in its clients and business partners across the world including emerging markets such as China, Australia and Saudi Arabia to develop the skills that will enable them to sharpen their social networking capabilities to build even stronger and more interactive ties with their clients.

The IBM eight week social media boot camp is available to its business partners to provide the education and skills necessary to successfully engage in social media and begin driving the conversation around their brand.   This initiative provides IBM business partners and clients access to one-on-one social media coaches who set measurable goals for building and exercising social acumen.

This customized curriculum is designed for organizations to become more comfortable and effective in their marketing and sales efforts.  By using social networking tools and techniques participants learn to integrate social media into their daily business activities.

"Social media and social networking have greatly impacted the way we interact and communicate in our personal lives, how we promote our personal brands," said IBM Spokesperson. "But the real power of these concepts are still in its infancy in the business world. There are limitless opportunities for businesses to engage with their employees, business partners and customers over these social channels to help make better business decisions and reach new markets."

IBM Business Partners Gets Social 

IBM Business Partner Starfire Technologies, Inc. was among the first organizations to enroll in IBM's Social Media Boot Camp. Prior to the program, Starfire's use of social media channels was limited. After enrolling in the eight week social skills program, Starfire is now leveraging social channels to re-architect the way it does business.

For example, as a result the tools and techniques offered by the Social Media Boot Camp, Starfire is reconstructing its company website, integrating social media tools and platforms to best interact with customers. The organization has transformed its business strategy by extending its reach through the social networks to create   significant interactions and two-way conversations with its customers.

"IBM's Social Media Boot Camp was instrumental in our understanding of how to effectively and strategically engage with our customers and business partners over social media platforms," said Mary Spurlock, Vice President of Marketing, Starfire Technologies, Inc..  "It also taught us enhanced ways to listen to our customers and engage in interactive conversations.  We learned to listen on the channels where our business partners and clients are participating, thus helping to identify and move opportunities faster through the pipeline. It's also helped us to create a valuable collaborative forum for marketing and client support."

Reaching Small and Midsize Businesses via Social

The amount SMBs spend on social media is set to almost double in 2012, according to recent market research. Almost two-thirds (64.4%) of SMBs currently market themselves via social media sites; however many still struggle in navigating the appropriate and relevant tools to harness business value for their organizations.

IBM Business Partner Key Information Systems serves SMBs in a variety of industries, encompassing 80 percent of the organization's client base, and agree that while social media is of profound interest to their clients, it is still posing a significant challenge. With Social Media Boot Camp, Key Information Services has not only better educated itself on how to better utilize social media resources, it is now sharing that knowledge with its clients and prospects.

"We're expanding and diversifying the way we connect with clients and prospects and honing in on what's relevant to SMBs," says Director of Marketing Pete Elliot, Key Information Systems. "We're hosting events where small and mid-sized organizations come together to learn about and collaborate on social media strategy. We're reaching new markets with creative social media marketing techniques. The IBM Social Media Bootcamp has helped take our efforts to a whole new level, further opening our eyes to the world of possibility and extending our ability to tap into new markets that we would have never reached without engaging over social media platforms."

After enrolling in IBM's Social Media Boot Camp, Key Information Systems has now integrated social into the work flow processes of every employee. Social has become a priority whether it's blogging or engaging with key constituents over Twitter, employees are dedicated to listening and interacting where their business partners, clients and prospects are talking.

IBM Business Partner  Profitecture has played a leading role in working with IBM to deliver their Social Media Boot Camps for Business Partners and their unique process is helping to extend IBM's prowess in guiding organizations' transformation into social businesses.

At IBM's PartnerWorld Leadership Conference, IBM and Profitecture will also host mini Social Media Boot Camp sessions on Thursday, March 1 where more than 100 IBM business partners from across the globe will participate to discuss the opportunities of social media on a global scale. Business partners can also continue to work with their IBM/Profitecture social media coaches after the Boot Camp program for more advanced training or to fine tune their social strategies.