The Triora Group

Oracle has introduced a new collaboration product, BeeHive, at OpenWorld.  It was the topic of the keynote address this morning (Monday).

This is another attempt by Oracle to crack into the collaboration market, which has been difficult for the previous product, called Collaboration Suite, since it was a rip and replace type of product.  Obviously organizations weren’t crazy about replacing Exchange, Active Directory and the Microsoft Applications (Outlook) with Oracle’s collaboration product.  That said, Oracle approach had some great merit by using the database as the storage repository and minimizing multiple copies of documents being sent all over the place.

With Microsoft Outlook, I receive a 5MB PowerPoint presentation.  I then forward it to five other people and now there’s 30MB of PowerPoint on the Exchange or mail server.  Oracle’s approach was to save a single copy and provide links and versioning for the presentation.  This was only one of the innovations that Oracle had, but clients were not convinced, and the Collaboration Suite remained a niche product.

Beehive, however, is a more “join ‘em” approach which provides the same sleek database background but now works happily with Outlook, Thunderbird and other email clients using plugins.  Oracle also offers improved document security, including “self-destructing” documents/attachments, and role management for devices.  It integrates both personal computers and smart phones and manages to get along with with other apps while providing a mature content management and collaborative (ie Microsoft SharePoint) environment for documents.

Check it out.  More information is at www.oracle.com/goto/beehive

Oh… did I mention it also integrates with E-Business Suite?  Interesting….

Incidentally, if you’re entering Triora Group’s “Oracle Open World Get Me Some Bling!” contest, I’ve highlighted the answer to today’s question. Just click on the answer, and you’ll be taken to the questionnaire.

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