Future of Search

Everywhere now, it seems, some theater, opera house, museum or center is mounting a show, series or symposium on the connections between computer sciences and art. As computer sciences stake out an ever-widening swath of our collective consciousness, artists across the board are paying closer and closer attention to a way of thinking and imaging they once regarded as alien, impenetrable and irrelevant to their humanistic enterprise.

Graphic arts are vital today and in the future the situation will be the same. At the heart of everything the designers will lie on solid, imaginative graphic art skills. Whether it is a Web Site, an Interactive Presentation or a printed brochure, good, clean, sharp images and powerful graphic design will have their important role. Any idea, no matter how “off-the-wall� will create a concept, design, layout or print ready artwork for use in products as business cards, CD’s and CD Covers, chocolate bar wrappers, brochures and manuals, logos, Web sites, flyers, labels, letterheads, catalogs and countless promotional items (t-shirts, mugs, key chains). 

A real presentation for products / services features a user friendly animated interface, and will contain any or all of the following video product demonstration, video of product maintenance (change over, repair, training), contact information, link to your web site, company overview, message from the sales manager, photos of your product, narration and music, features and benefits section, technical specifications, performance analysis, option list, printable brochures, instruction manual. Spare parts list, reviews and testimonials, pricing (or request form), related products catalogue, participating tradeshow schedule.  

Often the best art products are made on site filming products in action, on site photo shooting the product, planning and organizing the text based information, developing a very professional brochure, technical writing (instruction manual). The Web page development is essential, editing video too. Power point presentation will include very professional and high quality photos or videos. The same procedures will be used for PDF file, QuickTime, mpeg, AVI, swf and all formats that can be integrated into the art presentations.  

Video production, editing and Web integration will lead to attractive and successful web sites. If a photo is worth a thousand words… then imagine the impact a video has! Video is an integral part of any multimedia presentation and the possibilities of video are endless, and often overlooked due to the perceived high cost of producing them. Promotion, education, training, demonstration, exhibitions… video does it all! Story boarding, script writing and editing can be compressed to accommodate numerous formats such as VHS, CD, DVD and Web integration.

Digital music projects are opening new and exciting opportunities for music collections and sound archives, making it more accessible to designated communities as well as to the public.

In the new direction, the hardware and software will be used to store, process, manage and analyze music and information about music in a more friendly and attractive manner.

Digital library and archive documents will no longer solely remain in the domain of computer specialists and, therefore, guidelines should also aim at the non-specialist.

Finally, as technical developments converge to feasible system solutions, a change of emphasis towards user’s requirements is essential.

When it comes to the red-hot online music business, a lot of the focus has been on how we’ll get the music; whether we will buy songs from a download site such as Apple’s (APPL) iTunes music store or rent it from subscription services that let you listen to almost anything so long as you keep paying their bill, a la Napster (NAPS) or Real Network’s Rhapsody (RNWK) service.  

Another question is going to become an important issue for an increasing percentage of consumers: namely, what will the sound quality of this music be? Today, songs pulled off the Net are skimpy facsimiles of the ones you get on a CD. They’re highly compressed, stripped of millions of digital bits that leave them with about one-tenth of the data found on a CD track (that’s assuming the typical “bit rate� of 128 kilobits-per-second). You can transfer the files fast, but the sacrifice is sound quality.

CD quality: that is fine for now, since most people listen to digital music on their PCs or MP3 players, devices normally used with cheap speakers that mask any sound quality deficiencies. And compression has played a vital ole in the development of the market so far. It is the magic that makes iPod-mania possible, by enabling even tiny devices with limited storage to carry thousands of songs.

But if the digital music revolution is to reach its full potential, an all-digital future, perhaps, in which CDs racks are no longer needed, analysts say the industry will have to hit a far better – sounding note. Already, tech0savvy consumers are dabbling with ways to distribute their digital tunes more freely, to play them on their good living-room speakers, wall-rattling home theaters, or slick car audio systems.

Often they find the compressed files’ sound quality sorely lacking. “If you are listening to compressed music using your iPod ear buds, you won’t notice much difference from a CD,� said Scott Bahneman, founder and chief executive of tiny startup Music Giants. “But once you play it on a good home stereo, the difference is huge.�

Bahneman hopes to close that gap, and position Music Giants to take a high-end niche in the fast-growing “digital home� market. This summer, his 15-person outfit will launch the first service that sells online music at CD-equivalent fidelity, what Bahneman calls “high-definition music.� Music Giants has licensed the music of all five major record labels, which it will sell in a “lossless� format, defined by Microsoft (MSFT) that results in digital songs that equal the quality of CDs.

These are big files requiring far more storage space than MP3s traded on file-sharing sites, or downloaded from the for-pay services. But for music lovers who can the difference, or think they ca, Music Giants’ service will be the only game in town, at least for now. “They’re addressing the biggest compromise that music fans have to make: trading portability for quality. This solves that dilemma,� says Ted Cohen, senior vice-president for digital development and distribution for record label EMI.  

The Internet will eventually be wonderful for music buyers, but it is still a threat to today’s dominant record labels. Today, there is more optimism. In the first half of this year, global physical unit sales of recorded music rose, albeit by a tiny amount. The industry claims that file sharing has stabilized thanks to its lawsuits. The number of music files freely available online has fallen from about 1.1 billion in April 2003 to 800m this June, according to IFPI, a record-industry body. That said, Internet piracy is rampant, and physical CD piracy continues to worsen.

But big music's attitude towards the Internet has changed, too. Over the past four years the big companies have come a long way towards accepting that the Internet and digital technology will define the industry's future. Thanks to Apple and its enormously popular iPod music players and iTunes download service, most music executives now believe that people will pay for legal online music. (Although they have mushroomed, legal online downloads account for less than 5% of industry revenues.) The big companies are trying to work out how they can harness the Internet. Consequently, they have to rethink their traditional business models. 

In the past, an important part of the major’s R&D strategy was to buy up the independent firms themselves. But after years of falling sales and cost cutting, the major have little appetite for acquisitions, and now rely more on their own efforts. What some people call music’s “disease� is not solely a matter of poor taste on the part of the big firms. Being on the stock market or part of another listed company makes it hard to wait patiently for the next Michael Jackson to be discovered or for a slow-burning act to reach it’s third or forth breakthrough album.

The majors also complain that the radio business is unwilling to play unusual new music for fear of annoying listeners and advertisers. And while TV loves shows like “Pop Idol� for drawing millions of viewers, such programs also devalue music by showing that it can be manufactured, technology has made it easy for music firms to pick people who look good and adjust the sound they make into something acceptable, though also ephemeral. 

The majors could argue that they can happily carry on creating overnight hits; so long as they sell well today, why should it matter if they do no last? But most such music is aimed at teenagers, the very age group most likely to download without paying. And back-catalogue albums make a great deal of money. The boss of one major label estimate that, while catalogue accounts for half of revenues, it brings in three-quarters of his profits. If the industry stops building catalogue by relying too much on one-hit wonders, it is storing up a big problem for the future.

Universal Music and Warner Music are starting up units to help independent labels with new artists, both promising initiatives that show that they are willing to experiment. Thanks to the major’s efforts in the last few years, their music has already improved, says Andy Taylor, executive chairman of Sanctuary group, an independent, pointing to acts such as the Black Eyed Peas (Universal), Modest Mouse (Sony), Murphy Lee (Universal) and Joss Stone (EMI).

Computer graphics hardware and software is becoming less expensive and more accessible. Soon it will be possible to buy editing equipment for new consumer formats and do a really good job of putting together a final videotape without going to a postproduction house. New distribution methods and integrated video applications like DVI, which allow much broader use of video, will be available.  

Video’s future is Tiger, QuickTime 7, and H.264. Apple says that because H.264 is a standard and has been adopted by standards organizations and many other companies the battle for the successor to the current MEG-2 video standard is basically over. H.264 is a video compression technology that’s used in MPEG4, the industry standard video technology that uses Apple’s QuickTime file format as its basis. Apple has built H.264 right into the QuickTime media architecture the same way as it has other QuickTime video codec’s. This way, developers will be able to easily access QuickTime Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to support H.264 encoding and decoding capabilities in their own software and users will be able to select H.264 as an output option for their QuickTime-based projects. 

“As there are over 120 companies that have announced over 200 specific products that will read, write, distribute or in some way work with H.264,� Frank Casanova, Apple’s director of QuickTime product marketing, told MacCentral. Casanova points to companies like British Telecom, Intel, Motorola, Samsung and Direct TV as examples of companies that have chosen H.264 as the future for their industries.

One feature that makes H.264 particularly noteworthy is its ability to deliver the same quality of video as you see on DVD, for example, at up to half the data rate. Another is H.264’s ability to smoothly scale from very limited bandwidth applications like 3G cell phones all the way up to HD-quality video, and everything in between. 

With its ability to encode content for so many mediums, Apple sees uses for H.264 in many of the everyday things we do today, including DVD movies, cable television providers, on-demand television in hotels and next-generation cellular telephones. With H.264, DVD content authoring houses could use the same size DVD disk, but output the content in HD quality.

H.264 gained traction last year being ratified for the HD-DVD and Blue-Ray specifications, the two new high definition DVD content standards. In November the Digital Video broadcasting Steering Board approved a revision to its implementation guidelines for audio and video codec’s over a broadcast Transport Stream. The revision included the Apple-supported H.264. The technology has also received the nod from the MPEg-4 group, the 3GPP group and the Association of Japanese Broadcasters. 

“They have said the future of their digital transport is H.264 because of its efficiency and quality,� said Casanova. “Before it’s even shipped in any significant volume there are already hundreds of products that are being developed for it.�

With its current model, Apple says that it will be able to distribute millions of copies of H.264 with QuickTime 7 fairly quickly. Clearly, when we ship QuickTime 7 in Mac OS X, Tiger and then ship the Windows version, we are going to continue our distribution where we left off with QuickTime 6,� said Casanova. “We have distributed over 300 million copies of QuickTime 6 and we distribute 400,000 copies a day.� 

Apple said that when they show H.264 to the people in Hollywood responsible for the “dailies� (daily rendering of films) and other projects, they are very impressed because they can produce their work with better quality at the size file size. But what about using H.264 at home?

Apple said that all users would notice a big difference using H.264, whether they are in Hollywood film studio or at home. Any application that uses the QuickTime 7 export panel will have direct access to H.264, like Final Cut Pro, iMovie, QuickTime and any QuickTime – based third-part application.

“You will notice a difference because the video that you export now has a certain frame size and quality,� said Casanova. “Using the same settings with H.264 you will have larger frame size and better quality. There will be a noticeable advantage and benefit using H.264. That’s why it is so exiting, it really does affect everyone.�

Although new products are on the way to support H.264, you won’t be able to bun an H.264 encoded DVD and play it on your current DVD player. Current players look for an MPEG-2 stream, while the new players will accept an H.264. Apple left no doubt that H.264 is the future, replacing current technologies. The confidence comes from the fact that the technology is not proprietary and is and accepted standard in the industry. 

“H.264 is the future of broadcast, t will replace the older MPEG technologies,� said Casanova. Because it is a standard there are no other encroaching technologies, nothing else out there really matters. Windows Media, while good looking is not a standard and it is just not going to play a role in this space. We understand how it works because we contribute to the standard the way Microsoft is.� 

The line in the sand has been drawn and Apple feels they are on the right side, the side supporting standards. Their competition, mainly Microsoft, has to date not chosen to support or contribute to the standard. “In this entire world of standards, it is Microsoft versus the world and that’s not a good place to be,� said Casanova. The world has voted for standards and we are on the side of standards.�

Many different graphics standards and packages have emerged over the years to meet various needs of the engineering design community. The two primary standards are the Graphical Kernel System (GKS) and the Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System (PHIGS). Other common packages include that from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and others including GRAF, CGI, Plot-10, and for the sake of argument, Postscript.

High quality computer graphics technology is becoming ubiquitous. Soon, computer graphics will be where word processing is today: everyone uses it, but there are very few people doing basic research in word processing. The challenge now is to apply computer graphics technology to research in other areas.

Peek into a kid’s world of video games and you may see the future of computing technology for architects. Despite the differences between the realms of work and lay, the fact is that games and movies are fueling the economy and the direction of serious computer graphics research and development.

Just as the music industry pioneered the compact disc and brought its price down for computer users, the animation and interactive technologies now being created for the lucrative entertainment industries will eventually benefit the more straight – laced purpose of design architects. 

Noted inventor and author Ray Kurzweil is giving a keynote address, offering his predictions for the human-machine merger, speculating that we will spend most of our time in virtual reality in the 21^st century. In the near future, he stated, we will enter a shared virtual visual and auditory environment where Web sites will become fully immersive experiences. In Kurzweil’s wireless world of the next decade, he sees seamless, invisible computing with images projected directly onto the retina with fully immersive VR glasses or contact lenses. “We will totally get rid of the wires,� he promised.

 Research now underway will eventually lead to high-resolution rendering in real time, the physics-based behavior of animated objects, and interactive devices that incorporate the sense of touch. Glenn Goldman, an architect and professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, was impressed with an explosion of RAM. While architects are still buying random access memory in the megabytes, those in advanced graphics are into the gigabyte range and beginning to talk about peta bytes, or, millions of gigabytes. Newly available 128-megabyte RAM graphics cards are already being installed in the reasonably priced workstations that architects are likely to buy. Taking advantage of this power and faster processing, says Goldman, real-time rendering and representation of illumination are also improving. “3D Studio Max, which architects use, now also attracts a significant number of people making video games. This helps drive the software’s development, to the benefit of our profession.�

Serious researchers are also improving “image-based modeling� for the game industry. This makes it possible for developers to quickly create models from ordinary photographs.

This will be useful for architects who will be able to model entire cities with relatively little effort. Goldman was also impressed with Wacoma’s new pressure-sensitive tablet, which doubles as a 15-inch 1024x768 pixel monitor. It’s great for sketching,� he says. “And when the price comes down from its current $4,000, and its size increases to 19- inches, it will be still more useful for architects.�

Another architectural professional, Dace Campbell, an associate with the Seattle firm NBBJ and Industrial Fellow with the Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of Washington has been using the longstanding VRML (virtual reality modeling language) for years. With it, he creates virtual environments, which users can “walk through� and interact with. Having heard rumors about VRML’s demise, he needs to find out what would replace it.

“My impression,� says Campbell “is that there’s nothing better to replace it yet.�  There are many vendors demonstrating technologies for modeling and rendering 3D Web objects in real time. “They all claim to provide smaller files and therefore lower bandwidth solutions that VRML, but I couldn’t see how they were differentiating themselves.�

E-commerce appears to be driving this trend, with an emphasis on manipulating objects within on-line shopping environments. But there was little emphasis on modeling the e-commerce environments themselves, a market niche that NBBJ and other firms are carrying out. Architectural settings, Campbell point out, are fairly static. Even though it may be cool to show doors opening and elevators moving, it is not clear how such object manipulation will trickle down to useful technology for architects.

With a new generation of video game consoles, increasing online game play and distribution, cross-platform development and play, in-game advertising and more, there are earth-shaking changes going on in the video game industry.

Competition among game publishers is more heated than ever, which means a smart strategy, future-focused perspective and staying ahead of rivals is critical for success.

Predictions:

-The growing cost of development for games on next-generation platforms will increase demand from publishers to require new games to be deployed on many platforms.

-Increased cross-platform development will mean less money for optimizing a new game for any particular platform.

As a result, with the exception of in-house titles developed by the console manufacturers themselves, none of the three major platforms (Xbox 360, PS3 and Nintendo Revolution) will end up with games that look significantly different from each other, nor will any platform show any real "edge" over the others. Many games will be written to a "lowest common denominator" platform, which would be two threads running on a single CPU core and utilizing only the GPU.

2006 is one if the biggest years for games in history. What a wild and wacky year 2006 has been for gamers. While it will best be remembered as the year that the “next generation� really got into full swing with all three major game companies having new consoles on the market for the holyday season, much more than this happened in 2006.

This is the “hot� area. The list of industry events and the impact of mobile games is readily apparent. The appeal of mobile game development is fairly obvious. The team size is typically a fraction of the size of a typical development team; the development cycle is a few months versus a few years.

Given a choice between console games and those played on mobile phones, the mobile phone games are being preferred by a large segment of people from different walks of life. And the reasons are quite obvious. Gaming enthusiast can play these mobile phone games and mobile Java games at their own discretion, whenever they want and wherever they want to.  

These are far greater flexibility for them to indulge in a few moments of “mobile gaming action,� even during their busy day at work. And with most people in our times possessing a mobile phone handset of their own, there are endless opportunities to be explored. 

Another factor that has contributed to the widespread popularity of mobile phone game downloads is the availability of a wide variety of the same at affordable costs. Easy to download and compatible with the latest models of handsets, the mobile phone games and Java games have become one of the most common ways of entertainment in the modern world.

The development of mobile phone technology has contributed to this trend. Most of the latest mobile phone handsets from the leading names in the industry come with colored screens, enhanced memories and stereo sounds. These advanced features go a long way to give a whole new dimension to the mobile gaming experience.

However, this is not the end of the road. Or, we can say that the journey of mobile games has just begun. The present generation of wireless networks need further up gradation. This would enable faster transfer of data and enable people to lay mobile games and mobile Java games in real time.

The pricing policy regarding the download of mobile phone games and mobile Java games also need some changes. Mobile network operators need to take steps to encourage potential customers of mobile games to browse the Internet.

They would then be motivated to download extra gaming levels to their handsets. According to the opinion of experts, a change in the pricing policy would lead to a further “opening up� of the market for mobile phone game downloads and mobile Java games.

Computer games have now been taking up room in our home from over twenty-nine years. Of course, future gaming will be about more than bells and whistles. Sony and Microsoft are in the heated battle over our living room. The PlayStation and Xbox, of course, do more than play video games. They also double as DVD and CD players. And future generations may add even more multimedia functionality.

One of the best games around these days can’t be found on store shelves and has absolutely no learning curve. It is the guessing game, and just about every gamer worth his or her salt is paying. Most are focusing on the game machines of 2006-2007: the PlayStation, the Xbox Next and the Nintendo Revolution. That is fine, but many prefer to play for bigger stakes. Lately, people have been pondering what the world will be like in 2025.  

Expectations, as anybody guess, are pretty high. “I imagine there will be 3D projection technology that will allow people to play without a monitor�, said Yuji Naka, creator of Sega’ Sonic series. “Sonic will be running and the game will proceed just in front of or around you!�

 Naka is not the only one who sees virtual reality coming of age, either.  “I look forward to true virtual reality in games 20 years from now, where you can become totally immersed in the action and storyline�, said Ray Muzyka, joint CEO at Bioware, which created “Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic.� “Imagine taking the role of your favorite hero in a movie and making meaningful choices to move the storyline along.� 

Not everyone sees such dramatic advances, however. Ed Boon, who co-created “Mortal Kombat� in 1993, and has been involved with every sequel the franchise has spawned, foresees a more gradual progression. 

“My guess would be that the new machines will have basically more of everything that worked in the older machines,� he said. “More memory, the ability to display more polygons, betters lighting techniques and faster processors. I don’t suspect they will introduce much new that is as influential as going 2D to 3D.� 

Future gaming will be about more than bells and whistles. Sony and Microsoft are in a heated battle these days over your living room. The PlayStation and Xbox, of course, do more than play video games. They also double as DVD and CD layers. And future generations may add even more multimedia functionality. 

“In 2025 I doubt that we will even have something that we call ‘gaming machines’, said Electronic Arts’ Will Wright, creator of “The Sims�, the best selling PC game of all the time, and its just released sequel “The Sims 2�. 

“Today we don’t have dedicated ‘movie machines’, instead we have many different devices that can play and display movies as well as other media (DVD, TV, VCR, TIVO, PC, etc.). Each one of these machines has special features that give them some competitive advantage in the consumer electronics ecosystem. Movies have become a very portable form of media that can live on all of these. I think we’re starting to see gaming evolve and diversify in a similar way.� 

Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac Games (creator of the “Spyro the Dragon� and “Ratched & Clank� franchises), agrees.  “The biggest difference will be in hw these new machines will become the center of your entertainment experience,� he said.  “Want to record your six favorite TV shows while you are playing a game? No problem let your PlayStation do it for you. How about replacing the music in a game with the latest mp3s you’ve downloaded? No sweat…  

In 20 years it should be a given that all of your entertainment needs are satisfied by one machine.� So whether future machines are holographic projectors or super-powered multimedia machines, or both, remains up in the air. Let’s talk controls.  Today, we’ve basically got two options when playing a game – a handheld gamepad or the mouse / keyboard combination. While alternative controls are trying to flex their muscles, only one (Sony’s Eye Toy) has had any real penetration in the market. Will those controllers still rein supreme 20 years down the road? 

“I think the scenario where were all sing virtual controllers without physical representation will be quite likely,� said Greg Zeschuk, the second half of Bioware’s dynamic duo. “These controllers might use either magnetic fields or optical systems like those used in current motion capture set-ups… One other option is direct input into the nervous system of the player (spinal input port at the back of one’s neck), but this still seems rather far-fetched… and scary.�

In the early 90s, when “virtual reality� was the net big thing, it required players to wear enormous headsets that led to complaints of headaches and neck pain. Combined with the primitive graphics of the time, the ‘next big thing’ died on the vine. But will we see resurgence in the future? Insomniac’s rice hopes so. 

“Let’s get rid of the TV and create a more convincing head-mounted D display,� he said. “Let’s take the controllers out of players’ hands and instead create the sensation of actually holding a baseball bat or swinging a sword. And forget about keyboards, even now many games are really starting to take advantage of the things you can do with vocal commands.� 

That said, today’s controllers have their defenders, and they are pretty good.  “Just as we saw wheels on cars in the very beginning or the power button in electronics, there are certain elements that must remain as long as the equipment exists,� said Sega’s Naka. “That makes me believe we will probably be using some sort of a handheld controller in the future.�

“In some ways I find the mouse to be a much more advanced device than your typical game controller, adds the more PC-centered Wright. “It is generally easier to learn because of the visual nature of its interface and has far more consistency across applications. The mouse is still rapidly changing (more buttons, mouse wheels); in a sense it represents the evolution of a new language based on micro-gestures of your hand and fingers. Whatever the device is, this new spatial / gesture language represents the most probable future of input devices.�

At the bit SalesForce.com conference was announced a new programming language, with backing from Adobe and others. “This is the most important announcement Salsforce.com ever made,’ Marc Benioff, SalesForce.com chairman and CEO, told those attending its annual user conference.� Apex is for delivery to a SalesForce.com server, rather that to the general Web audience, or a particular intranet’s HTTP server. SalesForce.com already has initiatives with Flash, Breeze, Acrobat and so on… good possibilities here, but it will in the Saleforce.com audience base.

The First On-Demand Programming Language represents a powerful new tool for developers interested in building the next generation of business applications. With Apex, a whole new breed of on demand applications is possible, featuring sophisticated processes and business logic, entirely on demand and without software. Likewise, Apex will enable unprecedented levels of customization, allowing you to modify the behavior of existing features, or create entirely new ones. And like other customizations built on the platform, Apex apps can be packaged and shared through the AppExchange directory.

The key technology of Apex is a new programming language that allows developers to do something entirely new and powerful to run business logic on SalesForce.com.com servers. With the release of this language, Apex developers will be able to use the same tolls that SalesForce.com.com’s own development team uses to build our own apps, including our flagship CRM product. Before Apex, it was possible to do some impressive things with Ajax or other on-server code. But because Ape code runs natively on the server, it is faster and more powerful, can interact with the UI via Buttons and Events, and can manipulate data through the API. Transactions and flow control can now be efficiently done on the server side, opening u new possibilities for developers.

The Apex language, combined with powerful new platform technologies like custom buttons, outbound communications, and inline s-controls, means that it is possible to put code, and therefore business logic, almost anywhere in the UI. Expanding functionality within applications, as well as adding wholly new features, is easier than ever. 

ApexConnect will provide connectors for applications such as Office, Outlook, Lotus Notes, SAP R3 and Oracle 11i. ConnectOracle, which offers a built template designed to speed the integration process between SalesForce.com and Oracle 11i, enables Oracle 11i customers to access their SalesForce.com front office and back-office customer data.

SalesForce.com expects ConnectOracle to be available early next year, for an annual fee of $12,000 to users of SalesForce.com Enterprise Edition and Unlimited Edition. The company recently released its ConnectSAP for integrating SalesForce.com with SAP R3. ApexConnct will also become a category on the SalesForce.com AppExchange, which serves as a marketplace for hosted applications from more than 230 partners.

Apex has been compared to Java, and maybe that’s not accurate. But if not, how is Apex different? And why wouldn’t a developer just use Java? What’s different about Apex is that it is an on-demand programming language. By that mean that if a developer is using the sales force automation (software) he obviously can get up and running, and he don’t have to buy the hardware. The same thing is true with Apex: any developer can start programming.

What’s different about Apex is it’s running in the database, basically – it is actually running on application servers. And one of the key things a developer can do with Apex and can’t be done with Web services is the developer can have transactional control of the database. But the other thing, in terms of a language, is it’s really, really easy to use to write the logic, the business logic that needs to happen within the service… The developer can create these really complex applications really quickly.

On-demand Relationship management has a leader: SaleForce.com

Every aspect of the clients’ lifecycle of any size companies can be customizable. This CRM is perfectly tailored to the client’s needs, but there are also powerful features like forecasting, contract management, online lead capture, and analytics.

SalesForce.com can be the conduit for conversations between your organization – and your customers and prospects fate to face, by phone, fax, e-mail and on-line technologies.  SalesForce.com will have the knowledge to replace or reinforce the user’s in-house sales and customer service employees. SalesForce.com has experience in business-to-business, business to consumer and consumer to business. They have also conversations across a wide range of industries.

SalesForce.com offers three solutions for more effective and efficient sales and customer service conversations. The solutions are sales and customer service solutions, such as state-of-the-art interaction centers for receiving and making phone, fax, e-mail and on-line conversations and field sales systems and resources for face-to-face conversations.

Expertise sharing: professional consulting with organizations that require SalesForce.com eSmart or StreeSmart excellence using internally implemented solutions.

SAP is already working with Microsoft Corp. to integrate SAP processes with Microsoft’s Windows in a project named Mendocino.

The main technology related goal would be to improve the user experience of the company’s products that suffered since SAP is redesigning its screens to work with the Windows operating system instead of UNIX, because there is nearly 50% less space available on the screen.

SAP will follow in the same tradition featuring a very sophisticated, intuitive and versatile user interface powered by an unmatched analysis engine and design tools for engineers working on transportation, industrial, public works, sports, and other facilities.

From its 3D object based graphical modeling environment, to the wide variety of analysis and design options completely integrated across one powerful user interface, Sap will prove that it will be the most integrated, productive and practical general purpose structural program on the market today.

This intuitive interface will allow creating structural models rapidly and intuitively, without long learning curve delays. Complex models can be generated and meshed with powerful templates built into the interface.  

Getting a head start on information, exchanging knowledge and the possibility of making a difference these were the principles, which first brought SAP software users together. By 2006, approximately 1,850 German-language companies, institutions and authorities had enlisted as members.

Sap is the largest European software enterprise, with headquarters in Walldorf, Germany. SAP’s products focus on ERP, which it helped to pioneer. The company’s main product is MySAP ERP. SAP is the clear leader in the industry, with 4% of market share in the US, and plans to extend that.

"In retail, we are growing faster than any other vertical. In public services, we've made some very important investments. Our vertical strategy, segmented strategy, team, execution are right now at a better state than ever before." (McDermott)

The company is positioned at the forefront of the enterprise technology using a long-term strategy. This ability to execute over the long term has helped SAP achieve a dominant global market share.  

According to Gartner, SAP is #1 in enterprise software. Sap in the worldwide market leader in CRM, ERP, and supply chain software, according to a comprehensive new study. With 26% of CRM market chare, 29% of ERP market share, and 19% of SCM market chare by total software revenue. SAP exceeded overall market growth rates in all three segments. It is no wonder more organizations are turning to SAP to become best-run businesses. 

SAP will improve supplier relationship management (SRM) with real word wisdom. SAP, its customers, and its partners have amassed a wealth of real wisdom on forging successful supplier relationships. Now, they will share that wisdom with its customers. Watch Web casts on best practices, lessons learned, and case studies to discover new insights into the most critical supplier-related challenges facing the client’s company today.

Great companies relay on SAP, not just great big companies. More than 65% of SAP customers are small and midsize companies. The clients don’t have to be a big company to maximize the advantage with flexible, affordable, and proven software from SAP. 

SAP increases transparency and predictability with new CRC applications. SAP is enhancing the market-leading governance, risk, and compliance portfolio with three new applications to deliver more simplicity and increase process and cost efficiency, accountability, and control – based on a holistic approach to managing GRC. 

With the new SAP Net Waver Application Server, Java EE 5 Edition, SAP will provide a platform for building enterprise-class, scalable, distributed and open standards- based Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). A new solution will be designed for the process of building and testing a simple Web service using SAP Net Weaver Application Server, Java EE 5 Edition.

Sap is the largest European software enterprise, with headquarters in Walldorf, Germany. SAP’s products

PeopleSoft Support, Consulting, Education, Hosting, and Financing are now integrated with Oracle Services.

“Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft is not the dawn of a scary new era; it is the twilight of the old ERP age. It may also be an opportunity to create and ERP future that adds value not costs, to business�. (Scott Berinato).

PeopleSoft enterprise Supply Chain is a flexible solution that helps businesses synchronizes their supply chain. This helps provide efficiency, which in turn provides cost savings. Within the PeopleSoft Supply Chain there are solution modules like customer order management, logistics, manufacturing solution, and supply chain planning. PeopleSoft SCM falls under Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise product suite and its future is following Oracle’s main directions.

PeopleSoft is developing new solutions to accelerate deployment, improve system performance and availability and preserve the integrity of application code. PeopleSoft solutions help improve the control and visibility over the system performance and change management needs for the PeopleSoft platform and its underlying databases enabling you to achieve operational excellence and compliance to regulatory standards.

PeopleSoft will always work to deliver the best possible all-around application experience to the customers. PeopleSoft consultants and in-house teams depend on the code quality and optimization and performance solution to keep applications running smoothly. In fact, they will use Quest tools in their labs and on customer consulting engagements.

PeopleSoft for Oracle is the facto-standard for database developers and administrators with more than 500,000 users worldwide. Oracle increases user productivity and application code quality with rich features for data-base object management, develop and debug Pl/SQL, create, execute and optimize SQL queries while providing an interactive community to support the user experience.

Oracle and PeopleSoft will provide solutions for a comprehensive data management workbench that enables DBAs to manage more databases from a single, integrated interface. Oracle and PeopleSoft will combine best-of-breed products for:

• Database Analysis
• Performance Monitoring
• Performance Diagnostics
• Database Administration
• Space Management
• SQL Tuning
• Load Testing / Data Generation
• Performance Analysis / SQL History

Oracle and PeopleSoft will provide fault-tolerant, streaming replication for the Oracle database, allowing maintaining a near-real time copy of the database for reporting and migrations.

PeopleSoft Experience Monitor for Web-based applications optimizes the real customer experience, improves capacity and quickly diagnoses availability problems. Schema Manager eases the deployment of schema changes from development to test to production by managing dependencies while maintaining control with extensive change documentation. Schema Manager can help ensure a smooth migration for customizations or upgrades that have been introduces in the PeopleSoft database.

End User Management will provide better transaction simulation, performance measurement and problem reproduction to guarantee optimal service levels for any applications by assigning accountability for the end use experience.

Project Fusion is the next stage to bring together Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards product lines. This will bring all three product sets together using Java and HTML standards to make the new software easy to integrate into other systems.

“The future looks bright now: the new architecture and the results companies will achieve will be truly revolutionary, but the path to the new successor product line will be evolutionary�. (John Wookey, VP of application development at Oracle)

Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise applications are designed for the most complex business requirements. They provide web services integration with vendor and homegrown applications and can be easily configured and adapted to meet the most unique customer requirements. In addition, PeopleSoft Enterprise supports a very broad choice of technology infrastructure.

The future efforts are focused for:

1. Accelerate the path to Fusion
2. Drive superior ownership experience
3. Deliver best in-class business processes

The solution dynamically personalizes report information retrieved from PeopleSoft and other enterprises data sources and securely delivers individually formatted views to tens, of thousands of users inside and outside the firewall. The solution will integrate non-PeopleSoft data and the Management, Financial Management, Human Capital Management, Supply chain Management, and enterprise Performance Management by accessing them directly with Enterprise Information Integration, native PeopleSoft drivers, or through the AppConnect enterprise Warehouse.

The future solution will access PeopleSoft application data directly or through the data warehouse. It will be designed to integrate seamlessly with PeopleSoft applications and data including:

• PeopleSoft Security
• PeopleSoft Internet Architecture (PIA)
• PeopleSoft data sources

The main development directions are to assist Oracle analysts and design tools users in maximizing their investment in Oracle Designer and JDeveloper, through sharing experience with the other users and to ensure that Oracle customers are fully apprised of the future direction of Oracle analysis and design tools.

Oracle relies on its own software to run its global operations and meticulously plans software upgrades. There is an added complexity for Oracle: the company implements its software before releasing the new version to customers, so the pressure to get it right is overwhelming.

What made this possible is a foundation based on an integrated information model with a highly componentized application solution, with rich support for J2EE compliant APIs and Web services. It is a part of the latest evolution in the technology for designing and programming application software packages called Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). “In spite of this massive acquisition (PeopleSoft) in the middle our upgrade cycle we had a single place to upgrade, a single place to roll up processes, and without this architecture it would have been a very different story,� said David Cooke, Vice President and Global Oracle Alliance Leader.

More than ever, developers need to be able to acquire, integrate, repurpose, and exchange information with other applications to feed their growing databases and to coordinate their business operations with those of partners and suppliers over the Web. These tasks can be dramatically simplified using XML.

Oracle is making a major commitment to XML, and the Core XML Support being delivered in Oracle11i is a major step. Oracle will continue to make it even easier to build database-driven Internet applications that exploit XML in future releases of Oracle, AppServer, Tools, and packaged Applications.

By more tightly integrating the SQL type system and XML, the database will provide a natural mapping of object/relational SQL query results to a well-formed XML document. Combining this tighter SQL? XML integration with the current Oracle mechanism for defining Object Views over relational data, it will be possible to query a logical view of “Accounts� and return all of the related, supporting information pertinent to that account with a single request to the database

Rather than receiving HTML pages that present schedules, price lists, and product information in an attractive visual format, XML allows to request and receive the raw data itself for further processing.

The number or Oracle’s certifications is growing constantly; there are more than 230000 with growth mainly in India and China. This means that Oracle’s future is really bright. There are many reasons to use a well-known oracle development team, a group of outstanding Oracle professionals with a dedication to quality and a reputation as an author and expert. Managers can create some development teams with confidence when it is composed of respected industry experts. The Oracle’s expert’s future is looking bright too…

The prospective are very optimistic; there are obstacles too, but managers can optimize the business value of Oracle. There are many obstacles to Oracle benefits realization but managers can use some “levers� to realize Oracle benefits using their existing people, processes, and organizations. There are specific tools and approaches for leveraging the possibilities of Oracle, including performance measurement, process improvement, organizational design, training (very important and expensive), and communications.

Oracle’s XML strategy is to deliver the best platform for developers to productively build and cost-effectively deploy reliable and scalable Internet applications exploiting XML. Oracle represents a significant “down payment� on the delivery of this strategy, and broad efforts are underway within Oracle to deliver additional XML capabilities up and down the product stack.

To meet the new challenges, Web services link servers over the Internet to exchange data and combine information in new ways. These services run on Web-based severs instead of individual PCs, allowing people to use then through any device that has Internet access, including cellular phones and handheld computing gadgets, as well as desktop and notebook computers.

Oracle’s Siebel Mobile Solutions applications provide field technicians with complete mobile access to customer information, asset histories, reporting tools, parts information, corporate knowledge bases and much more. By supporting a large variety of devices in both connected and disconnected modes, it enables efficient and accurate customer service and ensures that all technicians have access to the right information in the right place at the right time.

Oracle’s Siebel Wireless will provide technicians more real-time access to critical service information, including activities, service requests, order status, account and contact details and an employee directory. And because it will be seamlessly integrated with other Oracle applications, it will be easily configurable and developed.

The main directions are:

-         Deliver real-time access to critical information through a wireless device

-         Wirelessly push messaged to employees, partners and customers

-         Support multiple handheld devices and phones.

Wireless Browser Support: Siebel Wireless provides real-time access to critical information through a wireless device. Using WML or HTML browser on a mobile phone or handheld device, a field user can read, edit and write data in the customer database. As a result, the application enables field professionals to order items, trace parts, send correspondence, update service activities, review customer and activity information, access calendar and contact details, and respond to service requests.

Siebel Handheld will allow field technicians to access key information from the customer database through Direct Server Synchronization or Companion Synchronization to a Windows Pocket PC device. Developers will connect to the Siebel Server using a variety of mediums to download and synchronize activities, service requests and other critical data.

Siebel Mobile Web Client enables field service professionals to access a full desktop computing solution on a laptop through an automatic exchange of information with corporate servers. It offers synchronization of laptop records with data over LANs, WANs, dial-up connections, and the Internet.

Oracle released a free dev tool for its Fusion middleware. The new productivity tool is called Oracle Developer Depot and provides access to a library or reusable and sample code for rapid development of Java app prototypes.

After the mega acquisition of rival PeopleSoft, the database world leader has many opportunities for the future.  Database marketing secures Oracle future; the strong revenue growth will be in two areas: oracle.com application service provider (ASP) business that allows companies to rent Oracle’s e-business software over the Web, and its application-server software business technology, that runs e-business and Web site transactions.

Headquartered in Redwood Shores, California (US), Oracle develops and deploys Internet enabled enterprise software across its entire product line, which includes database, server, enterprise business applications and application development, and decision support tools. Oracle offers e-business solutions that extend from front- office customers relationship management to back-office operational applications to platform infrastructure.

Oracle co-president Charles Phillips offered a few hints as to what partners can expect from the company’s next database and applications generation. The upcoming Oracle 11g database, for example, will allow segregation between applications users and the database that feeds their applications. Application users will not be able to see underlying data in the database unless they have the rights to see it.

What is being done now in compliance is the “tip of the iceberg�. “Future Oracle users will be able to audit database information and access by applications and users. It will track not only which applications it is possible to use, but what data must be viewed, what changes was made; it will identify the person once and track him across all apps and the stack. It will be a complete audit trail from keyboard to disk,� Phillips said.

Oracle’s current technology can monitor user response times across the stack and isolate problems, Phillips said. Future applications will be able to initiate a rollback of the application server and database.  Phillips also talked up tighter integration and going forward between the core Oracle database and middleware stack and applications going forward. “We have assets on the tech side that apply elsewhere. In our umbrella strategy, we have single core foundation of the technology stack – the database and middleware. Around that we have industry-oriented applications, ERP and CRM. The applications should leverage the core stack.�

Oracle has pledged continued upgrades not only to its homegrown apps suite but for Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards apps as well. The company can do more for customers and partners in terms of security, high availability and compliance in its next product wave. Many JD Edwards and PeopleSoft customers run their applications on IBM’s DB2 database, which competes with Oracle’s bread-and-butter database. Likewise, Oracle has promised that its database will continue to fully support third-party applications that compete with its own software.

Also was announced new Business Accelerators for the mid market. These wizard-like programs let partners and users easily enter information about the desired application and automate its optimal set up, Oracle said. A new Oracle Accelerate program aims to get partners to extend these accelerators for their verticals. Phillips also announced a new Configuration Support manager to ease deployments and optimize performance. It will be part of Oracle’s Premier support options.

In the future, Oracle products will enable centralized entitlements, so a user’s access to data and applications will automatically follow him or her thought applications and tasks. Oracle’s business information is about how to manage it, use it, share it, and protect it. The word’s largest enterprise software company, Oracle is the only vendor to offer solutions for every tier of your business: database, middleware, business intelligence, business applications, and collaboration. With Oracle, information that helps to measure results, improve processes, and communicate a single truth to the constituents is possible quick and in a correct manner.

Oracle has made a number of strategic acquisitions to help the users get the broadest functionality and the most value from the business applications. In the future they will make it even easier for the users to take advantage of the rich customer relationship management capabilities of Oracle’s Siebel CRM, by helping the users to integrate Siebel applications with the Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise applications.

Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management applications help provide insight to the right person at the right time, leading to faster, better informed decision. With solutions tailored to the specific needs of more than 20 industries, Siebel provides predictive analytics capabilities that deliver real-time intelligence, greater flexibility through support of both J2EE and .Net, and a lower total cost ownership.

 Siebel Integrations are software bridges that reduce implementation costs by accelerating the deployment time required for front to back office integration – all without disruption to existing business operations. By allowing information to flow across entire enterprise business processes, Siebel integrations provide immediate value.

In addition to Siebel CRM Call Center on Demand to Oracle E-Business Suite, which was just released, Oracle is developing these Siebel Integration offerings:

• Siebel Order Capture to Oracle Order Management, that combines Siebel’s campaign to opportunity product set with Oracle’s order management, fulfillment, and financials capabilities, giving to the users a single view of his opportunities to cash business process.
• Siebel CRM on Demand to Oracle E-Business Suite provides consistent customer data across the front and back office applications, enabling a true 360-degree view, so the user can provide more knowledgeable and personalized customer service.
• Siebel CRM to I-flex FLEXCUBE Integration enables a quick, integrated account and fulfillment process, reducing the time required to open an account, while allowing fast service request processing across multiple request channels.

Oracle’s commitment to providing industry solutions has never been stronger; they customers experience it, their partners share it, and analysts recognize the scope and strength of offerings that have been carefully developed with the input of thousand of valuable customers.

Oracle industry applications are based on a wealth of industry experience and are tailored to address the unique challenges and processes that drive the business. Oracle applications and technologies provides a uniquely platform that is helping industry leaders around the world get the most accurate and up-to-date information from their business systems.

Recovery Manager (RMAN) was introduced in Oracle 8.0 and enabled true incremental backups for the first time. Prior to RMAN, database exports could be taken incrementally, but if any block in a table was changed, the entire table was written. RMAN incremental backups write only the changed blocks from a given data file, thus saving space.

Priori to the version 10g, however, incremental backups required a scan of an entire data file to detect which blocks in it had changed. For very large databases, this made the time required for incremental not much better than for full backups, even though space was saved.  Change tracking, sometimes called Block Change Tracking, provides a solution by recording to a separate Change Tracking file, which blocks have changed. The changes are written in real time by a background process.

This is a performance impact to enabling Change Tracking, so unless you are using RMAN’s incremental backup feature, it is best left disabled. But if you are doing incremental backups, the time lost recording changes will be more than made up in faster backups.

Some industries are aerospace and defense, high technology (semiconductor, complex electronic equipment, computers, peripherals and consumer electronics, electronics contract manufacturing), oil and gas, professional services, public sector (national and local government, defense, justice and public safety), chemicals, industrial manufacturing (durable goods, heavy equipment and machinery manufacturing, industrial products), retail, telecom, education and research (higher education and research, k-12 primary and secondary education), life sciences (clinical applications, medical services, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology), travel and transportation (airlines, airports, logistics), financial services (banking, insurance, capital markets), media and entertainment, utilities (electricity, gas, water, waste), natural resources (raw material producers, mining, mill products), healthcare (health payers, health providers, government healthcare agencies). The future is looking so bright for Oracle!

Jan Baan created the Baan Corporation in 1978 in Barneveld, Nederland, providing administrative and financial consulting services. Jan Baan entered what was to become the ERP industry. A few years later, Paul Baan, Jan’s brother, joined the company. It is the largest software family firm in Dutch history. After some accounting scandals, some losses occurred and Baan was sold to Invensys, a firm from UK.

In 2003 poor market performances of Baan ERP led Invensys to sell Baan to SSA Global Technologies. Since that moment, the promoted brand was SSA Baan.

With 44 implementations in 25 years and zero failures, SSA Baan implement projects on time, staying in the budget and plan for the short, medium and long term plans.

Future plans are involving the product’s lifecycle management, to elevate customer service level from order acquisition through manufacturing and subsequent service and maintenance. Another goal is to increase flexibility in order-driven manufacturing.

HP and SSA Global made a product together to offer the best in class end-t-end ERP solutions. Baan is a really sophisticated system, and its “Milestone Deliverables� philosophy has no failure. This is an ERP system that is responding to customer demands with flexibility, not holding back. 

Baan is helping the firms to achieve manufacturing excellence. The specialists are saying that no other ERP system offers the breadth and depth of support for order-driven, project-based discrete manufacturing. From made-to-stock to engineer-to-order and from flow line technology to lean manufacturing, Baan recovers all the requirements. Full product lifecycle management enables you to elevate customer service levels from order acquisition through manufacturing and subsequent service and maintenance.

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