E-Business
Oracle Announces New Innovations in Cloud Platform for Digital Business
Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of Product Development at Oracle on Tuesday at Oracle OpenWorld 2014, outlined new innovations in Oracle Fusion Middleware.
With these enhancements, customers and partners can leverage the world’s leading cloud platform to power innovation and drive a digital business advantage throughout their organizations.
New features run the gambit of the Oracle Fusion Middleware portfolio, including new social, mobile, security, integration, and collaboration technologies.
Kurian highlighted major updates across the entire Oracle Fusion Middleware stack, including new platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and on-premises cloud offerings as well as mobile, security, content management, and data management and integration capabilities.
With these innovations, customers and partners can implement new digital business models and reduce costs by leveraging elastic private and public cloud architectures.
In addition to on-stage demos of the new offerings, Kurian highlighted the momentous customer adoption of Oracle Fusion Middleware.
Kurian was joined on stage by Steve Holland, CTO/CDO of 7-Eleven, who shared his company’s Oracle Fusion Middleware success story.
Cloud: Oracle’s public and private cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service(PaaS) offerings provide a complete, integrated, best-in-class and standards-based platform to lower integration costs, provide self-service capabilities to drive productivity, and deliver seamless workload portability between on-premises and cloud-based applications.
Further enabling customers and partners to leverage the power of the cloud, Oracle announced six new Oracle Cloud services—Oracle Big Data Cloud Service, Oracle Mobile Cloud Service, Oracle Integration Cloud Service, Oracle Process Cloud Service, Oracle Node Cloud Service, and Oracle Java SE Cloud Service.
These new services join the following Oracle Cloud platform services from the Oracle Fusion Middleware portfolio: Oracle Java Cloud Service, Oracle Messaging Cloud Service, Oracle Developer Cloud Service, Oracle Documents Cloud Service, and Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service.
Oracle mobile platform: Oracle Mobile Application Framework supports rapid mobile application development across multiple devices, and Oracle Mobile Security Suite provides mobile security for BYOD and shared devices, bringing together identity and access management.
To simplify secure mobile application development, Oracle deepened the integration between the two offerings, making it easier for developers to create rich mobile user experiences without compromising security.
The addition of Oracle Mobile Cloud Service also simplifies access to enterprise mobile services in the cloud, and the new Oracle Mobile Application Framework Composer allows users to accelerate and simplify the development of mobile applications by offering a visual and declarative way of delivering mobile applications.
Service integration: With the new Oracle Integration Cloud Service, Oracle Cloud Adapters, and Oracle Cloud Adapter Software Development Kit (SDK), organizations can simplify the integration of on-premises systems with customized and packaged cloud applications.
Customers can also support multichannel delivery of applications and services across mobile, Web, B2B, and cloud applications through new API management capabilities, REST, and JSON adapters.
Oracle provides complete API lifecycle management, including definition, creation, publishing, security, monitoring, and management of APIs and seamlessly integrates with private, public, and hybrid cloud solutions.
Business process management (BPM): The recently released Oracle Business Process Management Suite 12c is a comprehensive BPM platform that delivers business-driven process design and advanced process analytics.
The new Oracle Process Cloud Service supports process innovation and optimization through process monitoring and analytics; process automation capabilities including workflow, events, and rules; and mobile forms and workspace capabilities.
Data integration and business analytics: Recent data integration and business analytics offerings from Oracle provide a unified platform to speed analysis to insights and data movement across relational databases, operational systems, data warehouses, and Hadoop clusters.
Oracle Analytics Cloud is a comprehensive portfolio of analytics offerings built for the cloud, deployed in the cloud, and enabling data analysis for cloud, on-premises, traditional, and big data sources.
A new version of Oracle Enterprise Metadata Management covers the full breadth of metadata management and data governance needs in an organization, including data lifecycle management and harvest, and integrates third-party metadata, data governance, stewardship, and standardization.
Content and collaboration: Additional innovations enable collaboration in the context of business applications and integrate content management, collaboration, and process management into an agile platform for any department.
The new Oracle Documents Cloud Service provides document sharing securely across devices and with others using secure workspaces.
Oracle Social Network Cloud Service provides an enterprise social platform to facilitate collaboration within and across organizations.
Identity management: New identity management capabilities unify access management, identity management, and governance in a unified identity platform across on-premises systems and cloud for desktop, Web, and mobile applications.
The offering also enables interoperability across heterogeneous cloud services with modern security standards and protocols.
Oracle Cloud Application Foundation: Oracle Cloud Application Foundation, including Oracle WebLogic Server 12c Release 1 (12.1.3) and Oracle Coherence 12c Release 1 (12.1.3), aligns with the release of Oracle Java Cloud Service.
This is a significant release of Oracle’s core Java server infrastructure; in addition to major capabilities expanded for modern application development, it brings to fruition a key value proposition that enables Oracle customers to run their standards-based Java workloads in a private cloud or on-premises, on conventional hardware, or optimized for engineered infrastructure with Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and Oracle SuperCluster systems—all without change in the Oracle Cloud.
No other modern Java application infrastructure can provide this, Oracle said.
“As a very large multi-location retailer that runs 24x7x365, we demanded a better and safer way to connect with our external guests and deliver new innovations to market place faster and easier. With our Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies we are now able to provision new environments in less than a day. This includes the complete Oracle SOA Suite on Oracle Exalogic, with Oracle Enterprise Manager managing the Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Exalogic, and our Oracle Exadata databases,” said Steve Holland, CTO and CDO, 7-Eleven, Inc.
“With the data explosion, globalization, and the rise of social and mobile technologies, our customers are facing more challenges than ever before,” said Thomas Kurian, executive vice president, product development, Oracle. “Oracle is committed to delivering the technologies needed to help our customers turn those challenges into opportunities and to creating a modern, secure cloud infrastructure that can simplify IT, deliver a digital business advantage, and make it easier for organizations to deliver better customer experiences.”
Federal Government has unveiled plans to establish a National Cybersecurity Coordination Council, signaling a shift toward a more unified, intelligence-driven approach to defending the country’s rapidly expanding digital economy.
Conceived as a non-statutory, multi-stakeholder body, the proposed Council will enhance coordination, enable trusted information sharing, and guide government strategy on cybersecurity, risk management, and national response amid increasingly complex cyber threats.
The initiative, championed by Bosun Tijani, minister of communications, innovation and digital economy, is designed to bring together government institutions, private sector players and technical experts into a single collaborative platform to strengthen the country’s cyber resilience.
Tijani noted that this initiative comes in response to a wave of recent cyber incidents that have disrupted operations across key private institutions and public sector.
In recent times, Nigeria’s financial system has faced mounting cyber pressure, reflecting global trends as cybercrime is projected to cost the world over $10.5 trillion annually, according to Cybersecurity Ventures.
Analysts say these attacks are increasingly coordinated and sophisticated, prompting the government to recognise that fragmented, institution-specific approaches can no longer manage systemic cyber risks effectively.
Under the new framework, the government aims to promote a “collective defence” model, an approach widely adopted in advanced digital economies where threat intelligence is shared in real time across institutions.
The Council is expected to include chief information security officers, cybersecurity associations, the Nigerian Computer Society, global technology providers, researchers, law enforcement agencies and civil society groups, ensuring a broad-based and technically grounded response architecture.
Key priorities will include developing national threat intelligence-sharing systems, harmonised cyber defence protocols, and coordinated incident response, while strengthening capacity to close Nigeria’s cybersecurity talent gap.
Oracle, US-based technology giant, has initiated a sweeping round of layoffs affecting thousands of employees globally, with India among the worst-hit regions, according to multiple reports.
The job cuts, which began on March 31, are part of a broader restructuring exercise that could impact between 20,000 and 30,000 employees worldwide, making it one of the largest workforce reductions in the company’s history.
While the exact number remains unconfirmed, multiple reports suggest that around 12,000 employees in India have been affected,
Employees across several geographies, including India, the United States, Canada, and Mexico, reported receiving termination emails early in the morning, informing them that their roles had been eliminated with immediate effect.
“Today is your last working day,” the email stated, citing “organisational change” as the reason for the decision. Access to company systems, including email and internal platforms, was revoked shortly thereafter.
The communication, according to Business Insider, described the move as part of a broader “reduction in force and other terminations,” and said affected employees would be eligible for severance benefits subject to company policy.
The email also instructed employees to share personal contact details to receive separation documents.
In India, impacted employees have reportedly been offered severance packages that include 15 days’ salary for each completed year of service, notice period pay, leave encashment, gratuity where applicable, and an additional two-month salary top-up in cases of voluntary separation.
The layoffs are linked to Oracle’s strategic shift towards artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud infrastructure.
The company has announced plans to invest approximately USD 50 billion in AI infrastructure and has reportedly raised an equivalent amount in debt to fund its expansion.
In a recent regulatory filing, Oracle said it expects restructuring costs for fiscal 2026 to reach up to USD 2.1 billion, largely driven by severance payouts and related expenses.
The move comes as Oracle looks to strengthen its position against global cloud competitors such as Amazon and Alphabet.
Uncertainty continues to loom over employees, with reports indicating that another round of layoffs could follow in the coming weeks. Employees who were affected described the layoffs as abrupt, with little prior indication.
Some former staff members have taken to social media to share their experiences.
Tricia S Marsh, a former Senior Principal at Oracle, said the layoffs marked the end of an important chapter in her career while urging affected colleagues to remain hopeful.
As of May 2025, Oracle had around 162,000 full-time employees globally.
Kaspersky Global Research & Analysis Team (GReAT) has uncovered an active malicious campaign distributing a previously undocumented RAT with a very broad feature set. Beyond the standard remote access trojan functionality, it combines stealer, keylogger, clipper, and spyware capabilities.
Cybercriminals are selling it to third parties as MaaS (malware-as-a-service) promoting it on YouTube and Telegram, increasing the likelihood of its use across a wider range of actors, including less-skilled operators.
Due to its stealer functionality, the malware can collect a wide range of data about its victim: it gathers system information, extracts credentials for Steam, Discord and Telegram, and also harvests data from web browsers. It also poses a threat to cryptocurrency users, as it includes a browser-based clipper that replaces crypto wallet addresses.
Beyond data theft, CrystalX RAT is capable of full-scale surveillance, with the ability to take screenshots, record audio from the microphone, and capture video from both the webcam and the victim’s screen.
Particularly notable is the CrystalX RAT “playful” Prankware feature set, which is actively promoted by the developers. These capabilities allow operators to visibly interfere with the victim’s system by shaking the mouse cursor, setting wallpapers on the victim’s screen, changing screen orientation, hiding desktop icons, forcing system shut downs, and even delivering real-time pop-up notifications and messages to the victim.
While seemingly trivial, these features introduce a disruptive and psychological dimension to the attack, making the attack both visible and distressing for the victim.
Kaspersky reports attacks targeting users in Russia, but the trojan has the potential to spread to other countries due to its sales and distribution model.
“Such a diverse feature set effectively enables a 360-degree compromise of the victim and a complete loss of privacy. Beyond gaining access to account credentials, the stolen data could potentially be used for blackmail.
“At the moment, the initial infection vector is not precisely known, but it is already affecting dozens of victims. Our telemetry is already detecting new versions of the implants, indicating that this malware is still actively developed and maintained.
“We expect the number of victims to grow significantly and its geographic spread to expand in the near future,” says Leonid Bezvershenko, senior security researcher at Kaspersky GReAT.
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