Oracle Touts Document Sharing ServiceOracle Touts Document Sharing Service

Oracle, fighting to maintain its slim margin over IBM in the database market, is trumpeting the content management capabilities of its newly released Oracle9i and is preparing to release a hosted service for storing and sharing documents.

Oracle Files Online, scheduled for availability later this year, will enable customers to upload documents and attach identifiers, so a user can search for files based on its attributes, such as author and subject matter. Customers can manage content using a Web browser.

The Redwood Shores, Calif., company plans to offer the service through reselling agreements to application service providers and telecommunications companies, says George Demarest, director of database marketing. Mid-market companies may also want to use the service within corporate intranets.

The simplified interface for Files Online will become the standard interface for Oracle9i's Internet File System, which manages all types of data, including flat files, documents, Web pages, graphics, and video. "We're moving into a marketplace where people want to do content mining, not just data mining," Demarest says. "Oracle is working toward managing content just like it does any type of data. Therefore, there's a need for centralizing all files." The upgraded IFS interface will ship with the next version of Oracle9i, scheduled for release early next year.

The current version of Oracle9i, which has advanced search capabilities, the Internet File System, and XML support, gives customers as much as 90% of the services needed for enterprise-level content management, Demarest says. "We can save companies a lot of expense and work by providing built-in content management services and letting them do the last bit of customization," he says.

Oracle has also taken steps to give customers a better price. Last month, it announced a new pricing model amounting to a 30% price cut for customers upgrading to the 9i database. The price drop comes at a time when rival IBM is closing in on Oracle. Last year, Oracle controlled 33.8% of the $8.8 billion database software market vs. IBM's 30.1% and Microsoft's 14.9%, according to market researcher Gartner Dataquest. Microsoft's SQL Server is the best-selling database on Windows, and IBM has nearly doubled its Windows market share in the last two years. Also, IBM acquired Informix Corp. in April, adding the company's 100,000 Unix and Windows database users to IBM's customer base.