Ellison's Absence A Buzzkill For Security Show

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SAN FRANCISCO — Hundreds of attendees headed for the exit from the keynote hall here at the RSA Conference 2007 upon learning Oracle (Quote) CEO Larry Ellison was a last-minute scratch due to the flu.

The exodus did nothing to lessen the disappointment, which wrapped the room
like a wet blanket.

Ellison’s absence was notable because Oracle has become a serious contender
in the white-hot space for protecting corporate assets with identity
management infrastructure software, thanks to a series of acquisitions and
some home cooking.

Hasan Rizvi, vice president of identity management and security products at Oracle broke the news to the roughly 4,000 people in the keynote hall at the Moscone Center. Rizvi then soldiered on in Ellison’s place for 25 minutes. He demonstrated Oracle’s Secure Enterprise Search 10g, a piece of software designed to help enterprise customers find specific information without compromising corporate security.

The application, first launched
last year, employs an interface that looks a lot like the efficient
interface Google offers.

Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g originally only searched Oracle data
sources, such as the Oracle Database, Oracle Portal, Oracle Content
Database and Oracle Applications.

The search software now supports
non-Oracle information sources such as EMC Documentum Content Server
DocBases, FileNet Content Engine object stores, IBM Lotus Notes databases,
Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers, and Open Text Livelink, among
others.

Rizvi including the creation of the Management Pack for Identity Management, which lets
customers manage Oracle security software from a single console.

The software, an adaptation of the Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g management
software specifically for ID management, lets businesses locate ID
management tools in a computer system, monitor system performance, and find
and fix faults.

“Clearly our focus is on information security. Our focus is on protecting the information, protecting the data and protecting the applications that provide that data… and to focus on doing it in a heterogeneous environment,” Rizvi told the considerably thinner crowd.

Rizvi also said Oracle’s identity management software is now certified to
work with Oracle E-Business Suite 12 and Oracle’s Siebel 8 applications.

Oracle also said today it has submitted the Identity Governance Framework
(IGF) to the Liberty Alliance royalty-free. The IGF was developed by Oracle
to help companies protect sensitive employee, customer and partner
information.

Liberty Alliance will drive the IGF specifications going forward.

Oracle’s identity management suite, which competes with similar offerings
from IBM (Quote), HP (Quote), CA (Quote) and
other security vendors, was created from a combination of in-house
development and the acquisitions of Oblix,
Thor Technologies and
OctetString.

The stack includes Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Identity Federation, Oracle
Enterprise Single Sign-on, Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Internet
Directory, Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Web Services Manager.

Ellison’s keynote appearance, which would have been one of the rare public
speaking engagements the CEO has made since President Charles Phillips joined the
company a few years ago, was expected to symbolize Oracle’s growing strength
in security.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.