2012 Proves to be Award-Winning Year for Oracle

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This year is off to a good start for Oracle, as the company won several prestigious awards which put Oracle at the top of their game. Can the business software provider continue its success throughout 2013?

Oracle's LogoV3 readers awarded Oracle as Best Business Intelligence Vendor at the V3 Technology Awards 2012. After receiving the award, an interview with Nick Whitehead, senior director for business intelligence (BI) at Oracle UK, highlighted some relevant areas for Oracle and IT professionals as a whole regarding how 2013 looks for the ICT industry. Mr Whitehead discussed the systems developed by Oracle in the past year and how BI is affecting decisions being made and for the future.

Mr Whitehead highlighted that 90% of the world’s data was created since the beginning of 2011 with expectations for this data volume to multiply 50 times by 2020. He emphasised this by adding:

“Often it is talked about as a problem for IT – how do you capture and store all that new information? There’s lots of it, it’s arriving fast and there’s lots of variety. Our customers are starting to ask ‘how do we get business value from all that data we’ve never captured or analysed before.’ I think that’s a better question. Value is realised with analytics. We want to help our customers find answers with business analytics. In every industry we’re seeing answers emerging, new business models where using all this new data is imperative. Once the business case is clear and understood, we can help them solve the IT problem with good architecture and engineered systems to allow them to acquire and organise it in a cost effective way”

Advancements like these help many understand why IT has continued to be a thriving sector compared to other business sectors across the globe. The technological possibilities in answering these raised questions also mean for those in oracle jobs, forthcoming year is set to be an interesting and rewarding time.

Oracle’s success continued with being recognised as the global market leader in customer care systems and in overall market share by revenue. Leading industry analyst company Analysys Mason published the report in January 2013 based on 2011 shares.

Mark Mortensen, principal analyst at Analysys Mason, commented on the announcement saying:

“Customer care systems are increasingly important to communications service providers as they work to gain competitive advantage and reduce customer churn. ‘All-in-one’ CRM systems, such as Oracle’s offering, help CSPs reduce costs and grow revenue by enhancing self-service channels, improving cross-channel sales and marketing efforts and improving business analytics”

Yet another success came with Oracle being placed in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner Inc in its 2012 “Magic Quadrant for Integrated Revenue and Customer Management for CSPs” report. This is based on the high level of vision and ability within the company.

Widely recognised as the leader in the field, Oracle seems to going from strength to strength, will 2013 be another award-winning year for Oracle and their workers?

Quality vs quantity – the blogging dilemma

When I write, I want to write quality articles; articles which interest, amaze and inspire. Mediocre content annoy me. If ever I write something which I consider of low quality, I never publish it – I will either review it or scrap it.

A Wordle of blogging wordsI want to make a difference in the world, be it a small or big difference (I would prefer big) I have to start on a personal scale. If I can improve your life by changing the way you think and feel (for the better), and enriching your knowledge and understanding, then I am doing my job.

I love reading Jonny’s posts every week, they always interest me and many have inspired me to make (usually small) changes in my life and have often caused me to write something myself. Jonny posts once a week, on a Thursday – with the odd exception. Would he be able to post such great content if he posted twice a week? What about three times? I don’t know.

I am not meaning to pick on Jonny, once a week is just great and very appreciated. One day Jonny will stop writing as often, and one day he will stop writing all together. I hope that day is a long way off, and by that time I have no doubt that we will have other writers writing the quality and quantity of content that he writes.

The same goes for me. I get a lot from blogging at the moment, I love the researching and crafting process that goes into making an article, and I also love the responses. But one day I shall probably stop too.

Think about your favourite TV show, how often does it air? Usually (with exceptions) the best shows/series take months to produce and don’t launch every day/week of the year.

Blogging is the same. I want us to post 6 great articles a week. Jonny gives us one of those posts. I am usually able to provide another, and we often get the third from another writer – like Steve, Ron, Alan or another writer. Usually we only post 4 or 5 articles a week, and that’s fine. I would like to post 6, but would rather post 4 quality articles than 6 mediocre ones.

Blogs that post less often, usually don’t have such a great readership. It’s a fact. There are exceptions of course. What would a news site be, if it only published once a week?

If I was able to monetise Technology Bloggers so that I could run it as a business, then I could dedicate more time to it, as it would become a job, not just a hobby. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes we do host the odd bit of sponsored content, to help pay the hosting bills, and fund competitions, but this site is never going to make millions. I am not sure I would still want to blog, if it was solely for money though, so I don’t want to monetise the site.

So, here is the dilemma I have: produce okay content, daily; or produce quality content, less often.

I want to post 6 articles a week, only 3 are provided, who plugs the gap? Usually me. If I don’t I feel bad, as I don’t feel I have fulfilled my duty to the site. If I post the extra posts needed, but they aren’t quite as good as content I have produced before, I am angry that I let the posts go live.

There is a very fine balance which needs to be struck, and I am not sure I am there just yet.

Would you prefer to read 5 star articles once a week, 4 star articles twice a week, or 2 star articles daily?

The reason I am writing this is because I feel we had a great 2012, I had a great 2012 as a blogger, especially in the last few weeks. That said, I know my diary for 2013 is already looking pretty full. Friends, family, education, work and recreation all take a lot of our time, and rightly so. However other commitments I have, do mean that I will have less time to write in 2013.

Rest assured, I am not throwing in the towel and am going to continue to do my best to keep us up and running at full capacity, but there is a lot to do.

If you want to help, I am more than happy to accept suggestions. I would love to promote more users to author status, and give everyone more control.

What did you Wiki search for in 2012?

Did you use Wikipedia in 2012? Probably a silly question, as according to Alexa, 12.80% of all web users yesterday visited the online encyclopaedia, as part of their online day. The 3 month average reach of Wikipedia.org is 12.575%, so yesterday’s figure was no anomaly.

I usually visit Wikipedia multiple times a week.

Wikipedia logoThe fact that Wikipedia is open source is good, as it enables it to use the help of millions of people around the world to build its massive online encyclopaedia. Open source does however also leave it open to vandalism, as on most articles, nobody needs to verify your changes. Many Wikipedia articles are very accurate though, and they are getting better year on year.

In 2012, what was it you Wikied? A few days ago, Wikipedia released a list of the most popular pages visited on its site, segmented by country. The statistics make interesting reading, if you get some time.

With 32,647,942 views in 2012, Facebook topped Wikipedia’s list for the most visited English page. Wiki came in second with 29,613,759 views. Deaths in 2012, One Direction, The Avengers (2012 film), Fifty Shades of Grey and the 2012 phenomenon all had over 20 million views. The Dark Knight Rises, Google and The Hunger Games (all with 18+ million views) made up the rest of the English top 10 list.

For all of the top 10, I think you can understand why they were such popular searches. As Facebook becomes evermore a global brand, more and more people want to know what it is, and those using it, want to know more about it. A logical big winner.

With Wikipedia the 6th most visited site on the net, searching for what Wiki means, is probably not unexpected. One Direction, the 2012 phenomenon, The Hunger Games, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers were all popular 2012 trends online and off, hence their Wikipedia fame. Like Facebook, with growing web usage, and Google’s top spot on the web, that page you would naturally expect top have a big viewing.

The list isn’t limited to 10 pages though, Wikipedia have released the top 100 pages for many of the languages the site is published in.

Stephen Hawking - Photo from WikipediaThe 100th most visited English page is Stephen Hawking, the page about the British scientist, which had just over 7 million views in 2012.

Theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author, lecturer, defier of motor neurone disease and now 100th most visited English Wikipedia page 2012, what a career the 70 year old (71 tomorrow) has had!

With an extra 53,106 views, Albert Einstein just beat Hawking, claiming 98th place. That said, neither of the scientists had anything on Psy, who saw the page for Gangnam Style hit the 21st spot, with over 13 million views!

Many of the top 100 spots were claimed by websites (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Google etc.), countries (United States, United Kingdom, India, Australia etc.) and trends (Katy Perry, 2012 Summer Olympics, Skyfall, Downton Abbey etc.).


The stats for other languages are also interesting to look at. Facebook appeared in most of the lists, topping the Spanish list, claiming 10th place in the German list, 3rd in the French and Turkish, 4th in the Portuguese etc. Wiki was also very popular, appearing in the top 10 list for eight languages, as was Google, appearing in three languages.

What did you Wiki search for in 2012? Can you even remember? I know I searched far too many pages to recall them all, but looking down the English list, I recall visiting most of the top 100.

Do the amazing figures behind this list (Facebook getting 30+ million on its English page alone) worry you sightly? Do we trust Wikipedia, which is potentially a very unreliable site too much?