SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - Oct 1, 2012) - ORACLE OPENWORLD -- Oracle (NASDAQ: [ ORCL ])

News Facts

• Oracle today announced the availability of the [ Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine ], a 100 percent real-time rating and balance management engine designed using patent-pending technology to process high-volume, next-generation communications services with unprecedented performance and efficiency.
• Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine can process more than three billion events per hour on a single Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud system. At this level of performance, the Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine is capable of rating and charging every phone call made in the world each day in real-time. (1)
• Skyrocketing data usage, smartphone and tablet proliferation, and consumers' increasing demand for choice and control, are forcing communications service providers (CSPs) to evaluate their current rating and charging capabilities for voice, data, cloud and machine-to-machine services. Thus, CSPs must consider factors including system performance and scalability, efficiency and business flexibility.
• Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine is built on [ Oracle Coherence ] -- a leading, in-memory data grid solution enabling distributed computation, parallel transactions, and event processing. Oracle's solution enables CSPs to dynamically scale charging capacity by distributing processing and data across multiple processors for very high-volume and complex communications services.

Product Details

• Extreme Performance and Scale: Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine exhibits high performance with low latency and provides virtually unlimited scale. The solution:
  • Processes all rating events rapidly by co-locating data and processing logic within cluster nodes; if one node goes down, the data already exists in backup in another
  • Provides automatic high availability through the low level replication of data and process. In a separate performance test using a database of 400 million subscribers, Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine processed 500,000 events per second with an average latency of only three milliseconds (2)
  • Enables CSPs to accommodate peak demand (e.g., high call volumes on New Year's Eve) by quickly expanding capacity without service interruption and retracting capacity when demand spikes subside
  • Has been tested, benchmarked and certified to run on Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud

• Engineered for Efficiency: Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine drives simplicity in a complex communications industry. The solution:
  • Can install in less than ten minutes and is built to run on hardware from commodity hardware to blade servers
  • Allows CSPs to perform zero-downtime upgrades
  • Extends the [ Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management ] solution with innovative new charging capabilities
  • Integrates with existing applications through open, standards-based interfaces and is pre-integrated with [ Oracle Communications Pricing Design Center ] to further streamline product and service introduction
  • Enables centralized management through a single management console with [ Oracle Enterprise Manager ]

• Real-time to Market and Differentiated Customer Experience: Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine transforms how communications industry innovation is delivered and monetized and supports a unique customer experience. The engine:
  • Enables service providers to process rating and charging functions in real-time, supporting unprecedented flexibility in the design and delivery of innovative services and offers
  • Provides patent-pending "advice of promotion" technology, which allows CSPs to alert customers to relevant offers in real-time, based on their profile and current usage pattern

Supporting Quotes

• "With the mobile market growing rapidly and moving away from 'all-you-can-eat' pricing plans, communications service providers must invest in operational capabilities to better position themselves to deliver a personalized user experience and monetize new service offerings. As a result, features such as high availability, scalability and flexible rating rules are becoming must-haves in the real-time charging market to support CSPs' new business models," said Shira Levine, directing analyst for next gen OSS and policy, Infonetics Research.
• "This next evolution of the Oracle family of rating and charging solutions is an exciting step forward for communications service providers. It enables both large and small operators to scale their billing systems to support next-generation communications services, including data-intensive and machine-to-machine transactions. The 100 percent online rating and balance management solution provides CSPs with the extreme performance they require to meet consumer demands," said Bhaskar Gorti, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications.

(1) [ Informa Research ] states that the world made 9.8 trillion circuit switched mobile and fixed phone calls in 2011. This equates to over 1.1 billion calls made globally every hour in real time. The Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine has undergone [ performance testing ], which shows it is capable of handling this volume using 24 nodes on a full rack of Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud system (utilizing the other six nodes to generate load for testing).

(2) The performance test system was comprised of one full rack of Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud X2-2, consisting of 30 Sun Fire X4170M2 compute nodes.

Supporting Resources

• [ Oracle Communications ]
• [ Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine ]
• [ Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine Datasheet ]
• [ Whitepaper: Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine: Performance Test for High Volume, Real-time Transaction Processing ] ([ Oracle Coherence ])
• [ Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management ]
• [ Oracle Communications Pricing Design Center ]
• [ Oracle Enterprise Manager ]
• [ Oracle Communications on YouTube ]
• [ Oracle Communications on Diigo ]
• [ Oracle Communications on Facebook ]
• [ Oracle Communications on Twitter ]
• [ Oracle Communications on LinkedIn ]
• [ Oracle OpenWorld 2012 ]
• [ Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Keynotes ]
• Like Oracle OpenWorld on [ Facebook ]
• Follow Oracle OpenWorld on [ Twitter ]
• [ Oracle OpenWorld Blog ]
• [ Oracle OpenWorld on LinkedIn ]

About Oracle Communications
Only Oracle's software and systems span the communications industry technology landscape -- from carrier-grade servers, storage and IT infrastructure, to mission-critical business and operational support systems and service delivery platforms; from business intelligence applications and retail point-of-sale solutions to the Java platform running on more than three billion mobile and handheld devices. Oracle helps 100 of the world's top 100 service providers innovate and exploit new business models, build strong, profitable customer relationships, and streamline operations. For more information, visit [ http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/communications/index.html ]

About Oracle in Industries
Oracle industry solutions leverage the company's best-in-class portfolio of products to address complex business processes relevant to the communications industry, helping speed time to market, reduce costs, and gain a competitive edge.

About Oracle
Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ: [ ORCL ]), visit [ www.oracle.com ].

About Oracle OpenWorld
Oracle OpenWorld San Francisco is the most important educational and networking event of the year for Oracle technologists, customers, and partners. This information technology event is dedicated to helping businesses optimize existing systems and understand upcoming technology breakthroughs. The conference, which draws more than 50,000 attendees from over 140 countries, offers more than 2,100 educational sessions, 400 product demos, exhibitions from 450 partners and customers showcasing applications, middleware, database, server and storage systems, industries, management and infrastructure -- all engineered for innovation. Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is being held September 30-October 4 at The Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information please visit [ www.oracle.com/openworld ]. Watch Oracle OpenWorld keynotes, sessions and more live on [ YouTube ]. Join the Oracle OpenWorld discussion on [ Twitter ], [ Facebook ] and the [ Oracle OpenWorld Blog ].

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