An item which caught my attention was Oracle’s purchase of a calendar software firm:
Oracle has purchased Steltor, a small, 15-year-old company that offers calendaring software for businesses.
Oracle bought the Montreal-based company on June 21 as part of the database giant’s goal of improving its e-mail handling features built into its 9i application server-software and 9i database, an Oracle representative said. Steltor, which has about 600 customers, builds software that allows employees to manage their schedules, calendars and e-mail.
This is interesting. Taken together with the ads Oracle has been running about its database making Microsoft’s Mail “unbreakable”, it perhaps signifies a stronger push into corporate messaging and collaboration systems. Oracle’s view is perhaps that emails are objects which are better stored in databases (so more sales of Oracle) than in proprietary file formats by Outlook or Outlook Express.
Need to do some thinking on how an Application Server and Database can add value to email and calendaring.
