Ok, once again I'm going to describe what I do at Oracle. First, what does Oracle do? Oracle's first and primary product is the Oracle Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). It's what the company was founded on 25 years ago and it's still our primary Line of Business (LOB). The Oracle RDBMS is probably the most used high-end database in the world. IBM is second with DB2, but it only runs on IBM hardware which limits their growth. Other high end databases are Informix and Sybase, both of which have fallen on hard times due to some mismanagements.

At the low end you have desktop databases such as Microsoft Access and FileMaker Pro. In general, the low end databases have just as many databasey features as the high end. But high end databases support clustering, better error correction and recovery, massive scalibility, and other features that big business requires. One place where low end databases win is they have much better user interfaces and more intuitive development tools.

The last category of databases are various Open Source databases, mySQL being the one that comes to mind, though there are others. In general these databases have the user interface of the high end with the features of the low end. They're still years away from being reliable enough for running a big company on. But they are Open Source which has some nice upsides, such as free licenses and you don't have to worry about the parent company going out of business and taking its product with it.

But, as is with many larger companies, our primary LOB is not the only one. Oracle's second LOB is Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Basically, this is all the back-end applications that run a company. Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Human Resources, and a bunch of other businessy applications that every large company needs to run its operations. Naturally, our ERP applications run on the Oracle Database. Our ERP Division has been around for about a decade and it brings in about revenue as the Database Division.

ERP applications are called back-end because customers never really deal with it. If you look at a company from a customer's perspective, ERP applications stand behind the company facade. The applications a customer deals with, either in the form of a direct interface or the applications that are used by customer service people, are front-end applications. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) are those applications that help companies deal directly with customers.

Oracle's CRM Division has been around for about four years. Basically, if a customer deals with this person, then that person's applications are CRM apps. From the salesperson who calls you on the phone, to the customer rep that answers your call for help, to the repair person that comes to your home to fix your television, all the computer applications they use (that deal with the business process) fall under CRM. This doesn't include Word Processors or Spreadsheets, which are generic tools.

I work for the Call Centers and Telephony (CCT) group of CRM. So I guess I first need to explain Call Centers. What is a Call Center? Physically, it is a room full of people next to phones. These people's only job is to talk to customers. Either they're calling you to sell you something or collect money, or they're taking calls from people wanting help or to order products. It's a very repititive, low-end job that doesn't require anything other than a nice voice.

Call Center agents use computer applications. Not only that, those computer applications are CRM-type applications. When you call the Call Center, an agent answers your call. Just before they answer, they get a screen pop -- a window opens with your customer information -- that way they're ready to help you immediately. One of the more recent features of pizza places around here is that when you call them, they already have your address and pizza preferences on their screen so you don't have to keep giving it to them. That's just one example of why a screen pop is useful.