The acquisitions of Cerner, FarApp, Federos, and GloriaFood in 2021 by Oracle Corporation (ORCL) are just a few examples of Oracle’s reach in the technology market. Acquisitions like this have helped develop Oracle in a multitude of ways, including application development, industry solutions, middleware, server expansion, storage capabilities, and network development.
Oracle has spent a significant amount of money on its acquisitions but its most expensive has been its purchase of PeopleSoft for $10.3 billion in 2005; however, Oracle's announcement in late 2021 of its acquisition of Cerner, if it goes through, will be its most expensive at $28.3 billion.
Due to the numerous products, services, and industries Oracle caters to, it is no surprise that there are a substantial number of important subsidiaries and integrated companies that result in Oracle having the second-highest gross revenue across all software companies.
Acme Packet produced session border controllers, security gateways, and session-routing proxies. It allowed secure and reliable communications across devices, regardless of network. Oracle entered into an agreement to acquire Acme Packet in 2013 for $2.1 billion. At the time of the acquisition, Acme Packet’s solutions were utilized by almost 90% of the world’s top 100 communications companies. Acme Packet was founded in 2000 and was headquartered out of Bedford, Massachusetts.
Oracle acquired BEA Systems in 2008 for $8.5 billion. The acquisition was made to bolster Oracle’s Fusion middleware software suite. Founded in 1995, the three founders of BEA were all former employees of Sun Microsystems. BEA Systems’ three major product lines were a transaction-oriented middleware platform called Tuxedo, an enterprise infrastructure platform, and a service-oriented architecture platform. All three products are utilized today, including the development of the Oracle Weblogic Server and Oracle Service Bus.
Hyperion Corporation, a provider of performance management software, was acquired by Oracle in 2007 for $3.3 billion. It offered enterprise resource planning solutions, financial modules, and reporting products. The combination of the two companies resulted in the creation of the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.
In September 2014, Oracle completed the acquisition of MICROS Systems Inc. Previously headquartered in Maryland, MICROS provided enterprise applications to restaurants, hotels, casinos, and other entertainment businesses. The $5.3 billion deal to acquire MICROS enabled Oracle to expand its Retail and Hospitality Hardware and Software division. At the time of acquisition, MICROS technologies were used by over 330,000 customers in 180 countries.
Oracle’s 2016 acquisition of NetSuite expanded Oracle’s operations in cloud services. NetSuite was the first cloud company and was founded in 1998. NetSuite provided customers with a suite of software services to manage business operations and customer relationships. NetSuite provided products to over 40,000 companies in 100 countries. NetSuite was one of the biggest acquisitions ever made by Oracle, costing the company $9.3 billion, and giving their library of software a huge boost.
One of Oracle's most important and successful products is Java, which it acquired through its purchase of Sun Microsystems.
PeopleSoft provided numerous financial and business applications to address a range of business requirements. Oracle’s hostile takeover of PeopleSoft in 2005 cost $10.3 billion. Modules created by PeopleSoft included Human Capital Management, Financial Management, supplier Relationship Management, Enterprise Service Automation, Supply Chain Management, and PeopleTools.
Siebel Systems specialized in customer relationship management solutions. After paying $5.85 billion in 2005, Oracle acquired its main competitor in the sales automation program industry. Siebel’s customer relationship manager provided solutions to more than 20 industries and was integrated into Oracle’s Customer Experience portfolio. Founder Thomas Siebel was an Oracle executive from 1984 to 1990 before founding Siebel Systems in 1993. Siebel itself now operates as a product under the Oracle branding.
Founded in 1982, Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle in 2010 for $7.4 billion and was utilized in the production of Oracle Optimized Systems. Sun Microsystems helped develop a high-performance infrastructure for the Oracle Database, as well as the first Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Sun Microsystems’ personal portfolio of software developments has expanded under Oracle with the releases of Oracle Solaris, MySQL, and Java.
In its lifetime, Oracle has made 144 acquisitions, as of March 2022. The acquisitions have been both large and small and have allowed Oracle to expand its presence in a variety of fields.
Oracle's most recent acquisition, which is still pending, is that of Cerner in December 2021, for $28.3 billion ($95 a share). This acquisition will put Oracle in the IT healthcare space; a new frontier for the company.
Yes, Oracle makes hardware. Its hardware products include servers, storage, and engineered systems, with the goal of optimizing database performance at lower costs.
Training in sales is an exciting career, though it can also be a very frustrating one. Each salesperson you work with will respond to a different technique, and the possibility of conflict is always present when you put lots of driven, competitive people together. Indeed, a great deal of sales training is immersing new people in the culture of your business. Thankfully, there are ways to lay the right foundation, ensuring that the eager new salesperson in your charge can become a successful member of your sales force.
Acquaint new people with the corporate culture you've cultivated over the years. This ensures that there will be no misunderstandings. If a new person is hard-charging and ready to do whatever it takes to succeed, and your company is dedicated to a softer sell, make this immediately clear.
Withhold praise as much as possible. Many managers lavish the training salesperson with praise in an attempt to motivate. While you certainly shouldn't be an unpleasant taskmaster, you should pay compliments only when they are deserved. If you are able to adhere to this policy, then the praise you do give your team will mean more. After all, if people constantly hear positive things, they will not have as much desire to improve.
Establish concrete benefits and consequences. For example, a person training car salespeople could offer an extra half hour of lunch time to the first person to memorize all of the specifications of the SUVs on the lot. The last person to get with the program might have to make extra calls to prospects. A writer at startupnation.com goes one step further, advising you to set performance goals. The success your people experience with respect to these goals will help you decide to make changes in what you're offering, change the way you're offering it or reset your goals to more reasonable levels.
Involve the most successful members of your existing sales team in a closed-door meeting with the trainees. While you're out getting coffee, the top salesperson will be telling the new people how to succeed in the environment you've created. As long as you choose a salesperson you trust, you'll be propagating the attitude that made you a success.
Embark on a friendly field trip to see how the competition operates. When a new jewelry salesperson discreetly observes the mistakes and positive moves made by people at another jeweler, your lessons will be reinforced.
Provide a training salesperson with a script they can follow the first few times they are with a customer. This is all about expanding the comfort zone. With a little real-world experience under the belt, a strict script will not be necessary, but the best part of the sales pitch will remain in the employee's arsenal.
If Army captains headed to one of the major combat training centers are looking for pointers, the officers who will challenge and evaluate them there recently shared a few.
At last month’s Maneuver Warfighter Conference on Fort Benning, Georgia, observer/controllers from each of the three major centers shared what they’ve seen, both good and bad, in units they face off against in simulated combat.
Capt. Galen King from the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California; Capt. Andrew Mueller from the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana; and Capt. David Conser from the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Germany listed key tips they hope company commanders might consider before their next rotation in the box.
“Units consistently struggle to accomplish basic tasks that enable success or survivability on the battlefield,” Conser said. Leaders, regardless of their echelon level, “do not clearly articulate the commander’s intent or concept of operation.”
Conser stressed that a CTC rotation is a rare chance for commanders to road test their unit; coming prepared and having thought through and rehearsed every detail of their mission is vital to a successful rotation.
Mueller told the audience that at the company level he’s seen a host of positive trends and challenges that seem common across formations.
On the positive side, more units are not using roads and are improving their use of high explosives. Units really know how to employ their weapons systems, and their understanding of small unit tactics has increased over past rotations, Mueller explained.
Common challenges included a lack of routine security measures, poor troop-leading procedures, a failure to prioritize tasks, and the ineffective use of terrain to conceal or maneuver. Many also had essentially nonfunctional command posts, Mueller added, and they failed to fight to, through and beyond the objective, misunderstanding the difference between movement and maneuver.
Essentially, movement is getting units and equipment, with associated logistical support, to a predetermined location. That could happen rolling down an interstate and pulling off to a sideroad before parking trucks at a range.
But maneuver uses the terrain features to gain a tactical advantage, remaining concealed until the opportune time to strike or execute a portion of the mission, whether that’s making contact with the enemy force or retaining a reconnaissance position to observe and collect information.
“Leaders aren’t comfortable maneuvering; they don’t understand transitions from movement to maneuver,” Mueller said. “So units will just do these charges across open ground and not use terrain to mask movement and stay concealed.”
Mueller advised future captains to train the doctrine at home station, ensure they’re delivering clear and concise communication, and practice that before their rotation. It’s also important to build preformatted products, such as checklists, to refer to in a pinch.
For his part, King reminded soldiers that their next rotation likely won’t be similar to the one during the counterinsurgency wars given the modern battlefield is transparent; you can see and be seen. Planners must design their process to account for brigade and division rotations, and the pace of logistics is going to strain expectations set from some Afghanistan and Iraq deployments, where everything needed was quickly available.
To replicate the operational environment the Army expects to see in future conflict, King underscored how much simulated fires have increased for units at the centers. The blue force in one rotation conducted 27 howitzer fire missions, sending more than 800 artillery rounds down range, another 400 rounds of 120mm mortars and 550 rockets from the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System.
The red force sent more than 2,100 artillery rounds, along with nearly 500 mortar rounds and 1,827 rockets of the 122mm variety.
That’s a bit more than many saw on deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
One of the most beautiful aspects of
cross-country running is that it’s not just you against the competition and yourself; it’s also you versus Mother Nature. Which means you need specific cross-country training to be successful. Running over a variety of surfaces—from dirt and grass to mud and asphalt to gravel and everything in-between—you’ll find sharp turns, short steep hills, long cambered sections, logs to jump, creeks to cross, and bridges to negotiate. This all combines to constantly disrupt your rhythm much more so than a race run on an even, flat surface.Whereas, for most runners, track and road races are largely dictated by pace, cross-country racing is largely dictated by effort. Even on the rare occasions that they’re available, mile splits are mostly meaningless in cross-country. Trying to maintain pace through constant changes of footing, elevation, and direction can cause a midrace tie-up that’s painful to experience and can result in a placing far lower than your fitness merits.
Instead, the goal is to learn to employ a steady effort rather than to set an even pace.
“A well-planned cross-country course will do everything possible to disrupt your stride, your pace, and your focus,” says Pete Magill, author, coach, and five-time USA Masters Cross-Country Runner of the Year. “So the trick is to stop worrying about stride or pace. Find an effort level that you’re confident you can maintain, then make that your guide.”
You can learn what that effort should be—and teach your body to maintain it—with cross-country training tailored to the demands of racing.
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Successfully training for cross country follows the same basic training guidelines used when preparing for road races or long track events. Long runs, tempo work, and long and short intervals interspersed with maintenance and recovery runs are the basic building blocks of training.
For cross country, however, you’ll need to incorporate terrain, elevation, and course changes that mimic what you’ll encounter on race day. By regularly tackling the sorts of rhythm breakers cross country throws at you, you’ll adapt and learn how to dole out the appropriate effort for the length of the race you’re running. The more course-specific your preparation, the better.
“The thing I’ll do is scope out the course we want to run our best on and try to mimic that course with some of our workouts,” says Armando Siqueiros, who coached Jordan Hasay to a Foot Locker national title at Mission Prep High School in San Luis Obispo, California. “We’ll run our fartlek or repeats over different ‘parts’ of the course. The kids can then imagine themselves running over the terrain they’ll be racing on.”
Joe Vigil, who coached Deena Kastor and many other national cross-country champions, agrees with this approach. “If possible,” he says, “survey the courses you’re racing and duplicate the challenges of the course as much as possible within your surrounding geography. Make it tough, as hard as you can make it, then run a weekly workout on it hard.”
Join Runner’s World+ for more training tips! 🏃♂️🏃🏿♀️Here are the key elements to take into account when designing cross country-specific workouts.
1. Crush hills
Some cross-country courses are pancake-flat, but these are the exceptions. Part of the appeal of cross country is that most races take place in parks or on golf courses, places of peace and tranquility, most of which feature some slight to severe elevation gains and losses. Spending time becoming proficient at going up and down is the surest way to faster race times.
The San Luis Obispo chapter of the Asics Aggies Running Club uses several workouts to adapt to the ups and downs of cross-country.
Workout 1: Find a mile-length course (roughly) that is gradually uphill, preferably on a softer surface off the asphalt. Run the uphill portion at race effort to build strength. Once at the top, take a three- to five-minute recovery jog before heading back downhill, focusing on being fast and efficient. Do 3 to 6 repeats, depending on your weekly mileage. The idea is not to run the downhill as fast as possible—instead it is to run fast, but controlled.
Over the course of a few weeks of doing these, the times on the uphill sections Strengthen steadily, as expected, but most people see a dramatic improvement on the downhill sections. Early in the season, the difference in times between the uphill and downhill sections will usually be between 20 and 30 seconds. By the end of the season, the difference is more like 30 to 40 seconds, indicating greatly increased proficiency in running downhill.
Workout 2: This involves doing tempo runs that start with a gradual uphill for 800 meters, then turning around and running 800 meters downhill, and repeating the sequence for the length of your normal tempo run. Maintain a tempo effort—strong and steady, but controlled—throughout. In the last few weeks of the season, increase the intensity by running the uphills at cross-country race effort while keeping the downhills at tempo effort.
Workout 3: This is a tempo run over rolling hills or on grass, dirt, or wood chip trails—anything but a flat, even asphalt surface. (And don’t even think about doing these on a track during cross-country season!) Siqueiros had Hasay do many of her tempo runs on an 800-meter grass field made up of two fields separated by a small hill. Each 800 has a short steep uphill and downhill to negotiate. Plus it’s on grass, similar to the courses found in California.
Uneven terrain, soft dirt, thick grass, and mud all require additional energy to negotiate. Your knee lift is higher; the energy needed to maintain form on uneven surfaces is greater; your push-off is stronger; and the energy returned from the push-off on soft surfaces is much less than the track or roads—all of which necessitates additional attention if you’re to become proficient.
“I train for things I can Strengthen and ignore things I can’t,” Magill says. “You can’t directly train to be better at running through mud, but you can run hill repeats and long hills to Strengthen knee lift, which, in turn, helps you with both hills and, voilà, running through mud on cross-country courses.”
Magill does 50 percent of his running on trails, too, saying that doing so regularly utilizes all the muscles associated with a varied and choppy stride. Plus, trail running is beneficial to practice focusing on where your feet are landing.
Siqueiros notes, “I’ll start off with simple fartlek on secure, even footing. As the season advances, move on to real cross-country courses or surfaces. I’ll also just do our regular intervals, 400s, 800s, or mile repeats over cross-country courses and terrain, grass, dirt, or even sand.”
Given the increased muscular strength needed for effective cross-country running, some supplementary work will help you train and race more effectively. In particular, focus on your core, hip flexors, and lower legs.
Magill offers the following exercise to address all these areas: “I’ll lie on my back, hold up one leg, and draw the alphabet with my foot to reintegrate all the muscles in my lower legs to better handle the uneven terrain of cross country,” he says.
This exercise also requires a great deal of core and hip flexor strength to accomplish. Eccentric strengthening exercises of the Achilles tendon are also helpful, particularly for masters athletes who may have several years of mostly running in heeled shoes on level terrain behind them.
For championship meets, the starting area is specified to be no less than a 300-meter straight line until you meet your first turn or narrowing. Not all courses provide a free and clear 300 though—most provide less.
Even if you have the full 300 meters, the imminent narrowing dictates a key rule of cross-country: You must be able to get out quickly and efficiently from the gun without undue stress. Being left behind at this stage puts you at a disadvantage as the course narrows and passing becomes more tactical. Do you need to be in the lead at the first turn? No, but you don’t want to be last either. You want to get yourself in the best position possible without killing yourself to do so.
To prepare for this, Kara June, third at the 2008 national club cross-country championships, will do intervals of 200 to 400 meters on a flat grass field. She’ll do 6 to 12 repeats at a pace that’s 5 to 10 seconds per 400 meters faster than her cross country race effort. This effort is plenty fast enough to Strengthen her mechanics, efficiency, speed, and strength such that she can establish a solid position for herself the first 200 to 300 meters of a race and be able to settle into the race without undue stress or strain.
Most courses will have an obstacle such as a narrow bridge, a sharp turn around a tree, a single-track path, even a creek crossing at a key point that will force runners to slow into and accelerate out of the obstacle to maintain position.
The athletes in the top positions are at a significant advantage as they have a clear path around or over these obstacles. As you move back in the pack, the slowing into each obstacle is more severe as a greater number of people attempt to negotiate the obstacle. Similar to being at the end of a traffic jam, those at the back lose precious time, and they’re then forced to sprint with greater effort after the obstacle to try to regain position, thereby putting even more of a premium on developing the ability to repeatedly slow into an obstacle and accelerate out efficiently.
On her 200- to 400-meter grass intervals, June runs a square circuit. Unlike a track, where the shape of the 400 is an oval with gradual turns, her grass 400 is literally square, with 100-meter segments on all four sides and a sharp 90-degree turn at each corner. She runs these at a pace significantly faster than her target race effort, plus she is forced to slow into and accelerate out of each corner, learning the relatively quick 5 to 10 steps acceleration often needed to regain contact or establish position.
An important part of cross-country racing success is adapting your strengths as a runner to the various courses while minimizing your weaknesses. Additionally, patience and confidence in your race strategy are key virtues.
“What I first try to do is to let the kids know that a cross-country race is a race to the finish line—we talk about the ebb and flow of a race,” Siqueiros says. “I remind them what happens in the middle or beginning does not necessarily reflect what happens at the end. Therefore, don’t panic if things don’t seem to be going your way.”
Magill agrees, saying that when your effort level is disrupted, calmly, and patiently climb back up on the horse. Then, return to the proper effort level without exceeding that effort level to do so.
“I’ve fallen twice in masters national cross-country championship races,” Magill says. “In the first race, I tried to hurry back to the front of the pack and ended up dying, eventually finishing 30 seconds behind the leader. In the second race, I was patient; I returned to the correct effort level, caught the leaders a mile later, and won the race.”
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CLEVELAND, Ohio (WJW) — Fox 8’s Kristi Capel recently added a new member to the family named “Rocky” and while life with the puppy is going well, Kristi and her husband Hal are hungry for some helpful training tips. Jennifer Topalian is the owner of ‘The Grateful Dog‘ and she spent some time with the family to offer advice on potty training, nipping, discipline and more. To learn more about The Grateful Dog click here.
Fox 8's Kristi Capel recently added a new member to the family named "Rocky" and while life with the new puppy is going well, Kristi and her husband Hal are hungry for some helpful puppy training tips. Jennifer Topalian is the owner of 'The Grateful Dog' and she spent some time with the family to offer advice on potty training, nipping, discipline and more. To learn more about 'The Grateful Dog' visit https://www.thegratefuldog.org/
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In a recent video on his YouTube channel, bodybuilding coach
Eugene Teo shares some of the things he wishes he'd known when he first started lifting weights, specifically when it comes to how to train more effectively for bigger back day gains.First, don't be afraid of letting your upper back and shoulders round forwards. "This is the best way to stretch and train the muscles of the upper back," says Teo. "One thing you'll see me emphasizing a lot on the pulldowns and the rows that I do, is I really try to think about opening up and reaching around as much as possible... Depending on the angle you're pulling from, this will feel a lot better in some positions more than others, and on those exercises you should definitely let your shoulderblades roll forwards more."
His second piece of advice is: don't underestimate the value of cross-body exercises. Teo calls them a "huge missing piece in most people's workouts," as limiting yourself to one plane of motion also limits the amount of stretch you can place on the back muscles. You can adjust this with something as simple as merely offsetting your body positioning on a cable row, so that you're reaching around your chest slightly as well as pulling the cable downwards and towards you through space.
Thirdly, don't avoid working out on machines. "Machines help you train positions that you can't train as effectively with just free weights," he says.
Finally, Teo recommends using lifting straps. This is especially useful if you find that you reach fatigue with your grip strength before your other muscles during back training, as it will enable you to keep churning out high quality reps for longer in your next back day workout.
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
