Why Businesses Don't Work

Whenever companies are unsuccessful to the level that losing exponentially spreads to bring down a significant industry, particularly business finance, all around the country, considerable financial dislocation takes place.

According to what happens today, as the business state worsens, the horrible chain of financial challenges persists: people lose their jobs and purchasing power, household expenses deal, aggregate demand dwindles, sales revenues decrease, companies close, business finance and credit halts, and new ventures appear in trickles. On a better macro portion, government economic health weakens because of despondent tax collections and heightened welfare advantages. This grim trend highlights the very sensitive, crucial, and cancer-like nature of business failure.

Businesses don't succeed because of a single factor, which is poor quality of planning and decision-making. All the given reasons that explains why businesses are unsuccessful are rational derivatives of inferior views and judgments that company owners and administrators do in operating their businesses. Business routines, strategic or operational, firstly evolve from planning, and after that a decision that is put into action. The action, consequently, creates an outcome that morphs into the proximate reasons for business failing.

Inferior marketing programs normally happen whenever a company fails to understand the significance of the four P's of marketing which are the product, price, promotions, and place. Mistakes or omissions in setting up and putting into action the four key success factors can establish gaps in the company's potential to earn desired levels of profits, handle costs in recommended restrictions, and recognize streams of beneficial cash flows.

These gaps could be in any of the following predicaments, like the product or service is just not aimed with what the market demands, features are overtaken by new technology or trends, low quality to what competition offer, substandard quality and craftsmanship.

Selling price is usually one of many points that could affect company's income, specifically when it is not profit-based and not customer-friendly, the customer thinks less value for their money, the placing is non-competing, it yields unpleasant edges, or maybe it lacks value-added gains like increased warranty, invoice factoring or long-term supply payments.

Additionally, it may be the company's campaigns for the product is poor when compared to its competitors. It can happen in numerous reasons such as marketing campaign messaging tactic is wrong, the media mix fails to get in touch with the intended markets, there is insufficient powerful online presence, the sales agents and other front-line workers don't have product knowledge and customer orientation, the sellers are rarely getting continual assistance, or customer service processes typically are not responsive to customer needs and demands.

The place or branches in which the company performs business are in the unsuitable areas where convenient customer access isn't feasible, business targeted traffic potential is very low due to the fact real estate fees are high and raises business costs, peace and order condition is a threat and logistics such as regular delivery service are an issue.

Every time an organization is encumbered with any or a mixture of these problems, revenue are not likely to maintain a future-compliant behavior of development. What happens is that the company will bleed a lot in seeking to plug the holes and seal the gaps even when revenue inflow remains at undesirable levels. The company subsequently suffers serious cash flow problems especially on its business finance and invoice factoring that lead to miserable business closure.

One guiding rule in business success is the capability to build up a culture of outstanding value to please the consumer and serve the public good. A business can only be expected to thrive in the event it is founded on a solid organization that has the potential to consistently demonstrate these seven significant structure which includes the strategy, structure, systems, style, staff, skills, and shared value.

Leaders, essentially at every level of the organization, are the people that make the vision and mission, build the strategy, infuse a winning tradition, and inspire people into cohesive teams to honorably attain the company's objective.

Ofelia Mozzanti is a freelance writer for business finance and writes about this amazing invoice factoring.

The Best Ways to Finance Your Small Business

The past few years have been difficult for small businesses, to be sure. With the economic downturn, sales have been slower and growth has been halted in many industries. Further, the credit crisis of 2007-2008 has made financing a business even harder. Fortunately, the years ahead look promising for small business financing. Below are the leading ways to secure financing for a small business:

Angel Investing & Venture Capital

Angel Investing is the process whereby a wealthy individual provides funding to a company in exchange for equity and sometimes debt as well. There are professional Angel Investors, or the could simply be an acquaintance of the entrepreneur. Venture Capital is largely the same process, but on a larger and more sophisticated scale. Usually, venture capital firms create "funds" from investors that they use to invest in young companies or startups. While Silicon Valley is notorious for getting the lion's share of venture capital, there are also many VC firms and individual Angel Investors that work in industries other than technology and are based outside of Silicon Valley. For a new and unproven business, it's virtually impossible to secure bank financing (see below) and venture capital or angel investing are the idea choice for a young startup.

Bank Loans

As mentioned, bank lending was been tough on businesses during the credit crisis, and it's still very difficult to find easy credit available in the financial markets. However, for businesses in strong financial positions, with plenty of assets, lending is starting to gain momentum once again. The Small Business Administration, see below, can make a major impact in the availability of credit for small businesses.

SBA Loan Programs

The Small Business Administration doesn't directly make loans, but they guarantee bank loans for qualifying enterprises. This has a number of benefits. The added security to the lender makes the terms and interest rates much more favorable for the business. In 2012 and beyond, SBA Loan Programs should see strong activity.

These are the primary formats of securing financing for a small business, but there are many others (including combinations of the above), and all available options should be considered by the business or entrepreneur before making a final decision on how to finance the business. Typically the best financing choices are as follows: Angel investing (for a brand new idea), venture capital (for a growing startup), SBA loans (for young but thriving businesses) and traditional bank loans (for the mature and growing company).

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Top 5 iPad Finance Apps for Business

The past two years have been a whirlwind in mobile computing and people are embracing these new devices, like the iPad, at breakneck speeds. Apple's Fourth Quarter revenues jumped 21 percent from a year ago, including the sale of over 11 million iPads. It's clear that the huge advances in mobile devices are not only changing how we live our personal lives but also how we do business. For business, especially small business, some of the biggest advantages are coming from the app world. If you want to make your business finances a breeze, check out these apps:

1. Square: Credit card transactions have never been easier. The developers of this free app will send you an actual credit card reader that plugs into your iPad. It's secure, easy, mobile, and even has built in analytics to track sales, collect tips and tax, and send electronic receipts via email or text. There is no need to delay the payment process anymore. Oh, and they only charge a 2.75% transaction fee: no contracts, fees, or merchant accounts necessary.

2. Expensify has the traveling business world in an uproar. The features of this app are impressive at the least: sync banking information to track purchases in real time, digitize receipts to reduce the chance of losing them (just snap a picture and the app will discern and note the necessary info), customize and email reports for approval, and be reimbursed to your checking account. You'll be your accountant's best friend with the organization and ease provided by this app.

3. Time Master + Billing: With a 4 star rating in the app store, this app sets the bar for time and expense tracking. The overall best feature is flexibility to be customized to fit how you work - rounding minutes, multiple running timers, billing rates, expenses, client project/tasks, and so many more options. There are even additional modules available to include invoicing, QuickBooks export, and wireless sync between mobile devices.

4. Intuit GoPayment Credit Card Terminal: Similar to Square but a little bit more involved. It's also a free app, but you have to jump through a few more hoops (AKA a 15 minute application process) to be approved to use this service. However, if you're looking for a proven brand name, this may be for you.

5. QuickBooks Connect: This is a great supplement to your QuickBooks Online subscription (QuickBooks 2011 users you'll have to get a paid subscription to use this app past 30 days). Manage customer information and balances; create invoices and sales receipts; convert estimates to invoices; email estimates, invoices, and sales receipts and more with this handy app.

Mobile computing can make all the difference in the efficiency of your business. Look for the bottlenecks in your financial administration and ask yourself, is there an app for that?

Kristi Daeda is an online marketing strategist that works with companies nationwide to define and execute powerful online marketing strategies. Read more about her thoughts on online marketing at her website or as featured on Mobile Apps Designers.

Riding the Tumultuous Retail Waves

The retail space is changing. Twenty years ago we used to shop and buy in person at retail stores. Ten years ago, the Internet started a change Wave. We could buy online but were not ready yet. So we shopped online, but we still bought in person at stores. Now we have reversed this trend completely. Today we shop in retail stores to see and touch, but we buy online because prices are lower.

This trend has reshaped the marketplace, and it is not done. Many companies could not handle the shift. Large retailers like Borders and Circuit City (NYSE: CC) have closed their doors forever. Others like Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) and Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), which we thought would be strengthened by less competition, are still struggling with problems created by this shift.

At the same time, Internet companies like Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) have exploded with growth during the last 10 years. And as we see many of yesterday's retail leaders like Sears fade, we also see them going online to try to claim victory there.

Some companies are successful. Others are complete failures. That's what I'll dig into in this column.

My Pick of the Week is something brand new that MetroPCS is doing with local television on the wireless handset.

Over the years, I have watched CEO Brian Dunn guide Best Buy through both good and bad times. One thing about Dunn and Best Buy -- when there's a screwup, the company takes responsibility and apologizes. Take the mistake made this holiday season, for example. Believe it or not, talking with and staying close to customers can even help companies that make a mistake to live through it -- and even get stronger. Companies that don't take responsibility will lose, as I will explain.

What's funny is every time Best Buy hits a rough patch, the media writes the company off -- this has happened time and time again. I find it laughable, but it hurts the company when this happens. Sometimes more damage can be done by loose keyboards than by real problems. Best Buy has challenges, for sure, but they are an important part of the process.

Yes, Best Buy has to update and ride its next Wave. It can be a success both in the online world and the retail world if it can update the brand. It has begun. It has smaller, specialty wireless phone stores in malls. This is exactly the kind of thing it needs to do -- but much more. What is the next Wave for Best Buy?

Barnes & Noble is remaking itself with its Nook e-reader and tablet line. This part of the business is new and expensive for the company, but it is its next Wave. It is a rapidly growing and vital part of its future. This comes with its own challenges. B&N must learn to compete on the loud stage against companies like Amazon and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL).

B&N's retail side is just as important for different reasons. The problem is it has not updated the brand of the retail stores and their image in the marketplace. They look the same as they did 10 years ago. In that respect, it is on the downside of that Wave. What will it do to create the next Wave?

If both Barnes & Noble and Best Buy can update their Waves and brands, they can regain their strength and win. Will they?

Can they? That is the big question. Their futures depend on it. While these first efforts are good, they must continue, because these steps are not enough.

One easy path for Barnes & Noble is to follow Amazon, now that it has Apple in its sights. Amazon not only sells books online, but also tons of other things both from its own shelves and from countless smaller firms that sell their products on the Amazon.com site.

One thing that makes Amazon's model work is trust of the brand. Customers are taken care of like gold. Others do this successfully as well, like online clothing retailer LL Bean or Zappos shoes. There are so many good operations that make you feel special and taken care of. They make you feel comfortable -- even when you're dealing with one of their partners and not them directly.

That's where the power and magic of the brand comes into play. That brand relationship is what Amazon is building its future on. Companies must protect and build their brand. If they don't, they eventually lose, don't they?

Amazon is also expanding to compete with Apple. Later this year, it will start selling smartphones. So, it will offer books and merchandise, Kindles and smartphones, and tie it all together under the cloud.

This is brilliant. Successful. Profitable. Competitive.

Why can't Barnes & Noble follow? It can. In fact, there are many other key areas it could grow into. Will it? That is the question.

If it does, they can compete and grow. If it doesn't, I am afraid it will decline. Sticking to one segment -- like books, which worked through the 1990s -- may not work any longer.

Sears, with its new push online, is a good example of what can go wrong. It is a longtime American brand. A historic company. You would think it would care about its brand.

However Sears retail stores are struggling. The company sees an opportunity in following Amazon online. Its online store sells stuff from Sears and many smaller businesses as well. I like Amazon -- so I tried Sears.

I ordered a video game for my nephew in the middle of December. I was notified that it was mailed the next day. Mailed -- not shipped? Well, OK. As long at it would arrive in a few days.

It never arrived. I sent several emails to both the selling company and Sears over several weeks. The day before Christmas, I emailed them once again, asking where it was.

Bottom line: I never heard from the smaller company at all, and it's been almost a month already. At least Sears would take care of me, right? I kept getting excuses from Sears -- but no results.

Sears kept saying it needed five days to hear from the vendor. I heard that excuse several times over several weeks. So much for customer care.

Finally, I gave up. I called American Express (NYSE: AXP) about my credit card purchase and it took care of me. It took the charge off my account with a smile. That is why I always use American Express -- I can count on its service. It's a company that cares about its customers. That's why its customers care about American Express. That's why it is successful.

As for Sears, I finally just received a form letter by email signed by Imran Jooma, SVP of e-commerce, saying the company was sorry it did not meet my needs and that it had refunded my purchase price and hoped I would shop there again.

Sears failed. This was a holiday gift, remember. I got no communications and no help. Therefore, I can no longer trust Sears with my purchases. Obviously, if this is the way it deals with customers, it will not survive.

Sears does not understand -- like Amazon and Best Buy do -- that the primary key is to keep the customer happy and to stay close in order to keep the customer. The rest is just noise.

All the money Sears spends on advertising and public relations gets customers in the door or to log on. After that, it's all about the service -- and in my case, Sears failed.

The sad part is I don't even think the company realizes it. Without that realization, Sears does not have a chance to succeed. Compare its service to the world-class service of American Express, Amazon, Apple, Best Buy and Barnes & Noble. The difference is stark.

There are serious challenges as companies remake themselves. One thing is for sure -- some companies will succeed, and others will fail.

What about your company? Are you hitting home runs with customers and winning against competitors, or are you failing? I am sure you can give me plenty of examples as well.

There are plenty of companies on both sides. The writing is on the wall. The key question is which side is your company on? And what are you doing about it?
My Pick of the Week is something brand new that MetroPCS is doing with local television on the wireless handset. Sure, carriers offer national TV networks -- but no one offers local stations. Now MetroPCS is doing just that.

It filled me in on its new Mobile Content Venture (MCV) -- a partnership between MetroPCS, NBC, Fox and others --12 major broadcast groups.

Together, they are developing a new national mobile digital television service by using existing broadcast spectrum. That way, companies can deliver local TV to mobile devices.

The delivery method is different as well. Instead of sending the television signal to your device over your wireless network, the new venture uses new technology and an old-fashioned approach.

Remember before cable television when we received a signal over the air? When we had an antenna on the roof or on top of the television itself?

In this case, local television stations install a new way to deliver their signal for wireless devices and then simply broadcast. Next-generation wireless handsets from Samsung have the ability to pick up these signals and show them on screen.

The first year or so will be free to the customer, so this is a great value. Customers just have to purchase the new handset. After there's a large enough customer base, MetroPCS will decide how to monetize the idea. It could sell advertising, or it could charge the customer, but that decision is still down the road.

In this first stage, as long as you have the right handset, you can get free local television -- and that is the good news.

This service is not available in every market yet. Local television stations have to upgrade the way they send their signals. This first year is a building time. You can find out from MetroPCS if the new service is available in your area.

I have not yet used this yet, but the idea sounds great. How successful will it be? Good question. Depends on how well MetroPCS markets the service and how much users really want to watch TV on their handsets. This is an interesting time in wireless with all these new devices and innovations.

E-Commerce Times columnist Jeff Kagan is a tech analyst and consultant who enjoys sharing his colorful perspectives on the changing industry he's been watching for 25 years. Email him at mailto:%20jeff@jeffKAGAN.com.

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Amazon's Graceful Dance Around Apple's App Store Rules

By Chris Maxcer
MacNewsWorld
Part of the ECT News Network
01/12/12 5:00 AM PT

Due to Apple's App Store rules, Amazon months ago opted not to allow users to purchase e-books directly through its Kindle iOS app. That added a few steps to the process of getting Kindle titles, but recently Amazon has refurbished its Kindle page on iOS Safari to make the process smoother. It's certainly an improvement, though it seems Amazon may have overlooked at least one opportunity in terms of design.

Because Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has this pesky rule against running apps on iOS devices that direct you away from Apple's ecosystem to buy competing products without using Apple e-commerce engines to handle the transaction -- and shuffle 30 percent of the sale to Apple's bank account -- it's has been a bit harder to buy Amazon.com-based Kindle e-books to read on an iOS device through the Kindle app.

The newly optimized Kindle Store for the iPad features a cleaner, touch-friendly look and feel.

Until last summer, you could click from within the app, buy a book with your Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) account, and start reading it seconds later. Now you have to leave the app, click through a few screens and, it seems, wait a bit longer until all the systems are done talking in the sky so you can start reading. It's not a terrible workaround, but it's not overly friendly, either. And that's what Apple wants because, after all, Amazon.com is a major competitor for Apple and its iBookstore. I get that, and knowing Apple, I feel lucky that we still get to use the Kindle app at all. (I'm not joking.)

Fortunately, the Web and the world isn't standing still, and Amazon realized that millions of iPad users still want to buy Kindle e-books, even if they don't own Kindle Fire tablets. So Amazon created an optimized website that's clean and touch-friendly for iPad-based browsing readers. I took it for a spin, and it's pretty amazing.

A feature that may be super useful (or not at all) is the Recommended for You section at the top, which lets you flick left or right through a handful of recommended titles. The flicking action is clearly a nod to the iPad touch experience, and it's a welcome feature. And the bad? My recommendations where a whole series of children's books, which is puzzling, until I remembered that I bought a kid's book as a gift during the holidays, and Amazon must be associating that gift purchase with a topic that I actually care about.

Unfortunately, you can't set that recommendation process manually, for example, by asking Amazon to only recommend a type of book or genre, so prepare to be surprised. If you share your iPad with family members, and they browse around Amazon.com too, you might run into similarly surprising recommendations.

Back to the app ... I mean, back to the iPad-optimized Kindle website. The site definitely runs well in my Safari browser, and while it has a look and feel that makes it less like a Web page and more like an app, it's still browser-based.

A great thing about perusing Amazon's wares via a browser is tabbed browsing. I can open up several tabs of various products (or books or e-books) and decide which one I want to buy. With iTunes and the iBookstore, there's no way to open up multiple pages or even put items of interest in a holding area to consider for purchase -- not even a shopping cart. Not every buy is an impulse buy, and if Steve Jobs took months to figure out what kind of couch to buy, I wish he would have recognized that some people like to take a few minutes to an hour or two to decide to buy a particular book.

So the iBookstore doesn't have tabbed browsing, but the old-school Amazon.com site does. And the new Amazon Kindle site optimized for the iPad? No tabbed browsing! If you touch and hold a link on the Kindle iPad site, nothing happens. Browse over to the full Amazon.com site, and boom, you'll get the pop-up box that lets you open the page in a new tab.

Amazon has taken a couple of steps forward, but then took a step back here.

What I appreciate about Amazon over the Apple iBookstore is that I trust Amazon to be more inclusive, to have more titles, and to actually link to or reference titles that a) are no longer available, and b) are not yet published.

Amazon, for instance, will let you buy a book months in advance of a release date, as well as give you a projected date of release ... although the company is inconsistent at it, no doubt due to some information available (or not available) from publishers. I'm not sure how well the new iPad site will shake out in this sort of information -- it'll take some time to run into not-yet published titles, for example, and see if the site has details.

As for additional browsing features, such as New York Times Bestsellers, New & Noteworthy, and Kindle Singles, as well as the Top 100 Paid and Top 100 Free e-books, not to mention genres, the Amazon Kindle iPad site is fun to navigate. It loads fast, it's airy, it shows off reader reviews ... and so does Apple's iBookstore.

The fact is, there are more Kindle types of content available than available through iBooks, and I doubt we'll ever see one-to-one parity. So consumers, even Apple lovers, need easy choices, and I'm quite pleased to see Amazon make the workaround. With increasingly powerful Web-based solutions using technologies like HTML5, Apple won't be able to keep its ecosystem as closed as it might like. But as a consumer, I like how Amazon is thinking here.

MacNewsWorld columnist Chris Maxcer has been writing about the tech industry since the birth of the email newsletter, and he still remembers the clacking Mac keyboards from high school -- Apple's seed-planting strategy at work. While he enjoys elegant gear and sublime tech, there's something to be said for turning it all off -- or most of it -- to go outside. To catch him, take a "firstnamelastname" guess at Gmail.com.

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If Customers Will Pay, Why Aren't We Selling?

 By Christopher J. Bucholtz
CRM Buyer

 Various consumer surveys indicate that customers of all stripes have two minds about price and customer experience. Both are important, but in different ways, at different times and in different degrees based on the customer. You don't want to have to compete on price, so how do you change the emphasis back to the experience?

Do customers suffer from a split personality? I say this not because of encounters with clearly rattled fellow shoppers during the holiday season. I say it because of the numbers that consistently come out when customers are surveyed -- and the other numbers that seem to be in the forefront of most buyers' minds.

The latest survey (neatly summarized by 1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman here) was done by Harris Interactive (Nasdaq: HPOL) on behalf of RightNow technologies. It shows a similar result to surveys done in the past: Customer service is a big deal when it comes to customer retention -- and customer defection, for that matter.

The annual Customer Experience Impact Report revealed that, as has been the case in the past, customers value good experiences and reward the businesses that deliver them. For example, 86 percent of U.S. adult customers will pay more for a better customer experience, and almost three in four said that friendly employees or customer service representatives made them fall in love with a brand.

By the same token, failure to provide good experiences can devastate a business. A whopping 89 percent of U.S. adult customers who have received a poor customer experience have switched to a competitor. Half of those polled said they would bolt if a customer service inquiry was not answered within a week. And four out of five customers who shared complaints about poor experiences online had their complaints ignored by the businesses that sparked them.

Obviously, customer experiences -- and customer service, in particular -- plays a major role in retention. However, when poll questions aren't built around customer experience questions, customers give a different answer. Time and again, when customers are asked why they make buying decisions, price bobs to the top of the list.

The common wisdom is that experience is a B2C thing, and price is a B2B thing -- and indeed, recent surveys like this one have confirmed how important price is in B2B buying.

But that's not always the case. As a reporter for VARBusiness in the early 2000s, I was astonished at how many large sales were made by technology vendors and resellers based on experience-related activities -- like the reseller who opted for one vendor over another in a huge deal not because of price, or because of the quality of the products, or any other factors directly related to what he was buying, but instead because one vendor took him golfing. It was an experience-based decision. This reseller owned his business and could be frank in discussing his reasons; I suspect that an employee who made such a decision would go back to the language of price, product features and other conventional factors for job security reasons.

So customers of all stripes have two minds about this -- price and experience are both important, but in different ways, at different times and in different degrees based on the customer. You don't want to have to compete on price, so how do you change the emphasis back to the experience?

This is the tough one: How do you make customer experience -- a driving force in customer decisions that seems to be getting stronger -- a tool for customer acquisition rather than only customer retention?

It's a matter of telling your story -- something that many otherwise great companies have trouble with. But today, it's really a matter of completing the loop: If you have delivered good customer experiences, you need to find ways to communicate that to other customers looking for good customer experiences. You need to be active about it, and you need a team that fully understands the value those experiences bring for both your business and your customers.

The good news is that technology makes this easy today. Both happy and disgruntled customers are easier than ever to find thanks to social media -- and that usually makes them easier to contact, too. Just as service needs to focus on helping customers who voice problems on social media, so should marketing work with customers who express their delight with their interactions with you.

From there it's up to your business to get creative. Case studies and testimonials are ways we show off successes already -- why can't they be used to talk about the experience customers have had with your business? Treat these customers as peers and treat them to previews, special events and other perks; they will reward you with additional good words about how you treat them in social media.

Beyond that, it's time businesses who have nailed down customer service and customer experiences to tell their potential customers about it in an up-front fashion. Customers are now sophisticated enough to understand these concepts, so appealing to them around your ability to offer a better, easier, more enjoyable experience is a message they already understand. And actively shifting the discussion to experience is a great way to keep the conversation from starting with price.

If 86 percent of customers are willing to spend more for a better customer experience, it's time to focus first on delivering that experience and then on ensuring that customers and potential know that experience can be theirs.

CRM Buyer columnist Chris Bucholtz blogs about CRM at the CRM Outsiders. He has been a technology journalist for 17 years and has immersed himself in the world of CRM since 2006. When he's not wearing his business and technology geek hat, he's wearing his airplane geek hat; he's written three books on World War II aviation.
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Oracle Makes Bold, Risky Move With Big Data Appliance Launch

Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) has released its Big Data Appliance, which it announced last year at Oracle OpenWorld. With no release date promised, the industry was surprised by its relative speed to market.

Less surprising was Oracle's enlistment of Cloudera -- the leading provider of Hadoop system management tools -- to provide an Apache Hadoop distribution and tools for the appliance. With Cloudera's established track record and relatively large install base, partnering with the company was almost a no-brainer.

Oracle Big Data Appliance incorporates Cloudera's distribution, including Apache Hadoop and Cloudera Manager; an open source distribution of R; Oracle NoSQL Database Community Edition; Oracle HotSpot Java Virtual Machine; and Oracle Linux running on Oracle's Sun servers.

"This is a unique offering in the market," Ed Albanese, head of business development for Cloudera, told the E-Commerce Times. "It is a purpose-built appliance that contains a sophisticated high-end software configuration with a good combination of software."

The chief element of the software is the open source distribution of Apache Hadoop -- CDH.

The partnership gives Oracle users the benefit of a new product, Albanese said. Apache Hadoop's users get the benefit of a tighter combo of hardware and software.

"Oracle has a very large ecosystem of all sorts of vendors, and we anticipate that there will be a much larger number of services and tech products available that will be easier to integrate," Albanese said.

Oracle also announced Oracle Big Data Connectors, a portfolio of software products aimed at integrated data stored in the CDH Hadoop distributed file system or Oracle NoSQL database with Oracle Database 11g.

The partnership also holds interesting implications for Oracle's future direction, John Busch, founder and CTO of Schooner, told the E-Commerce Times.

"Certainly, Hadoop has a strong level of adoption, and I am sure that played part of a role in Oracle's decision to partner with it," he said. "Hadoop is also a new computation model that applies very well for big data."

In short, it is different from Oracle's traditional relational database approach.

"The idea of bundling Hadoop computational model with Oracle's hardware and developing appliances is very interesting," Busch continued.

However, the execution of this partnership may be more difficult than the industry expects.

"I read somewhere that something like 40 percent of computer PhDs are working on Hadoop projects, sometimes unsuccessfully," Busch noted. "It can be a very complex process, so I don't know if bundling it with hardware will be easy as one-two-three."

The market may not be interested in the appliance, suggested Quantivo Senior Director of Products Jim Chiang.

"Businesses and users are demanding cost-effective analytics, with infinite flexibility and a pay-as-you-go model," he told the E-Commerce Times. "You just can't get that with yet another hardware product to add to your data center."

It was inevitable that Oracle would produce something like this appliance, Ken Bado, CEO of MarkLogic, told the E-Commerce Times.

It is a defensive move, as more organizations abandon relational technology -- Oracle's core competency -- for new approaches to modern data problems, he said.

"Oracle's model is to drive revenue stream by joining forces with open source in order to maintain product viability. It's really a block on any customer who is thinking about transitioning from Oracle," Bado continued.

"Hadoop was built for commodity hardware and batch processing, and this partnership is taking Hadoop out of its comfort zone," he explained. "Today's big data solutions need to address a few major points -- they must scale out on commodity hardware, provide real-time and ad-hoc access to data, and go beyond analytics to provide enterprise-class big data applications."

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