Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Adds Cloud Management, Security Capabilities

The Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c (the "c" is for "cloud") also offers new management capabilities for Oracle's next-generation Fusion applications, which are just becoming generally available, and the company's "engineered systems" such as the Exadata and Exalogix servers. And it expands the software's capabilities for centrally managing database security throughout a company.

"It is our biggest release of Enterprise Manager in five years," said Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of product development, in a Monday keynote at the Oracle OpenWorld show.

Oracle also touted the partner opportunities afforded by the new product. Enterprise Manager has an Extensibility Development Kit and application programming interfaces (APIs) that ISVs, systems integrators and solution providers can use to develop plug-ins and add-on software for vertical industries that tap into the toolset's core discovery, provisioning, configuration, monitoring and compliance functions. Oracle also has updated the Oracle Validated Integration program that partners use to test and validate that the plug-ins and connectors they develop work with Enterprise Manager 12c.

Also new is an application quality management specialization for partners who work with Enterprise Manager. Other Enterprise Manager-related specializations have been updated for the 12c release, according to Oracle, as have the Oracle Partner Network Knowledge Zones that cover Enterprise Manager.

The new software is a good example of how Oracle software and Sun hardware are increasingly being engineered to work together, said Sri Ayyeppen, vice president and CTO at Keste, an Oracle channel partner based in Plano, Texas. "It looks amazing," he said in an interview at Oracle OpenWorld.

The new product provides systems management capabilities that cover on-premise data centers, as well as virtualized systems and cloud environments. IT administrators, DBAs and application developers can manage a cloud system's complete lifecycle using the capabilities of the new Enterprise Manager Cloud Control console, including consolidation and capacity planning, self-service, testing, monitoring, and metering and chargeback.

Also new are virtualization management and cloud resource management features built on Oracle VM 3.0.

The new database security management tools in Enterprise Manager 12c include a database security dashboard for centrally monitoring and configuring database access, data encryption, privileged user controls and security policies. New data-masking capabilities help secure production data held in nonproduction environments.

Oracle said the new features would help businesses comply with regulatory requirements and governance policies. "The increasing complexity of enterprise IT infrastructure, now encompassing traditional data centers, virtualized and cloud computing environments, has heightened security requirements for most Oracle customers," said Sushil Kumar, Oracle vice president, product strategy, in a statement. "With Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, customers have a single place to manage all security options, helping them to better safeguard sensitive data."