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Dthree Uses Oracle Infrastructure To Power Marketing 2.0

I caught up with Oracle customer Dthree recently wanting to get the scoop on how Oracle's infrastructure is helping them deliver something meaningful to marketers. I'm always interested in how such technology-driven companies can speak to the business user.

Dthree told InformationWeek the crux of its platform is helping marketing organizatons capture key touchpoints and deliver context around these interactions. Ok, they had me at context, a key concept that's become common vernacular for companies across every software category. From Salesforce.com to Vignette, OpenText, and others, providing relevant content that helps users work the way they work is something that's on the top of every product manager's to-do list.

A bonus for Dthree is the ability to deliver its platform via software-as-a-service (SaaS). Through SaaS, companies like DThree can use the best of what platform providers offer, things like OLAP, security, and dashboards, while remaining focused on pure business processes.

Dthree CEO Keyvan Cohanim said some of those customer-focused business processes were driven by the demand for Web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 services. He described the two segments in the context of collaboration, search, information exchange, and interaction.

"We asked our customers which elements of Web 2.0 create the most value. From there we looked at how we could deliver those services to drive profitable revenue," said Cohanim.

It's certainly refreshing to see companies cutting through the hype surrounding everything 2.0. The recurring theme is again the context Cohanim describes. Organizations are figuring out that 2.0 by its lonesome is often just a novelty. But if you combine web 2.0's user-focused approach with real business applications, then you've got something. And with web connectivity standards like REST and HTTP entrenching themselves, pulling it off should become less of a chore.

Oracle's WebCenter chief Vince Casarez echoed that same sentiment recently when he told InformationWeek "Web 2.0 services make the most sense in the context of business processes."

According to Cohanim, its new Oracle-powered platform, IntelliMax 5.0, is the culmination of Dthree's vertical expertise and its ability to add applications on the fly. Cohanim says the flexibility provided by Oracle's service-oriented architecture(SOA) has allowed Dthree to "snap in" best-of-breed applications and components as needed.

That ease of integration, says CTO, Igor Nesmyanovich, has allowed Dthree to focus on building business apps instead of the typical infrastructure concerns associated with product development. He described the ability to "assemble applications" as a key differentiator.

I can’t help but wonder if the combination of Web 2.0 and expanding ECM capabilities is finally moving us closer to solving some of marketing’s dilemmas. If contextual content with the right mix of personalization doesn’t help businesses market in real-time, I’m not sure what will.

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