Oracle Support Services received two 2006 Software Technical Assistance Recognition (STAR) Awards for superior customer service from the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA). The SSPA STAR Awards have become one of the highest honors in the support industry. The awards demonstrate Oracle's continued success in driving innovation, proactiveness and automation into its support tools and capabilities. It also shows Oracle's commitment to delivering a superior ownership experience to customers.

As one of the largest and most influential associations for technology service and support professionals, SSPA recognized Oracle for delivering exceptional leadership, innovation and service excellence to its customers. For the fourth year, Oracle was honored in the Innovative Support category. The Innovative Support award recognizes the company that provides new, cutting-edge technology, tools, and systems for delivering exceptional technical support to customers.

And for the fourth year Oracle was also awarded the WebStar Service award, which honors the company that delivers exceptional customer service and technical support via the Web. Areas evaluated by the SSPA during the awards process include overall support model, nature and type of assisted and non-assisted support, key performance metrics, and customer satisfaction results and methodologies.

"Oracle has once again shown its strong commitment to technology innovation in support delivery." said Bill Rose, founder and executive director of the SSPA. "Oracle has clearly demonstrated the importance of ongoing innovation and its commitment to providing customers with an outstanding customer service experience."

Oracle is committed to ongoing innovation and to enhancing solutions with embedded features and tools that help lower the cost of operating and maintaining Oracle systems. Oracle has delivered on its commitment with the development of more than 250 automated, advanced support tools for problem avoidance and rapid resolution. In addition, the company extended its Premier Support offering with the introduction of Oracle Configuration Support Manager, a proactive, automated support capability that provides simple, more intelligent ways to track, manage and support Oracle configurations. In recognition of that commitment to service excellence, Oracle was the first enterprise software company to receive global certification under the new J.D. Power and Associates Certified Technology Service & Support Program this year.

"We are honored to be recognized by the SSPA again for our technology innovation and success in delivering a faster, easier, and more cost-effective way for our customers to operate and maintain their Oracle solutions," said Juergen Rottler, executive vice president, Oracle Customer Services. "This award reflects our continued commitment to delivering proactive and automated support technologies that help our customers maintain their systems for optimum performance and our proven track record of delivering a superior ownership experience to our customers. It is also a statement regarding the dedication of Oracle's support professionals who consistently provide excellent support to Oracle's customers."