As databases in general become more strategically vital, and as cloud technology becomes essential within advanced IT architectures, Oracle is betting that the combination of speed and cost-performance offered by its increasingly popular Exadata engineered systems will allow the company to stay well ahead of other alternatives.

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Six years ago, radiologist Michael Zalis found himself spending a lot of time logging in and out of separate electronic health records at Massachusetts General Hospital to gather lab data, clinical notes, and other non-imaging information scattered in multiple databases.

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