Oracle is working on their own Data Provider for .NET - ODP.NET. It is a native ADO.NET data access driver for Oracle databases. It is as good as data provider from Microsoft.
The new release offers improved application scalability, performance and security. As always :). Every developers tell you about a new release this way. The most important thing is that it simplify access to Oracle databases from the .NET Framework.
The full release may be found here: New Oracle Data Access Components 11.1.0.7.10 Beta Features