As expected, Oracle is taking the wraps off the next
generation of its database and business application products, even
as it continues its legal proceedings to buy out rival
PeopleSoft.
In presentations at the Oracle OpenWorld 2004 user conference in
San Francisco, executives reiterated the advantages of running a
single set of applications on a single database to manage customer
and other types of information. Oracle said it also intended to
expand its existing data hub product line.
The data hubs sit between disparate applications and allow them
to share and consolidate information across the enterprise. Oracle
already ships a customer data hub and now plans to roll out hubs
next year to handle government, financial and product-related
information.
For instance, the product data hub could take engineering and
manufacturing information and synchronise changes across a company,
said Oracle president Charles Phillips. It could also be used to
help Oracle customers integrate PeopleSoft's applications or
software from any other acquisitions by Oracle.
The status of the company's hostile bid for PeopleSoft remains
up in the air, as Oracle goes to court next week seeking to remove
PeopleSoft's poison-pill anti-takeover provisions.
Phillips said PeopleSoft customers, who have generally expressed
concern about the acquisition, have become more open to it as a
result of Oracle's outreach to them.
In a keynote speech, Oracle's executive vice-president, Ron
Wohl, outlined improvements the company has made to its
next-generation E-Business Suite 11i.10, which started shipping
last month.
They include the ability to do more extensive reporting and mine
customer-related information to help cross-sell and upsell, not
only through the direct sales force, but with a company's
partners.
Oracle has also enhanced its procurement software to handle
complex contracts and pricing and help private- and public-sector
entities purchase goods and services.
End users will access the suite through configurable, prebuilt
dashboards, and Oracle has boosted the amount of reports it can
generate by 80%, said Wohl.
"We've really created a critical mass of information directly
available out of the box as a packaged application," he said.
Oracle is beginning to re-emphasise its applications business,
which has languished somewhat as the company put the majority of
its marketing and technical resources behind its infrastructure
offerings, said Josh Greenbaum, an analyst at Enterprise
Applications Consulting.
"It looks like applications may come out of the dark basement
they've been in the last few years," he said, adding that Oracle
appears to be better co-ordinating its infrastructure products to
support the E-Business Suite.
"This could give Oracle the ability to give SAP a run for its
money," Greenbaum said.
Marc L. Songini writes for Computerworld