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Oracle launches new release of five application families

DUBAI — Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company, yesterday announced new versions of its five major product lines: Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Release 9.0, Siebel CRM 8.0, JD Edwards Enterprise 8.12 and JD Edwards World A9.1.

The products were launched at its global "Applications Unlimited" event held on six continents over 24 hours. All the latest products have been released across the Middle East and are said to reflect customer-driven innovation and next-generation technology.

Oracle has 1400 users of its applications software in the Middle East and Africa and holds 80 per cent of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software in the region, said Hisham Esaadi, Oracle's director of alliances and channels, Middle East, speaking at the launch of the applications in Dubai. He advised customers to understand the product carefully before migrating to the newest version and added: "Oracle is becoming more industry focused and there is less demand for generic applications. The industry is becoming more competitive."

And Oracle's president, Charles Phillips said: "These releases are proof that Oracle is delivering on its strategy to protect and extend customers' current investments in Oracle's leading horizontal, specialty and industry suites. "With the 'Applications Unlimited' program, Oracle is providing best-in-class infrastructure technology that delivers next-generation capabilities today, and we are giving our customers the choice as to when they upgrade without having to re-licence their applications. This is a first in the software industry."

In developing these new releases, Oracle consulted directly with customer user groups to define customer-driven enhancements and ensure these products effectively address customer needs. These include its CIO Council, customer advisory boards, industry and product strategy councils, early customer adoption programmes and extensive user group communities - all of which help "to understand customer requirements and prioritise new functionality", the company said.

Oracle is also delivering the components needed to enable successful implementations, such as automated upgrade scripts, extensive product documentation, an extensive, trained, partner eco-systems and a wide variety of education courses. For example, workshops will be held throughout the Middle East, said Esaadi.

An Oracle press release also states: "A key component of Applications Unlimited is delivering value to customers allowing them to leverage next-generation technology within their current investments through integration certification with Oracle's leading database and Oracle Fusion Middleware technology. The new releases of Oracle Applications provide next-generation, role-based analytics, comprehensive application management, integration, search, master data management, and XML-based reporting capabilities."

As an example, Oracle said its new application product lines leverage role-based analytics, which provide pre-defined analytics that source information across heterogeneous systems and provide a unified view through Oracle Portal. Oracle Applications can also be managed with Oracle Enterprise manager, to help increase the performance and quality of the application service, while reducing the costs of systems management.

Oracle executives also emphasised the importance of next-generation technology having the ability to provide open and sustainable integration. They said that Oracle applications provide extensive Web services and business events, enable modelling of business process and offer published repositories of Web services.