Oracle’s eyes focus on bigger picture and smaller user ends of the spectrum

It’s a huge event: more than 41,000 Oracle customers and partners have converged on the Moscone Centre, making it the biggest yet. E-Business Suite Release 12 seems to be mostly about larger organisations managing global operations better, through a new streamlined user interface providing global view of customers, suppliers, partners and operations. The big focus is on achieving holistic whole-business views for all functions which, the software giant believes, will lead to better business decision making and optimisation. Release 12 will also feature “thousands” of new industry-specific capabilities spanning its ERP, CRM (customer relationship management) and SCM (supply chain management) applications. That expressly includes the former JD Edwards and PeopleSoft suites, the company says, citing that news as proof of its commitment to those users and to its ‘Applications Unlimited’ programme. Examples cited of planned capabilities include: Oracle Profitability Manager (analytics that can be trained on any aspect targeting profitability); Oracle Strategic Network Optimisation (impact analysis for supply chain orientated decision making); and Oracle Projects Portfolio Analysis (to assist in prioritisation of projects using what if scenarios). As for the industry applications, Oracle offering examples in the service sector – like improved applications for Oracle Order Management and Oracle Asset Tracking – and in the high tech industry, like Oracle compliance and Oracle Shop Floor Management supporting lot and serial controlled assemblies and sales order reservation for lot-based jobs as well as MES (manufacturing execution system) capabilities. And while it’s not immediately clear how all, or any, of that pertains to smaller manufacturers, Oracle says its Accelerate programme is one of the key points here – involving rapid configuration through pre-packed application bundles, certified partners and new partner resources. Interestingly, Oracle claims “more than 19,000” SME applications customers world-wide, and experience from those driving this programme. It claims to have identified “80 product and industry-specific bundles,” and those span front office, back office and again, industry-specific processes – all of which can be extended by the partner network for specific requirements. Its marketing people also talk about “Oracle Business Accelerators,” and in particular an automated set-up tool that “configures end-to-end business flows to decrease cost, risk and implementation time.” The set-up tool “captures responses to simple questions about specific business requirements and then automatically applies that information to the application implementation.” “Our goal is simple: to become the number one provider of applications to small and medium businesses,” says Tony Kender, Oracle senior vice president, who heads up the new SME business unit. “With Oracle Accelerate we are aligning Oracle’s applications and rapid implementation tools with our partners’ industry solutions under a single package. We have doubled our SME marketing programme budget and added a dozen new SME-focused executives around the world.” Finally, the increased on-demand offerings relate to the former PeopleSoft ERP/SCM and its Seibel CRM suites. For Oracle, the ‘software as a service’ subscription-based mantra and its managed applications offerings are an important part of its proposition for business applications users into the future.