BUSINESS SOFTWARE / APPLICATIONS UNLIMITED LAUNCH

Oracle refreshes enterprise applications

DON SAMBANDARAKSA

Oracle claims that the launch of Applications Unlimited is proof that it can add value and features to its acquisitions and that it was not simply buying market share. At the same time it was maintaining application independence from the underlying database, which means that they continue to work with IBM's DB2 and other vendors databases.

Best of all, according to Oracle Asia Pacific senior vice president for applications Mark Gibbs, these upgrades and new features were delivered as a maintenance release, at no extra cost to customers who are already paying for annual support packages.

Gibbs was in Bangkok for the launch of the five programs in Applications Unlimited, which he noted had been released on time.

"E-Business Suite 12 has more new features than in the entire history of the product. It's the same for Siebel and JD Edwards. Especially if you look at the JD Edwards world, we did a lot of work with IBM for their i-series (fromerly AS/400) and added new functionality. Previously there has been no investment in this product for years [prior to the acquisition by Oracle]," he said.

Gibbs said that with the last release, version 11, over 90 percent of Oracle e-Business Suite users upgraded and he expects the same ratio to upgrade this time around.

Gibbs said that the new versions also disproved critics who claimed Oracle was buying up competition and destroying choice. In addition to hardware and OS choice, the new applications will work with middleware and databases from every major vendor, not just Oracle's own database.

"Proprietary is bad. Standards are good. We've reached this point and I think Microsoft and SAP agree, but they do not particularly like it. We participate in standards bodies and want them to be determined by the market.

"We don't want them to be Oracle standards. We don't want to become another Microsoft," he explained.

Today, Gibbs said that there is a clear preference for enterprise development around Java and around Linux.

At Oracle World in October, Larry Ellision announced that Oracle would be offering support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to all users, not just users running Oracle databases.

Gibbs claimed that when these support contracts come to renewal time, a significant number of users were renewing with Oracle rather than with Red Hat because of the better support infrastructure Oracle had.

Oracle Linux users now get support through the same channels as its database, middleware or application support, which means a global footprint and multiple tiers of support.

Linux is also the foundation for Oracle's Real Application Clusters (RAC) which, according to Gibbs, offer mainframe performance at one-tenth of the cost.

By grouping together tens of generic white-box servers, the system is not only significantly faster than more traditional "scale-up" solutions, but provides fault-tolerance, better security, scalability and easier management.

Gibbs also suggested that Oracle was doing very well in the SMB space. Oracle accelerators (prebuilt software templates) and Applications Unlimited are very much aimed at the SMB space as well as the large corporation.

"We provide the same functionality and the opportunity for growth so the IT system can grow as the enterprise grows," he said.

In fact, quite often, when there is an enterprise customer using Oracle, they will prefer their SMB suppliers to also use Oracle applications as it will help them integrate more closely and make for a more robust and efficient extended supply chain.

Asked about the outlook for Thailand, Gibbs said that businesses tended to run whatever the situation was.

"Whether it's political unrest in Thailand or floods in Indonesia, all it does is delay investment. But these economies are very strong and businessmen are used to dealing with these things," he said.

Bangkok Post

Last Updated : Wednesday April 11, 2007