Enterprise software maker Oracle Tuesday added three new products to its software arsenal in an attempt to keep its E-Business suite fresh.
At its Oracle Appsworld confab in London, which drew around 8,500 attendees, the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company said its Oracle Project Management, Oracle Project Collaboration, and Oracle Project Intelligence platforms are designed to piggyback off of its Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.9, while adding functionality.
“We focused these tools not just on managing people and budgets, but also on sharing information,” Robert Fleming, senior director of applications marketing for Oracle EMEA told Internetnews.com.
Oracle Project Management includes Web-based tools to track projects
with one team or among several. Users can access schedules, progress
reports, staffing plans, documents and other information necessary to
oversee a project; it also connects to financial information within other
E-Business Suite applications. A graphical “dashboard” lets managers map
and compare key project performance metrics such as progress to plan and
cash flow.
Oracle Project Collaboration provides role-based access to information
within the Project Management application. Team members can view relevant
information including work plans, change orders, and status reports, and
also communicate and share documents with others on the team.
Oracle Project Intelligence provides a business intelligence dashboard
that lets users graphically map different metrics to get a visual
understanding of how parts of the business are performing. While there are
already business intelligence modules within E-Business Suite, this new app
focuses on metrics a project manager would need.
Oracle also introduced Advanced Product Catalog, a tool for handling
product and component information. The new modules bring the E-Business
Suite offering to more than 100 modules.
On Wednesday, the company will announce Oracle Outsourcing, a leasing
model in which Oracle will manage applications for the enterprise,
patching, fixing and upgrading them on a daily basis. Companies taking
advantage of Outsourcing can have Oracle either host their licensed apps on
Oracle servers or manage those on company servers remotely. Fleming told
Internetnews.com, “We’re seeing significant momentum in the U.S. and
abroad for this model. Incremental upgrades and problems that may come
about are resolved much more quickly.” Outsourcing clients will be charged
a monthly management fee which is a fixed percentage of the license fee.
There are a number of different pricing options for these new
applications, according to Fleming. The project management tools will be
included with the latest version of E-Business Suite or can be licensed
individually. Fleming said a typical European license for the Suite costs
99 Euros per user per month with a three-year contract. In these hard
times, Oracle will even provide financing for cash-strapped enterprises.
