Oracle updates major enterprise apps

Oracle cooks up some application hype

Oracle has released updates for its five major application suites in a highly scripted global launch.

The company hosted events around the world to unveil new versions of Oracle E-business Suite 12, PeopleSoft Enterprise Release 9.0, Siebel CRM 8.0, JD Edwards Enterprise One 8.12 and JD Edwards World A9.1.

The updates deliver a series of new products in each suite, as well as thousands of enhancements to existing products.

Oracle is under pressure to deliver the updates after the company spent more than $16bn to acquire PeopleSoft in 2005 and Siebel Systems in 2006. 

Critics said at the time that Oracle was mostly out to acquire new customers for its E-Business Suite, sparking fears that the firm would try to push users to upgrade by cutting back on support and updates.

"Today is an important day, as we release five significantly enhanced product families," said Oracle president Charles Philips.

"These releases are proof that Oracle is delivering on its strategy to protect and extend customers' current investments in Oracle's leading horizontal, speciality and industry suites."

Oracle is in the process of developing a single next-generation enterprise application suite dubbed Fusion that will bundle all existing applications and middleware. Fusion is due by 2008.

The vendor has also promised to continue developing updates for all existing products, allowing users to update to the new applications in their own time.

In addition to the applications, Fusion will also bring a new middleware suite based on Java which aims to enable service oriented architectures.