Oracle launches 5 new releases; touts integration, on-demand
Oracle president Charles Phillips said Wednesday that the company has released five new flavors of its applications that will all interconnect to each other. It is also allowing its independent software vendors connect those systems to other systems via SOA.
In an event that was part pep rally, part product launch and part an Oracle pat on the back, Phillips said "five releases on time is remarkable." The effort is that latest volley in a battle between two primary players--SAP and Oracle--in the enterprise applications market. SAP has tilted toward the middle market to grow.
"There is also integration between our own products," said Phillips. The linchpin it Oracle's Fusion middleware. "Middleware is increasingly important. We innovate with the middleware and our applications get better. It's the foundation of how we'll build applications in the future," said Phillips.
"The same technology to integrate our own applications will be available to our ISVs," he added.
However, Phillips seemed to realize that customers aren't going to be a rush to fuse their applications into one Oracle suite. To that end, Oracle also touted Oracle On-Demand where it'll host its applications and combine them for you. "Our on-demand business is important for us. For anyone concerned about the applications upgrade process we have an easy solution--we'll do it for you."
Oracle also wasn't shy about knocking SAP. In fact, the first knock took all of about three minutes. An executive went through the attendee roster and noted there was one person named Mark from SAP. He asked him to raise his hand and then invited him on stage for a better seat. The punchline: "It's ok we're an open company."
Phillips came back to the SAP kicking later when he was talking about middleware. "We have more Oracle Fusion customers in the SAP installed base than SAP has Netweaver customers. We try to modernize them a bit and help them out where we can. "