Oracle Rapid Release Pattern Continues with Oracle EPM System

Oracle's recent release of Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System 11.1.2 marks another round in the company's recently frantic release pattern, with its large number of additions and applications again hinting at a strategic desire to expand its middleware stack.

The new applications baked into Oracle EMP System 11.1.2 include Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management, Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management and Oracle Hyperion Public Sector Planning and Budgeting. Features include intelligent approval workflows, zero-code Web forms and, according to Oracle, "virtually seamless delivery of all the planning, workflow and task management capabilities to business users through familiar Microsoft Excel and Outlook interfaces."

For the public sector, including both U.S. federal agencies and local governments, the Oracle Hyperion Public Sector Planning and Budgeting includes Human Capital Planning-which "provides out-of-the-box configurable and expandable position and employee budgeting models"-in addition to Financial Budget Books and Reports, capable of producing highly formatted and detailed reports and budget books in HTML and PDF formats.

Oracle's release of a public-sector module mirrors a similar April 7 announcement from Microsoft, which released a version of its Microsoft Dynamics CRM customized for nonprofits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Additional tools in Microsoft's platform offering included donation and pledge management, basic membership management, basic volunteer tracking, support for online payment solutions and campaign management.

"The new applications, enhancements and key integrations introduced in this release will help organizations significantly improve their planning, financial close, and statutory and internal reporting processes whether using the Oracle EPM System with Oracle Applications or non-Oracle ERP Solutions," Robert Gersten, senior vice president of Oracle Development, wrote in an April 7 statement.

On April 6, Oracle unveiled Oracle Primavera Portfolio Management 8, designed to assist organizations in project portfolio management from conception through execution, mostly through the leveraging of various business intelligence tools designed to identify risks and potential impacts.

"Organizations are under pressure to ensure that they are not only spending money on the right things, but also flawlessly executing on those investments," Joel Koppelman, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle's Primavera Global Business Unit, wrote in a statement. "With the launch of Oracle's Primavera Portfolio Management 8, Oracle is effectively delivering on enterprise portfolio -GPS' that gives organizations the information and capabilities they need to optimize both the selection and management of any type of investment."

Oracle has been rolling out new products at a fairly rapid clip in 2010. On April 5, Oracle released AutoVue 20.0, a document visualization and collaboration tool capable of integration into enterprise applications; that followed on the heels of the March 31 release of Tuxedo 11g, which integrates technology from the company's 2008 acquisition of BEA Systems into an application server operating as an SOA (service-oriented architecture)-ready system, with support for the development and deployment of C/C++, COBOL, Ruby and Python developer languages.

At the same time as Tuxedo 11g, Oracle also released Tuxedo Application Runtime for CICS and Batch11g, as well as Tuxedo Application Rehosting Workbench 11g. The company's focus in both 2009 and 2010 seems to be introducing new applications that buttress its existing portfolios' capacity, with an eye towards creating complete software stacks that can be offered to the enterprise as end-to-end packages. Oracle is also working to digest its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems and the technology inherited through that deal.