Oracle Corp. next week will announce Release 2 of its Oracle Collaboration Suite, adding Web conferencing capabilities to the messaging and collaboration applications the company debuted last year.
The suite takes aim at rival messaging and collaboration platforms from IBMs Lotus Software division and Microsoft Corp.
The new Oracle Web Conferencing component of OCS, known in beta as iMeetings, will include support for co-browsing, document presentation, white boarding, desktop sharing, chat and voice streaming, as well as support for storing of documents and transcripts generated by the application and playback of recorded meetings.
It will be available as both a hosted service and licensed software.
Oracle, of Redwood Shores, Calif., began shipping Release 1 of Oracle Collaboration Suite last September and now has more than 500 customers for the product. Release 1 supported e-mail, voice mail access from within e-mail, calendaring, file serving and search.
Future versions are expected to support embedded instant messaging and presence, integrated content management, and document and records management among other features.
The product uses Oracles namesake database as its file store.
Oracle Collaboration Suite Release 2 is available now. Pricing is $60 per user for a perpetual license, $15 per user for an annual license. Individual components, including Oracle Web Conferencing, can be purchased at $45 per user. Only the initiator of the conference requires a license.