Seeking to demonstrate its sustained support for users of its EnterpriseOne product line, Oracle Corp. today unveiled a new release of the ERP suite and pledged to continue to enhance indefinitely the version of EnterpriseOne that runs on IBM's iSeries hardware platform.
The new EnterpriseOne release, 8.12, is the second to be announced by Oracle since the company purchased the product line as part of its December 2004 acquisition of PeopleSoft.
The release includes a new sourcing module, enhancements to the suite's Human Capital Management module, new supply chain management features, and long-awaited functionality tailored to wineries and other food and beverage manufacturers.
"This announcement demonstrates a high level of investment in the EnterpriseOne product," said Lenley Hensarling, vice president and general manager of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne product line. "The level of commitment to EnterpriseOne by the application development group is high."
Hensarling said Oracle will continue to support and develop enhancements for the version of EnterpriseOne running on the iSeries "as long as there's a marketplace around the iSeries." Previously, Oracle had committed to supporting and enhancing EnterpriseOne for the iSeries only until 2013.
That cut-off point, though far off, had caused some concern among Oracle's customers running EnterpriseOne on the iSeries platform, Hensarling said. Following Oracle's takeover of PeopleSoft, he said, customers running EnterpriseOne -- and its predecessor World product -- on the iSeries had been somewhat less willing than other Oracle applications customers to upgrade to current releases.
"Upgrades had been slower in the iSeries customer base," Hensarling said. "Oracle support was, in their minds, in question. This is an effort to remove that."
Hensarling noted that many Oracle customers running EnterpriseOne and World on the iSeries are uncommonly committed to the platform, which is known for its ease of use and ease of administration. "It was not really a surprise to us, but customers are almost religious about the platform," Hensarling pointed out.
The same open-ended support pledge also applies to the World ERP product running on the iSeries, Hensarling said.
A major feature of the new 8.12 release of EnterpriseOne is an integrated sourcing module that allows manufacturers to issue RFP bids and score and evaluate the performance of suppliers. The module is closely integrated with the procurement module in EnterpriseOne.
Previously, Hensarling said, Oracle had attempted to cross sell a sourcing module, developed for PeopleSoft Enterprise customers, to the EnterpriseOne customer base. The new sourcing module, he said, is more tightly integrated with EnterpriseOne.
The new Human Capital Management module in EnterpriseOne 8.12 includes employee scheduling and time and labor self-service functionality.
The new supply chain features build on capabilities added to the 8.10 version of EnterpriseOne that targeted automotive parts suppliers. The new release adds transportation shipment sequencing and upgrades fixed asset management.
Release 8.12 of EnterpriseOne includes three categories of enhancements specifically for food and beverage manufacturers: grower management, grower pricing and payment, and blend management, which is particularly important to wineries.
The food and beverage enhancements, in fact, were developed in partnership with and with financial support from winery customers including Fosters Wine Estates Americas, a subsidiary of the Australian Fosters Group food and beverage manufacturer. Blend management, which allows wineries to track and document the type and source of juice that goes into different varieties of wine, is particularly important to wineries, noted John Collins, vice president of information technology at Fosters Wine Estates in Napa, CA.
Fosters Wine Estates plans to deploy EnterpriseOne 8.12 in the U.S. this fall. Two instances of EnterpriseOne in Australia will likely be upgraded to release 8.12 later this year, Collins said. Currently, the U.S. operations of Fosters Wine Estates run version 6 of the JD Edwards World product.
The company, Collins said, had delayed upgrading to EnterpriseOne in anticipation of the new food and beverage enhancements. In the U.S., these enhancements will replace a stand-alone, third-party system that had been deployed to handle blend management.
Work on the enhancements started even before JD Edwards was acquired by PeopleSoft -- which pre-dated the Oracle acquisition -- Collins said.
"We're pleased that these enhancements have finally become a reality," Collins said.
Though Fosters Wine Estates Americas two years ago moved off of the iSeries in favor of a Wintel and SQL Server platform, Collins said Oracle's commitment to continue to support the iSeries version of EnterpriseOne is reassuring.
"It doesn't change much because, when the Fusion release comes out, if it has the functionality we expect, we'll go to that," Collins said. "But Oracle's commitment to continue to support the product going forward will give a lot of people a lot more options."