Having acquired Global Logistics Technologies Inc. (G-Log) for $34 million last September to beef up its trade management application offering, Oracle Corp. is now taking a further step by developing a broader global trade management platform offering, officials said recently.
The global trade management platform offering will encompass the Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) module that the company acquired with G-Log and re-launched late last year. The new platform, however, will extend OTM's functionality. Whereas OTM mainly allows users to automate the physical movement of goods between, say, contract manufacturers and distribution centers, the global trade management platform will also allow users to understand the financial implications of global sourcing and transportation decisions, says Derek Gittoes, senior director of Oracle's logistics products strategy. The application, for example, will allow users to analyze the transportation costs associated with a given offshore sourcing decision, Gittoes explains.
The new global trade management platform will be sold as either an integrated piece of Oracle's ERP applications or as a stand-alone system, and it will be targeted both to manufacturers and their third-party logistics service providers, Gittoes says.
Oracle is expanding its global trade offering for a couple of reasons, according to Gittoes. First, as manufacturing outsourcing continues to increase, demand for such applications will grow, he predicts. Also, availability of an expanded global trade management platform will enhance and differentiate Oracle's ERP products, he maintains.
Gittoes says Oracle has not yet decided when to launch the new global trade management offering, a decision which he says will depend on the features the company decides to include in the first release.
The expanded Oracle trade management offering is expected to compete with similar products from ERP vendors Infor, QAD, and SAP, as well as best-of-breed products from vendors such as TradeBeam, Vastera, and Management Dynamics.
This article originally appeared in the April 2007 issue of Managing Automation.