Oracle Breaks the Silence

Some of you might have seen this announcement from Oracle earlier this week noting some of the highlights from their latest procurement version, Oracle Advanced Procurement Release 12. There are a number of specific enhancements referred to in the press release and I'd encourage you to check it out for yourself. As a side note, since Oracle -- unlike SAP -- keeps bloggers like me in the dark, my only source of knowledge on their solutions comes from customers, channels, and the analysts.

But that won't stop me from speculating on them. So here's three pieces scuttlebutt that I'm hearing "indirectly" from those close to Oracle. First, Oracle continues to make waves on the user experience. While not Rearden or Orbitz, their UI is good, if not industry leading. Second, their integration is great. That is, if your back-end is entirely Oracle (in other words, the integration story and references for a heterogeneous IT environment is lacking). Third, Oracle has pockets of deep functionality and glosses over the surface in other areas. My advice here is to force Oracle -- and other prospective vendors -- to perform use-case demonstrations based on the business processes which you want to enable (versus what they want to force down your throat). These types of demos will show whether or not the functionality in areas that are important to you is available or lacking.

As Oracle begins to make more noise in the market, I look forward to digging more into their capabilities and direction.

- Jason Busch