As Oracle Corp prepares itself for the announcement of first quarter results today, the company yesterday (Monday) announced a series of changes to its Oracle Applications enterprise business applications suite. The database giant says Release 11.0 of the suite is expected to be available early next year and Oracle is billing it as the broadest functional upgrade in its history. The company recently said it expects revenues in the next few years to be driven by the application side of its business, rather than the current 70% generated from the traditional database side of the business (CI No 3,208). Oracle believes this release, which is an upgrade of version 10.7, will enable the company to break into markets where it has little or no presence, according to a company spokesperson. The Redwood Shores, California-based operation unveiled the new suite as part of a series of announcements made at the Oracle Applications User Group conference being held in Orlando, Florida this week. Release 11 sees the introduction of improved globalization support that includes the multiple reporting currencies, cross currency transactions and better support for the European Monetary Union, although it has been widely acknowledged that such applications throughout the industry are far from adequate as of yet (CI No 3,239). Oracle however, believes Release 11 will prove to be a definite step in the right direction when it comes to developing definitive EMU compliant software. As a result of the new release, users in some 40 countries will now be able to use the suite with local features, and the number of languages catered for will rise to 28. Concentration has been paid in the process management and flow management application area, while there is also new support for industrial applications among others. On the eve of the publication of first quarter results, brokers were predicting Oracle’s earnings per share are likely to be $0.15, down from the $0.17 in its first quarter last year.
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