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Technology Stocks : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Captain Jack who wrote (5131)	1/22/1998 5:56:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 19079

Oracle Web tool culls databases By Mike Ricciuti January 16, 1998, 11:55 a.m. PT Oracle (ORCL) will begin offering its customers a Web-based tool Monday for culling information from vast corporate databases. The software company will debut Oracle Reports 3.0, a server-based tool that compiles database reports and makes them available to thin client systems via the Web. Oracle will for the first time make the reporting tool available as a separate product. It was previously sold as part of Oracle's Developer/2000 toolset. Reporting tools are generally unglamorous pieces of technology but are widely used by businesses to compile sales reports, customer profiles, credit analyses and other vital documents. But despite their central role in typical businesses, reporting tools have been notoriously hard to use, from the point of view of the people who need the information most. Oracle and other reporting tool companies have pounced on the Web as an ideal way to deliver information. Because tools like Oracle Reports are managed centrally, they allow information systems managers to easily specify both the types of reports that can be run, as well as the employees who are authorized to see them. The tool will generate reports in HTML, Adobe's Portable Document Format, PCL PostScript on Windows NT and Unix, and in plain ASCII format, according to Oracle. Oracle Reports 3.0 costs $2,495 per developer and $195 per concurrent person using the report server from a thin client, said Dee Shorten, a product manager at Oracle.

To: Captain Jack who wrote (5131)	1/22/1998 6:00:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 19079

In May, Baan said it would purchase Aurum, a customer relations software provider, in a stock-swap deal valued at approximately $250 million. The Dutch software firm followed up that announcement with another in August saying it planned to buy Siemens Nixdorf Information System's business software unit ALX-COMET for an undisclosed amount. And in October, PeopleSoft said it would acquire management software maker Salerno Manufacturing Systems for an undisclosed amount. Under the terms of the purchase, PeopleSoft moved all nine Salerno employees, including development, support, and sales staff, to its offices in Southfield, Michigan, PeopleSoft executives said. Details of the purchase were not disclosed. Salerno's flagship SPM+open software will be integrated with PeopleSoft's next version of its software suite PeopleSoft 7.5, PeopleSoft said. All three companies compete, along with Oracle and JD Edwards, in the global ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems market, providing packages used to automate and integrate corporate functions such as sales forecasting, inventory, control, procurement, manufacturing planning, distribution, finance, and project management. ERP applications have become fixtures at a large majority of multinational corporations in recent years, but sales have begun to stagnate with market saturation, observers say. The major ERP vendors have devoted large resources to try to extend their core product to the front-office to make it attractive to a more diverse market. Hodges said everyone makes out in these purchases and investments. "It's a strategic move for both the vendors and their customers," because the software companies push into the front office and the customers get integrated client-server business application suites. Although most of the enterprise software makers are making these buys, others are building integrated suites by alternative means. For example, Oracle is working to develop stronger sales and marketing functions in its enterprise software offering. "And they're spending the money internally," the IDC analyst pointed out. As for the new year, Hodges said to look to PeopleSoft to make the next acquisition, possibly in the customer management applications arena.