Ellison's gang hits users with a surprise Proposal

By Alorie Gilbert

Oracle is polishing up its business applications to get ready for launch early next year.

The company plans to release a new ebusiness program called Oracle Proposals in February, said John Wookey, senior vice president of applications development at Oracle. At that time, the company will introduce an update to its data analysis products, he said.

With Oracle Proposals, the software maker intends to broaden its line of customer relationship management (CRM) software. Oracle competes with SAP, PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Siebel Systems in the CRM market.

The program, which is designed to help companies put together sales proposals for customers, should be available alone or as part of Oracle's larger ebusiness suite of CRM, accounting, human resources and manufacturing applications. Oracle Proposals should also be able to easily exchange data with the company's price-quoting software, Oracle Quoting.

Oracle also plans to expand its recently released set of data analysis and reporting tools, called Oracle Daily Business Intelligence. The application is designed to pull information about finance, human resources, payroll and inventory from numerous components of the Oracle Ebusiness Suite.

That report should provide business managers with up-to-the-minute information via the web about company operations and performance, Wookey said.

Attendees at the Oracle AppsWorld are likely to get a first look at the new products. AppsWorld, Oracle's annual business applications convention, is scheduled to be held in San Diego next month.

Alorie Gilbert writes for News.com