Oracle explains product integration strategy

Paco Aubrejuan, head of Oracle’s enterprise applications provider PeopleSoft, said Oracle’s post-acquisition strategy was likely to benefit customers in an economic downturn because the firm continues to support the platforms it acquires.

After an acquisition vendors can opt for one of two different strategies, he said.

A company can either focus on driving forward a particular product line and direct all their investment in that, or they can focus on supporting multiple applications that might overlap in functionality but will allow customers to choose their own product integration.

An example Aubrejuan gave was that Oracle has opted to continue supporting products acquired from Hyperion, PeopleSoft and Siebel.

Meanwhile Oracle rival SAP has tended to force its business intelligence customers to transition to applications it believes are the richest in functionality.

For example, users that have bought SAP’s NetWeaver tools are being encouraged to move over to the SAP Business Objects XI offering.

Although both SAP and Oracle post-acquisition integration strategies have benefits, Aubrejuan said Oracle’s open-ended strategy would benefit customers in a recession because they would not have to make any hefty transitions to new products.

SAP was not immediately available to comment but Aubrequan also said Oracle’s support of additional products would work well for businesses that are shifting to Web 2.0 and software-as-service architectures because there is more opportunity for application integration.

When discussing Oracle Web 2.0 strategy, Aubrejuan said there were no firm plans in Oracle yet to partner up with social networking sites like IBM has done.

For example, IBM recently announced a partnership with LinkedIn that will see social networking functionality integrated into various Lotus products.

Aubrejuan said Oracle believes business remain anxious about data privacy concerns when enterprise software vendors partner up with Web 2.0 sites, adding that Oracle was adopting “a wait and see” approach on how these concerns are resolved.

Aubrequan finally detailed a “fast returns” option Oracle was offering customers hard hit by the economy.

Customers will be able to fast start certain initiatives that are part of a longer term strategy with Oracle in order to generate a number of fast returns. Aubrequan listed a few of the initiatives as eprocurement, absence management and expense management.

In related news, Oracle announced on Wednesday the availability of PeopleSoft Enterprise Workforce Communications, a solution for planning and delivering human resource programmes.

It will allow organisations to pinpoint underperforming areas and those that require additional training or development, said the firm.