After Woes, Oracle Woos Businesses With New ToolsAfter Woes, Oracle Woos Businesses With New Tools

Oracle hopes the sixth release of its 11i E-Business applications suite will change customer perceptions that still linger about the bug-ridden first release 19 months ago.

In the months following 11i's initial release in June 2000, 5,000 software patches were issued (see "Apps Made Easy?" March 12, 2001). Oracle says it's worked out the bugs, but the company still has work to do when it comes to customer perceptions. In a recent survey of 210 Oracle customers, by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and the Oracle Applications User Group, Oracle scored a 5.4, on a scale from 1 to 10, when respondents were asked about the quality of Oracle's applications.

The newest apps, which will begin shipping in March, were unveiled last week at Oracle's AppsWorld conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands. They include: Daily Business Close, which lets companies close their books daily or weekly; CADView-3D, which adds the ability to view computer-aided designs and 3-D models to Oracle's product-development exchange; Enterprise Asset Management, for managing various assets; Partners Online, for managing channel-partner relationships; and Customers Online, a data-management tool to help companies centralize customer records.

The company also rolled out a flat-rate fee schedule based on the workplace roles of each user. It's designed to attract buyers put off by Oracle's practice of charging by the application. Oracle no longer will charge per application module under the new pricing structure but will charge $4,000 for each frequent user who accesses the suite's more-sophisticated features and $400 for each casual user.