Company has released E-Business Suite 12, a financial-information suite designed for worldwide deployment, plus other new applications

Oracle announced on Wednesday the general release of E-Business Suite Release 12, a financial-information suite designed for global deployment, and unveiled postmerger applications for users of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel products.

Oracle made the announcements during its Applications Unlimited event this week in New York.

In addition to touting the features of E-Business Suite Release 12, the company aimed to persuade customers using software acquired from PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems and JD Edwards that it will continue to support and enhance those respective software products.

The new applications in those product lines include the PeopleSoft Enterprise 9 human capital management module and Siebel CRM 8 customer relationship management software. Oracle also previewed the JD Edwards World A9.1 applications package.

"These are not small releases but major improvements in functionality," John Wookey, Oracle senior vice president of applications development, said during a keynote speech at the event.

Oracle E-Business Suite 12 is designed to provide new functionality for managing work processes across far-flung business units, Wookey said. For example, global corporations with a single transaction could create multiple accounting entries that would be localised to fit accounting requirements applying to any part of the world a company operates.

The suite is also designed to display, in a single place, all forms of compensation for employees, regardless of the geographic location in which they are based.

"This makes global deployment a reality," Wookey said. "It'll be a way to differentiate us in the marketplace."

Oracle announced the general availability of the human capital management module for PeopleSoft Enterprise 9, which is designed to work with Oracle Fusion Middleware.

"PeopleSoft was halfway through developing its 8.9 release when we acquired the company," Wookey said. "We told [PeopleSoft customers] we were committed to 9.0, and we delivered that last pillar — human capital management — at the end of the year... We're currently working on version 9.1."

Oracle also announced the general availability of Siebel CRM 8, marking the first time its customer relationship management software will work on servers running Linux.

The preview of JD Edwards World A9.1 highlighted the first major release of JD Edwards World in a decade. World A9.1 includes regulatory compliance support, capabilities for global operations and various technological improvements.

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