Oracle certifies Mac clients with E-Business Suite

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by Stephen Beale

(IDG) -- Apple Computer and Oracle announced that the Macintosh has been certified for use as a client with the Oracle E-Business Suite, a comprehensive set of business applications accessible through Web browsers. The companies said they will promote the suite in the education and small business markets, and Oracle said it will use the Mac in its sales demonstrations.

"Every application we make works with the Mac today," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said in a prepared statement. Ellison also sits on Apple's board of directors.

The E-Business Suite includes software that Oracle hosts as an application service provider (ASP), along with customizable Web- and Java-based business-management systems that organizations can deploy on their own. Either way, clients can access the applications through Web browsers or Internet appliances.

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Targeting the education market, Apple and Oracle said they will launch a seminar series promoting the technology in the top 100 colleges and universities. For small-business customers, Apple and Oracle will promote OracleSalesOnline.com, an online sales-management tool, and Oracle Business Online, a set of applications, also hosted under an ASP model, that cover finance, human resources/payroll, supply chain management and other business functions.

The ASP software, all based on Oracle's enterprise applications, is designed for rapid implementation. Oracle Business Online applications, sold through Oracle sales reps as packages that include training and support, can be delivered in as little as five days if they do not include custom components, Oracle said. You can set up OracleSalesOnline.com accounts on your own. The latter offers free contact management features, but Oracle plans to add premium services for a monthly fee.

The Oracle E-Business Suite currently works with clients running Mac OS 9.0.4 with Macintosh Runtime for Java (MRJ) 2.2.3. The companies said the suite will be available next year for Mac OS X. Oracle also announced that it will add the Mac to its support services.

Oracle has been promoting the idea of highly centralized and integrated Internet applications as a cost-effective alternative to traditional distributed client/server systems. About two years ago, the company began an ongoing effort to convert its own information systems to the new model, and already claims to have saved $1 billion by consolidating servers, reducing IT personnel and taking advantage of other efficiencies. By December 2001, Oracle said it expects to have two back-office servers running four databases, compared with the previous 32 servers with 60 databases. The company also plans to consolidate 97 e-mail servers into four.

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