ERP developers PeopleSoft and Oracle continued their push into B2B commerce last week, each unveiling new e-procurement software.
PeopleSoft announced the release of PeopleSoft eProcurement 2.0, a stand-alone product that provides tight integration with PeopleSoft's accounts payable, receiving, purchasing and asset management applications.
The announcement came in the wake of the company's positive earnings report, which bucked the downward trend of enterprise resource planning software vendors. The Pleasanton, company earned US$16.8 million compared with a loss of US$171.2 million last year at this time.
PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway said the e-procurement offerings fulfill the promise of an "accelerated" e-business applications push while continuing the company's focus on ERP and customer relationship management software.
"You should expect a company like PeopleSoft to not only provide best-of-breed applications in those three areas, but have them fully integrated, which is a unique advantage," Conway said during an interview with PC Week.
"Most CIOs are just now figuring out that the e-business applications they licensed still have to be fully integrated to their back office," he added.
In addition, Conway said PeopleSoft will launch this quarter a vertical corporate portal, but he declined to give further details.
Pricing for eProcurement 2.0 varies according to the size of the implementation.
Meanwhile, Oracle announced at its Application Users Group Conference in Philadelphia a quicker option for deploying its Internet Procurement software.
The Redwood Shores, company's Internet Procurement System Bundle allows integrators, hardware vendors and channel partners to preinstall the software, providing a more predictable cost and time framework for installation and faster deployment.
Oracle also unveiled last week FastForward Financials and FastForward Human Resources/ Payroll.
Targeting companies with revenues of US$500 million or less, the new products are geared toward deploying financial applications in five days and human resource software within 65 days. The packages include software, implementation services, education and support.
In related news, Andersen Consulting, announced it will launch in the fall an e-procurement venture with Sun Microsystems.
The as-yet-unnamed venture would buy US$300 million worth of Sun servers and storage hardware and iPlanet e-commerce software from the Sun-Netscape Alliance.
