News

Oracle Extends Fixed-Cost Offerings

• By Scott Bekker
• 02/05/1999

This week Oracle unveiled the latest application suite under its FastForward program, a discrete manufacturing application suite intended for high tech manufacturers. Called FastForward Manufacturing^RPM for High Tech, the offering builds upon a series of other FastForward application suites that have emerged from the database giant since last September. Suites already available include FastForward Financials^RPM, FastForward Public Sector Sector Financials^RPM and FastForward for Manufacturing^RPM. The company plans to offer a process manufacturing package by the end of the second quarter of this year. The company says other configurations may be announced through the year.

The "RPM" designates "Rapid Pre-configured Model," which means using standardized release 11 configurations of Oracle’s Enterprise Application suite developed by Oracle’s consulting organization. The program is designed for companies under $500 million in annual revenues and works on the premise of completing an implementation under a fixed-cost, fixed-time contract.

The high-tech manufacturing package with 30 user seats carries a $575,000 price tag and includes licenses to financial applications and manufacturing/MRP modules, one year of Oracle’s OracleSilver support package and an educational component. The program promises implementation, in a 90-day window or less, through Oracle’s 10,000-person consulting unit. Alternatively, customers can contract with a local Oracle Solution Provider company. The package differs by the standard manufacturing package announced late last year with the addition of a quality control module not offered in the standard manufacturing package.

Although the program is offered for deployment on both Windows NT and Unix systems, preloaded configurations are available only on Unix systems from Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc.

To promise a fixed price, fixed time implementation, Oracle has taken steps to limit the extent of any implementation. A potential customer must first complete a questionnaire that helps them pre-qualify for the program. Among the limitations Oracle won’t handle in the fixed-price implementation: multiple languages, multiple currencies, and migration of legacy data from existing MRP systems. "We have the ability to do data migration for our customers, but to make the offering as straightforward as possible, we’re not including data migration," says Eve Milrod, Oracle senior director of mid-market business development. – Al Gillen, Editor in Chief