20 Years of Applications
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of Oracle. But Oracle is celebrating
another significant milestone in 2007: two decades in the enterprise applications business.
In 1987, Oracle launched this new software division with only seven employees. Today,
thousands of applications customers around the world have saved billions of dollars using
Oracle’s applications for automation, self-service, business process efficiency, and industry best practices. And with Oracle Fusion Applications on the horizon, the next 20 years
should be just as significant for Oracle and its customers.
MILESTONES
1987 Oracle Applications Software Division is founded to create
software that integrates closely with Oracle Database and brings
unprecedented processing power to essential business activities.
1988 Row-level locking improves application performance when
many users are accessing the same data. 1989 Oracle’s support
of online transaction processing (OLTP) facilitates transaction-oriented applications—an increasingly critical issue for businesses
involved in e-commerce, electronic banking, electronic trading,
and order processing. 1990 Oracle releases the first client/server–
based packaged applications—accounting software networked to
an Oracle database server. The Oracle Applications Users Group
is formed. 1993 With Oracle Applications Release 10, Oracle
becomes the first software company to rewrite all its business
software to run in client/server mode. 1995 Oracle shows a commitment to e-commerce by becoming the first major applications
vendor to offer internet access as an integrated component of its
applications. 1996 Oracle introduces browser-based self-service
applications—a technology that will go on to save companies
millions of dollars in processing, purchasing, and other costs. 1997
Oracle announces the world’s first open standards–based, Java-enabled enterprise applications suite, Oracle Applications Release
10. 7 NCA. 1998 Oracle launches Oracle Business Online, the first
hosting service for enterprise applications designed to run on the
Web. 1999 Oracle debuts Applications 11i, an internet-enabled
suite of enterprise applications that signaled a dramatic move
away from client/server computing towards the internet. 2000 The
industry’s first fully integrated e-business applications suite—
Oracle E-Business Suite 11i—eliminates the need for complex
integration projects and allows enterprise data to be consolidated
in a single database. 2003 Oracle E-Business Suite Special Edition
offers enterprise resource planning applications designed specifically for small and medium companies. 2005 To expand the company’s applications portfolio, Oracle completes the acquisition of
applications rival PeopleSoft and announces its intention to acquire
Siebel Systems. 2006 Oracle announces Applications Unlimited,
a commitment to enhance Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and
Siebel applications on an ongoing basis to help customers derive
benefits from their current implementations for years to come. 2007
Oracle announces new releases of all five major application families, delivering on the promises of Applications Unlimited.
Announcing Oracle
Financials: an ad for
a series of Financials
seminars offered
throughout the U.S.
“If the internet turns out not to be the future of
computing, we’re toast. But if it is, we’re golden.”
—Larry Ellison, Founder and CEO, in 1998
“Large packaged applications, for example, that were
developed to run well on Oracle would not run well on
other products. Customers were immediately drawn
to Oracle, if they had any kind of serious workload.
So this was a real important advantage for Oracle for
many, many years.”
—Ken Jacobs, Vice President, Product Strategy
“It was clear that there was an opportunity there
to build a new generation of applications that would
be a lot easier to deploy and manage and offer
better functionality.”
—Ed Screven, Chief Corporate Architect
“IBM is not an applications company. They can’t
know the requirements from applications as well
as we can. SAP is a good applications company, but
they don’t have the same capabilities of building the
technology base that we have with Oracle Fusion
Middleware. That’s what makes us truly unique.”
—Jesper Andersen, Senior Vice President, Applications Strategy
“Applications Unlimited is a pretty unique strategy in
the history of the industry. We’re completely committed to bringing a great next-generation application
into the marketplace, and we think customers will be
very excited about it.”
