Oracle out to seduce mid-market with Suite talk

Vendor unveils Oracle E-Business Suite Special Edition

Oracle is targeting the mid-market with an update of its business software.

The Oracle E-Business Suite Special Edition, aimed at firms with 100 to 500 employees and revenue of £13m to £160m, comes pre-installed and pre-configured on a server, requiring little customisation.

Trudy Norris-Grey, Oracle's vice-president of UK multi-channel sales, said: "We think there are about 14,000 potential customers for the Suite in the UK. People are increasingly looking for quick implementation and integration. It's possible to get this up and running within 20 days."

The software installs on a variety of platforms capable of running Linux; the choice of hardware is up to the reseller. A hosted version is also available from an Oracle data centre or through a VAR. The vendor has signed six resellers so far.

Ritchie Malin, managing director of Sysao, one of the new VARs, said: "We are all about consulting, and this product gives us the opportunity to offer this while delivering a good-value solution."

Some Oracle competitors, such as SAP and PeopleSoft, have also earmarked mid-market firms as a lucrative opportunity.

But Norris-Grey said: "SAP's view of the market is very different. We are looking at installs for under €100,000. SAP products are more expensive."

However, Jonathan Taylor, from reseller TrustMarque Solutions, sounded a note of caution. "Lots of companies are packaging solutions to appeal to smaller businesses - everybody is trying to find a way in," he said.

"But we all need to keep an eye on what these SMEs are going to do in the future. The products need to be flexible enough to cope with that."