Oracle Launches Product Development Exchange

Oracle Corp, one of the largest providers of software for e-business, announced the availability of Oracle Product Development Exchange, a comprehensive collaborative product development and product lifecycle management solution. Oracle Product Development Exchange allows companies from all industries, such as manufacturing, construction, retail or graphic design, to bring team members together to collaboratively develop, design and review projects or products. With today's announcement, Oracle has significantly advanced the state of the B2B market by moving beyond transactional marketplaces to offering true collaborative environments.

The Internet provides an opportunity to facilitate collaboration among global product development teams, including customers, engineers and suppliers. For example, a retail company based in San Francisco could, via a Web-browser, review a proposed graphic from their graphic design firm in New York and in real-time mark-up the copy and come to a final decision. Today, however, such online collaboration is rare. A recent Forrester report indicates that only 12 percent of companies are actively using the Web in their product development process. Oracle Product Development Exchange harnesses the power of an exchange environment where global, multi-company team members can come together to securely share product information, project schedules and performance metrics in real time. Using Oracle Product Development Exchange, global enterprises can dramatically increase product innovation, improve project management and streamline product development processes.

"Oracle's Product Development Exchange announcement provides an exciting new collaborative product lifecycle management solution based on Oracle's Exchange platform," said Alan F. Mendel, Director North American Consulting Operations for CIMdata Inc, a leading global strategic consulting and research firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "Oracle Product Development Exchange will be eagerly received by those organizations that need to manage product development across a distributed supply chain and multiple projects."

Oracle Product Development Exchange

Oracle Product Development Exchange delivers a solution that is robust in every area of collaborative product development, including product information management, document management, project collaboration and product development intelligence. By recognizing efficiencies in the product development process, companies can significantly cut costs and accelerate time-to-market.

Oracle Product Development Exchange provides project collaboration tools that automate notifications and facilitate the reduction of non-value added time and expense associated with conventional communication methods. Utilizing these collaboration tools, Oracle Product Development Exchange can facilitate virtual design conferences where CAD drawings can be viewed and marked-up by attendees in separate locations. Drawings can then be cataloged in the Oracle Internet File System (iFS), which guarantees that valuable intellectual capital is securely held in the database, where it can be searched and versions can be maintained. Additionally, by holding all files in the database, companies can be assured that valuable intellectual capital can be maintained, and not lost when document versions change, or when key employees leave the company or move to new roles.

Unique product development intelligence features help businesses continuously evaluate and improve performance while providing executive visibility to real-time project status. These core capabilities are complemented by integration to partner tools, which allow users to work with the PDM, CAD and conferencing solutions of their choice.

Open, Collaborative Environment

Oracle Product Development Exchange provides highly secure, role-based access privileges through a simple Web browser. Open application program interfaces (API's) allow all companies -- regardless of their ERP provider -- to connect to a common hub. Oracle Product Development Exchange is a key part of the Oracle Exchange suite of products, which includes Oracle Marketplace and Oracle Supply Chain Exchange. Integration with the Oracle Marketplace allows users to move toward electronic sourcing of complex, design-to-order parts. Each product in the Oracle Exchange suite pulls from a single data source to provide consistent product information in every B2B process.

"We have designed Oracle Product Development Exchange with intuitive user interfaces and broadly useful functions that allow any type of organization -- manufacturer, service provider, or IT -- to quickly gain tremendous value," said Kurt Robson, vice president, Design and Architecture, PD Exchange and BI Applications, Oracle Corp. "Oracle Product Development Exchange takes care of business processes, so project teams can focus on designing and launching more innovative, high quality products."

About Oracle

Oracle Corporation provides the software that powers the Internet. For more information about Oracle, please call Oracle Public Relations at 650-506-4176.

Contact Karen Houston of Oracle Corp, 650-607-0326, or karen.houston@oracle.com, www.oracle.com.