Furthering its commitment to extend and evolve Oracle's JD Edwards products and protect current customer investments, Oracle today announced the availability of a new release of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, 8.12. This latest release offers new modules and enhanced features to address the needs of a broad base of EnterpriseOne customers as well as functionality specifically targeted for the food and beverage market. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, 8.12 is also certified on Oracle® Fusion Middleware.

Optimizing relationships with suppliers to help ensure the best quality and price for goods and services can help companies lower operating costs. A new module, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Operational Sourcing, helps automate the process of obtaining and awarding bids after a Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Information (RFI) is issued. Fully integrated with all the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Supply Management solutions, the addition of operational sourcing functionality means companies can efficiently manage all phases of the supplier lifecycle, from critical sourcing decisions to supplier payments.

Several other new features across the suite of applications provide new and existing JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customers with the ability to stay competitive, take advantage of new market opportunities and increase business efficiencies. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Human Capital Management now includes employee scheduling, enhanced time and labor and self-service capabilities. Further, customer relationship management applications delivered in the previous release of EnterpriseOne have been enhanced to drive greater visibility into customer service operations. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Supply Chain Management adds transportation shipment sequencing, which enables OEM suppliers to deliver to manufacturing production lines in the exact sequence in which the parts are required. In addition, the Fixed Asset Management module has been enhanced to facilitate today's complex accounting and regulatory requirements.

"Small and midsize businesses need comprehensive, affordable and flexible solutions to automate processes and drive profitable operations," said Gartner Research Director Billy Maynard. "There continues to be strong demand among SMBs for enhanced capabilities around core Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) that help customers reduce operating costs and increase business effectiveness."

The 8.12 release helps lower the total cost of ownership by simplifying the deployment and management activities of a JD Edwards EnterpriseOne implementation. By adopting the standards-based XML format for application specifications - also referred to as metadata - key processes such as package builds and deployment are simplified.

Industry-Specific Solution for Food and Beverage Producers

Oracle industry solutions are based on a wealth of industry experience and are tailored to address the unique challenges and processes that drive those businesses. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is the first enterprise ERP solution with specific functionality for the food and beverage producers industry. The comprehensive package of pre-integrated software, hardware and services enables food and beverage producers to automate business processes and gain the visibility to information needed to operate efficiently and deliver high quality products to customers. Three new modules - JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Blend Management, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Grower Management and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Grower Pricing and Payments - were designed in collaboration with customers to help provide the ability for food and beverage producers to manage processes and the manufacturing of blended products. Oracle worked closely with CIBER, a leading systems integrator for the food and beverage industry, on product requirements and functional specifications for these new modules.

"We're very excited about the new features in Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12 package," said Vice President of CIBER's Oracle Practice Mike Dillon. "CIBER has been working with businesses in the food and beverage industry for more than ten years, and we've written similar custom functionality for our customers during that time. Oracle's new software will be the only top tier ERP package today with this type of functionality built into the base product. This will provide our customers the best of both worlds-a top tier ERP solution with vertical specialization to meet their unique needs."

Global beverage company, Foster's Group, has been involved with the development of these food and beverage modules since design and development began with JD Edwards.

"We've had a long relationship with JD Edwards and we're gratified to see the commitment that Oracle has shown for the JD Edwards products through the transition," said Foster's CIO, Ian Farnsworth. "Once fully implemented, the three new modules should deliver to Foster's the ability to integrate wine production from grapevine to bottle in a single ERP environment."

EnterpriseOne Path to Oracle Fusion

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customers now have an option to take advantage of the Oracle Technology Foundation - a tightly integrated and complete infrastructure based on the industry-leading Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware. With JD Edwards EnterpriseOne certification on Oracle Fusion Middleware, organizations can use components such as Oracle Containers for J2EE, Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle Identity Management and Oracle Portal, to support their entire enterprise including business applications, custom applications and standards-based enterprise services. Adopting Oracle Fusion technologies today helps companies gradually move towards future technologies at their own pace, absorbing changes in a manner that is manageable and without disruption.

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne allows customers to choose to leverage the tools, database and middleware from Oracle or continue with current investments from partner vendors. The new version includes support for the current and next releases of platforms, such as IBM WebSphere 6.0, IBM Portal 5.1, Sun Solaris Unix 10, Redhat Linux 3.0 and i5/OS V5R4.