InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

Oracle Marketing 11i-the last piece of the suite to be unveiled-has three modules: Marketing Online, the central marketing application that handles campaign planning and execution, events management, and budget management; Marketing Intelligence, which analyzes campaigns for performance by products, channels, and market segments; and iMarketing, for interactive Web promotions such as content personalization and product recommendations. Pricing will be available by the end of the month, when the rest of the suite ships.

Marketing 11i builds on earlier Oracle marketing offerings, adding improved analysis, E-mail campaigns, and marketing budget management. Budget management is attractive to Nantucket Nectars Inc., a Boston beverage manufacturer. Nantucket is using Oracle's Marketing 3i but hopes to upgrade to Marketing 11i after its busy summer season. Director of IS Drew Farris says it's been difficult for the company to link marketing data to financial numbers and determine how effective its marketing programs were. With 11i, "we can use analysis tools and really look at the relationship between marketing and the budget."

Oracle's analytical and operational systems background should help its marketing automation push, says Meta Group analyst Steve Bonadio. "The question is how well they've integrated it," he says.

The Internet File Server lets users store within the Oracle relational database documents and other data that reside in desktop operating system files-primarily Microsoft Windows. Internet File Server will be bundled with the Oracle8i database at no extra cost. Solaris and Windows NT versions are available now; AIX, Linux, and HP-UX versions will follow in a few weeks.

"Files should not be part of the operating system. We'd like that data to be stored under software that we write, not software that Microsoft writes," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said when introducing the product last week.