Larry Ellison, Oracle's president and CEO, made a familiar pitch at Oracle AppsWorld in New Orleans late last month. "It's far better to go live with a solution that gives you everything you need to run your business now, even though it might not yet provide everything you'd want, than wait two years with the dream of a 100% solution," Ellison said. The Oracle 11i E-Business Suite, he proclaimed, gives customers all they need now. "We built the complete E-business suite--and that's what Oracle 11i is all about."

But while the software has breadth, encompassing everything from customer-relationship management to supply-chain management, many say Oracle stumbled in the execution. Since 11i was released in May, the software has seen 5,000 patches, according to the Oracle Applications Users' Group, and it's on its third major revision. With the release of Oracle 11.5.3, which shipped to Unix customers in January and Windows NT users in February, customers and integrators are hoping Oracle really delivers on the promise it began making even before it introduced the suite.

Mark Barrenechea, Oracle's senior VP of applications development, won't comment on bugs in previous versions, but Oracle claims that 11.5.3 is as solid as any version of enterprise software out there. It had better be, analysts say. Oracle two weeks ago revealed a double whammy: Database sales were flat or slightly negative for the third quarter ended Feb. 28, and expectations for growth in its apps business were down from 75% to 50%. The vendor blamed the fall-off on IT execs' decision to delay signing off on deals in the face of a slowing economy. In such a climate, neither Oracle nor any other vendor can afford to fail to live upto expectations.

Some who have seen 11.5.3 say the software is ready to be the foundation on which companies can build Internet-enabled businesses. Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, which has been running 11.5.3 in its lab, says it's the most stable version yet; it's also ready to begin using the CRM modules in its practice. "There were difficulties for the last half of the year, but Oracle has made significant improvements and fixes," says Peter von Euen, the consulting firm's senior manager and North America solution lead for CRM.

Early adopters accept the risks of defects and problems in order to gain the advantages of being first to use new technology, Barrenechea contends. Compaq, which has deployed 11i iProcurement, agrees that the risks are worth the rewards. Paul Box, director of corporate procurement at Compaq, says the fixes required to implement the software were "not out of the ordinary" for a new system like 11i. "It's a complex tool," he says--and one that he expects will help the company cut $12 million off the cost of generating purchase orders each year. He says another $50 million in annual savings will be generated because the software will make it easier to leverage volume purchasing agreements and supplier discounts.