Oracle to launch WebCenter Suite on 31st January

New software will help firms build blogs and wikis into their intranets

Oracle will launch its WebCenter Suite on 31 January, a Fusion middleware component first announced at OracleWorld in October last year.

The software contains six elements designed to let companies build in Web 2.0-based tools like blogs, wikis, mashups and RSS feeds into company intranets, internal dashboards and other types of portal.

It will also aid collaboration and communication between colleagues and business partners by adding a smoother interface into standard business applications, said Oracle.

"WebCenter 2.0 has six pieces; the first is the web centre framework that extends support for a dynamic client based on asynchronous javascript and XLM (Ajax), with mashup content integrated into that from various sources, including databases and document repositories from JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Siebel applications," explained Oracle senior vice-president of development for Oracle middleware platform products, Thomas Kurian.

“It makes it easy for business users to interact with those environments using familiar tools like MS Office, and also to interact with enterprise applications from mobile devices and voice over IP (VoIP) clients,” he added.

“The key thing is that we would like to bring the same web-based experience to users in all the applications they are using, so that they are not regarded as separated applications but embedded in business applications that customers build on top of Fusion Middleware,” said Rahul Patel, vice-president of Oracle Server Technology.