ORCL: Oracle Delivers Oracle(r) Transportation Management 5.5

For companies seeking to reduce the cost and complexity of transportation planning, execution and management, Oracle today announced the general availability of Oracle( Transportation Management 5.5. The first product release since the acquisition of G-Log, Oracle Transportation Management 5.5 enables companies to lower transportation costs, improve customer service and asset utilization, and provide flexible, global fulfillment options.
"Customer demand for transportation management systems remains strong, driven by rising fuel costs, shrinking order-to-delivery cycle times, and capacity constraints," said ARC Advisory Group Director, Logistics Executive Council Adrian Gonzalez. "Oracle's latest release demonstrates its commitment to product innovation which, as reported in our soon-to-be-published TMS Worldwide Market Outlook study, has enabled the company to gain market share over the past 18 months."

The newest version of Oracle Transportation Management integrates and streamlines global transportation planning and execution, freight payment and business process automation on a single platform across all modes of transportation - from truckload to complex multi-leg air, ocean and rail shipments. Oracle Transportation Management is available both as a stand-alone product and as part of the Oracle E-Business Suite.

"Oracle understands that transportation management requirements continue to evolve and that to further extend our leadership we must continue to invest," said Oracle Vice President SCM Strategy Jon Chorley. "Oracle Transportation Management 5.5 is a major release that delivers broad logistics capabilities and gives companies comprehensive visibility across supply chain operations in an open, standards-based architecture."

New fleet and contract carrier capabilities that evaluate land-based transportation options, illustrate Oracle's continued commitment to logistics service providers and shippers, as well as Oracle's understanding that the relationship between these parties is evolving due to changing market conditions. This key component of the latest release provides the ability to identify network-compatible lanes with sufficient, repeatable volume to optimize the utilization of fleet and dedicated assets in conjunction with common carrier rates and availability. Through a mix of operational and tactical planning capabilities, users now have the ability to create capacity scenarios that determine and adhere to the appropriate mix of private, dedicated and contract carriage.

In an effort to evolve Oracle Transportation Management into an SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) platform, this latest release introduces several new web services that expose key functional and informational components to external applications. This will allow for easier data integration and cross-application business process flows. For example, users can invoke transportation business processes in the context of the overall business process flow and vise-versa. Users can leverage these capabilities to make Oracle Transportation Management a central part of the overall business process platform.

With a significant amount of innovation in Oracle Transportation Management 5.5, Oracle has demonstrated its continued focus on quickly delivering new solutions that support global operations across multiple industries. Some of the enhancements that illustrate this are:
* Three-dimensional load modeling - This enhancement offers containerized item placement and volume calculations that account for orientation and stacking constraints. This feature will help reduce failed and sub-optimized loads by creating detailed loading instructions that account for actual item characteristics;
* Dock and yard management - Oracle Transportation Management 5.5 now has the ability to monitor dock and labor utilization via newly added dock management intelligence. Users can now schedule, remove and recalculate appointment stop times as arrival and departure changes actually occur; and
* Wireless carrier communications - New wireless capabilities allow users to stay in touch with service providers in remote locations or without on-board systems. This enables smaller niche carriers to adhere to automated communication process mandates with limited investment in technology.

Based upon the capabilities of Oracle Transportation Management, Oracle won the "Logistics Service Provider of the Year" award at the China Logistics Summit and Awards held in Beijing in July 2006. Oracle Transportation Management was also recently positioned in the Leader Quadrant in Gartner's 2006 Transportation Management Systems (TMS) Magic Quadrant.1 The full 2006 Gartner Transportation Management Systems Magic Quadrant report can be found at the following URL: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/141713.html

1 Gartner Research "Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems, 2006," by Jeff Woods, July 18, 2006