SINGAPORE—Oracle Corp., the world’s largest enterprise software developer, is anticipating rapidly growing demand for improved Business Intelligence (BI) solutions with far more powerful applications that go beyond simple data collection and reporting.

Largely viewed as tomorrow’s BI, Business Performance Management is revolutionizing the industry in terms of further pushing the capabilities of BI. 

“The market for these products is certainly booming,” said Sebastian Marotte, vice president for BI and Enterprise Performance Management of Oracle Asia Pacific.

He was speaking at an Oracle conference here Tuesday on the commitment of Oracle to deliver better BI applications to meet the perceived trend.

IDC’s 2006-2011 forecast shows the market size for business performance management tools is expected to grow 11.6 percent by 2011 with the performance management tools market valued at $6.8 billion in 2006.

“During meetings with clients, management executives and IT executives always talk about systems, wanting better tools at their disposal, more reliability, more trust in their data and more standardization,” he added.

In order to meet the gap, Oracle has taken steps by  offering improved tools  for businesses through the launch of Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System(EPM)—Oracle’s version of business performance management—after the acquisition of Hyperion, a leading provider of performance management software in 2007.

Marotte said that through EPM Oracle expects to deliver one of the most fully capable range of applications for any kind of business with the main feature of the EPM having been divided into two components: BI applications and performance management applications.

BI applications handle the management process with its wide range of business tools, as well as the ability to build or customize applications depending on the needs of the business. Performance management applications are more rooted in the financial aspect of the business such as financial modeling, budgeting, cost considerations and consolidation.

Most importantly, he said, both components fully integrate with each other thus making this a very powerful tool for managers seeking to connect different aspects of a company. This proves invaluable for companies both large and small as it can save on expensive maintenance and also simply processes resulting in more relevant output.

Since many companies will have different systems in place, the EPM system is designed to be “hot-plugged” into existing IT investments as well. This enables companies to pick, which applications are most suited to them without having to overhaul the entire IT infrastructure.

Marotte said that through the use of EPM, some companies have already begun to give them positive feedback.

IN line with a strategy to dispose of non-core assets, Benpres Holdings Corp. of the Lopezes said it has sold its 18-percent ownership in Professional Services Inc.—owner and operator of the upscale The Medical City—for P600 million.

Filinvest to spend P500M on BPO space

GOTIANUN-led Filinvest Land Inc. (FLI) is spending P500 million this year to fund the completion of office spaces intended for the business process outsourcing (BPO) market.

SINGAPORE—Oracle Corp., the world’s largest enterprise software developer, is anticipating rapidly growing demand for improved Business Intelligence (BI) solutions with far more powerful applications that go beyond simple data collection and reporting.

CEBU CITY—SPi, a unit of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) that provides outsourcing and offshoring (O and O) solutions, is rapidly expanding operations here in an effort to transfer a chunk of its projects into the country from the US.

PUBLICLY traded Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp. said its net income in 2007 grew 515 percent to P289 million from P47 million a year earlier on the back of higher revenues from its nickel unit, Berong Nickel Corp.

There are three dates that the public investors generally monitor and remember when a listed company declares dividends. To illustrate: The board of directors of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. approved on March 26, 2008, which is the approval date, a P0.825-per-share dividend, which it will pay its stockholders as of April 30, 2008, which is the record date, on May 27, 2008, which is the payment date.