Another OAUG member, Basheer Khan, said that Oracle has been touting an overall commitment to product quality, and argued there should be no fears about this upgrade being buggy. A member of the OAUG executive committee, Khan is also president and CEO of Innowave Technology LLC, an Irvine, Calif.-based consultancy specializing in Oracle applications.

E-Business Suite 12 is shipping now.

In addition to releasing Version 12 of its flagship E-Business Suite, Oracle yesterday also announced four other applications releases.

The other releases include PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0, Siebel CRM 8.0, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12 and JD Edwards World A9.1. But perhaps most significant announcement was the preview of World A9.1 -- the first major release of the application since 1998. World A9.1 comes with new software documentation, Wookey said in a presentation.

World, which runs on the IBM AS/400 hardware and software platform, had languished under JD Edwards & Co. and was slated for obsolescence when PeopleSoft Inc. bought JD Edwards in 2003. PeopleSoft committed to supporting the applications again, and when Oracle purchased PeopleSoft two years ago, it expanded on that pledge. That effort included working closely with rival IBM to ensure the application is optimized to run on AS/400/System i server platform.