PeopleSoft has one of its biggest releases ever in the pipeline, said Paco Aubrejuan, senior vice president of PeopleSoft development. "The number of large companies that depend on us to run their business has continued to grow," he said.

Customers can expect Oracle to simplify the apps to make them easier to use, he said.

Separately Monday, Oracle announced a set of new HTML5-based mobile applications for PeopleSoft.

E-Business Suite is also gearing up for a major release, 12.2, over the next year, said Cliff Godwin, senior vice president of applications development.

The key feature in 12.2 will be online patching. "People have been asking me to deliver it for about 20 years," Godwin said to scattered applause. "We expect that feature will substantially reduce, down to minutes, planned downtimes associated with E-Business Suite."