NEW DELHI, July 10: Oracle Software India Ltd, a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation of USA, plans to launch its second global education centre (GEC) in India and fourth in the Asia Pacific region by the end of this year. The first centre in the country was opened at Delhi in May.

Oracle India chairman and managing director Anil Kaul said, "We have a plan to start an educational facility in Andhra Pradesh similar to the one we have in Delhi." The centre will be located at Hyderabad.

This will be the fourth in the Asia Pacific region, the other three being in Melbourne, Singapore and New Delhi.These centres have been created to unify the existing Oracle education organisations which serve its customers. The GECs will provide courses beyond those available in the authorised training centres.

The focus will be on building skills and expertise for hi-end of Oracle's products and services.

Oracle Corporation recorded sales of $5.68 billion for the financial year 1996-97, of which $1.16 billion came from its application software alone. The company plans to make further investments in India during the year. "We have had a 25 per cent increase in our expenditure and the investment will have to correspond to it," said Kaul. The company markets the complete range of its products and services through its offices in Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi, and through its partners in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. It has about 40 distributors all over the country. General manager for channel operations Shekar Dasgupta said, "Currently, we have sufficient distributors to market our products. We may appoint a few more companies with new skills as our distributors." The company's Application Release 10.7, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, seems to have found favour with the cellular industry and a few corporate houses in India.

Oracle's director for applications and industries, T Srinivasan, said, "Two cellular operators, Air Tel - the cellular service provider in Delhi - and Birla AT&T have already deployed this application. Punj Lloyd and a few other companies also are in the process of integrating ERP solution."

Three new products have been launched to support an integrated, networked supply chain solution. The company also plans to soon launch web-deployed line of client/server applications. It claims to be the first to provide such an application which will also integrate with Oracle's electronic commerce server.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.