Another week, another middle east implementation of Oracle E-Business Suite to report. This time it is AwalNet, the ISP based in Saudi Arabia, who is implementing a range of Oracle E-Business Suite modules to help it improve customer service.

AwalNet is implementing:- Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management, Siebel CRM, Oracle Financials, Oracle Human Capital Management and Oracle Supply Chain Management.

Fahad Al-Husain, President of AwalNet was reported as saying "we are confident this project will enhance our capabilities, drive innovation and improve our agility and speed in servicing our customers."

Bradford & Bingley, one of the first building societies to convert to plc status (in December 2000), reported gross profits of £351m for its financial year ending December 2007. It has over 3,000 staff in the UK.

The bank has implemented Oracle E-Business Suite Human Capital Management HR Self Service, Learning Management and Daily Business Intelligence. The new installation reduces HR administration effort, gives employees faster access to key HR information and provides a platform for ensuring best practice in staff development and learning.

The long and complicated history of Gulf Oil as a company and brand is well-documented at the excellent Wikipedia article - Gulf Oil. Today there are now 2400 Gulf-branded petrol stations as well as a thriving wholesale fuel distribution business.

With the renaissance of this brand, powerful software was required to support the coroprate growth strategy. A year-long search for the most appropriate software concluded that Oracle E-Business Suite, in particular Oracle Financials modules and Oracle Project Costing, were the most advanced available in the marketplace.

The work of implementing this software now begins, with the expectation that the result will be global integrated reporting, earlier closing of month and year ends, and much improved project portfolio financial performance information.

BREG, the American manufacturer of orthopedic, reconstructive and postoperative products, has deployed Oracle E-Business Suite in order to standardise production processes, centralise key back-office capabilities and create a more flexible supply chain.

Already a user of another Oracle product, Siebel CRM, BREG have made a natural choice in implementing Oracle E-Business Suite, given its relatively easy integration points.

Their implementation was of modest cost. BREG are using the Oracle Database Standard Edition rather than enterprise edition and have installed on Dell quad-core Linux servers. Fusion Middleware and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g complete the suite of Oracle tools that BREG have installed.

The Indian manufacturer Kirloskar Ferrous has implemented Oracle E-Business Suite in order to improve business processes at its two production plants in the Karnataka region of India.

Kirloskar has implemented Financials, Human Resources (HRMS), Manufacturing and Distribution modules. The integrated view of the business across locations improves the basis on which management makes decisions, and reduces the costs associated with executing many frontline and back office business processes.

The healthcare sector in Victoria, Australia has been struggling to replace core clinical systems and complete a general overhaul of its IT. The overall HealthSmart programme is over two years later and substanitally over budget.

However the implementation of Oracle E-Business Suite has been completed in 8 of 11 sites, with the remaining sites due to go live this month. This makes it the best performing stream of the entire programme of work. The budget overrun of 2% is trivial compared to the problems that still beset the other applications streams.

Oracle has opened a Global Support Service Centre in Cairo, intending to grow to 520 seats. It will service customers in EMEA and North America including Oracle E-Business Suite customers. The working languages will be Arabic, English, French and Spanish.

Dr Tarek Kamel, Minister for Communication and Information Technology and Sergio Giacoletto, executive vice president, Oracle EMEA, opened the centre last week.