Oracle has continued its push into business intelligence analytics following its merger with PeopleSoft by releasing PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 9.

The release adds broader enterprise planning and compliance management capabilities, as well as more features specific to higher-education institutions, including a Campus Solutions Warehouse module.

Oracle said the new functionality would help colleges respond to challenges such as global competition for students and increasing regulatory requirements.

“The ability to report from student administration, human resource and finance data marts within one application is a valuable tool for higher education,” said Donna Furon, CMS data warehouse project director at the California State University, in a statement.

Oracle has also enhanced other capabilities by integrating Planning and Budgeting with Workforce Rewards and Human Capital Management capabilities to help users improve control over employee compensation.

The suite also includes a new feature called Enterprise Global Consolidations, which collates financial data from disparate sources to aid compliance procedures.

Ronan Miles, chairman of the UK Oracle User Group, said PeopleSoft users were generally content with their lot after a year and a half under Oracle’s aegis.

“Oracle’s Applications Unlimited announcement [promising generations of product enhancements] has made a whole bunch of them feel their initial investment is safe,” Miles said.

However, Miles said that the commitment could be a challenge to Oracle’s long-term strategy of migrating users to a unified applications platform called Fusion.

“Applications Unlimited was there to defend their share of the market but it doesn’t half [create problems for Oracle by] asking users to move their current estate to a new estate. It’s a two-edged sword.”

The UKOUG will present the latest findings on user satisfaction at its annual conference that runs 14-17 November in Birmingham.

Separately, Oracle has released Oracle Application Express Release 2.2. The new version of its free toolkit for developing web applications is intended to simplify the process of installing applications to Oracle databases, and also adds an Access Control Wizard.