Oracle Releases Primavera Prime – New Cloud-Based PPM Solution

This past week, Oracle announced a new product offering under the Primavera banner – Oracle Primavera Prime. Although details are few and limited to press releases and one-pagers, Oracle Primavera Prime appears to fit into the Project Portolio Management (PPM) space.

Described as a “next-generation PPM solution” that “leverages engineered systems vision to deliver exception performance and ROI”, my first question is where does Oracle Primavera Prime sit in the Primavera suite and does it have overlaps with existing Primavera PPM products such as Oracle Primavera Portfolio Management, P6 EPPM and Primavera Unifer? It may take some time for clarity to set in.

For some time, Oracle has been talking about it’s Red Stack integrated software / hardware platform and the next generation of applications that were specifically designed to run on Red Stack. It looks like Oracle Primavera Prime is the first Enterprise PPM offering that meets that promise.

Oracle is all about the Cloud

Oracle Primavera Prime is a cloud-based web application. It’s java-based and on runs on Weblogic, just like Primavera P6 EPPM does. Like EPPM, this is software that an organization would install on their own internal webservers or securely in the cloud. It’s also mobile-ready which is nice.

Integration and Connections

Since Oracle Primavera Prime is a high-level PPM planning tool, you will still need your detailed project plans, which in a cloud-based world, would be managed in Primavera P6 EPPM. Primavera Prime integrates with P6 EPPM through Primavera Gateway. My guess is that you’ll be able to push or pull data between EPPM and Prime through Gateway.

Oracle Primavera Prime, like EPPM, will connect to Oracle BI and Oracle’s content repository tool. Apparently workflow functionality is built-in.

Here’s an overview of Oracle Primavera Prime’s architecture:

Oracle Primavera Prime Module Released:
Capital Plan Management

Oracle Primavera Prime Capital Plan Management is the first module released for Oracle Primavera Prime and is already available for download on Oracle’s software delivery site. It looks like Oracle will be developing modules as they go and releasing them. This modularization is similar to SAP or Oracle eBusiness and is becoming standard architecture for Enterprise software.

Here’s what features you can expect from Oracle Prime Capital Plan Management:

— Budget Planning: Enables capital planners to allocate budgets, review
annual budgets against targets, recommend priorities, and model
strategies to manage long-range capital planning requirements.

— Project Initiation Governance: Allows key stakeholders to review
proposals for new projects and support planning for active as well as
planned projects.

— Project Costing: Empowers project managers to easily manage the
time-phased cost planning of a project from inception to completion.

— Project Selection: Supports the project prioritization and selection
process allowing capital planners to develop a capital portfolio that is
balanced and configurable across multiple dimensions such as location,
project type and risk/reward.

— Business Process Management: Provides customizable forms and business
workflow processes to facilitate the easy and smooth execution of the
capital planning process.

— Strategic Alignment and Compliance: Supports alignment and compliance
with company priorities by providing reporting and performance
monitoring controls to meet company targets, monitor project performance
against pre-defined thresholds, predict spends and to mitigate risk.

— Portfolio Monitoring: Enables capital planners to make easy, agile and
strategic changes, when necessary, across multiple projects by providing
visibility into project budgets and timelines.

— Collaboration: Facilitates collaboration between project managers,
capital planners and key stakeholders during critical budget negotiation
cycles as well as throughout the capital project lifecycle via inbuilt
workflows, discussion and notification capabilities.

— Integration with Oracle’s Primavera P6: Enables time-phase details to
be shared between each solution related to budget, cost and
schedule progress.

— Mobile Support: With zero additional applets or plugin footprint, Oracle
Primavera Prime Capital Plan Management is designed for easy consumption
on mobile devices.