Oracle targets enhanced S&OP with Interlace buy

In another shot across the bow of SAP, Oracle is in the process of buying Interlace Systems, a supplier of integrated business planning tools. Interlace's offerings ensure that sales & operations planning (S&OP) efforts remain on target.

Oracle will fold the Interlace offering into the enterprise performance management (EPM) suite it inherited from the PeopleSoft acquisition. Specifically, Interlace would fill out a gap in EPM, which currently is used for consolidating financials to create the bigger picture on enterprise profitability.

Interlace Integrated Business Planning complements and leverages existing business planning and execution systems, integrating relevant data from these systems and providing an environment for enterprisewide planning.

Using a common, dynamic body of metadata called Change-Based Data Modeling, and an Excel-like front end, planners can simulate the impact of varying S&OP strategies.

Interlace, until now, has played its partnering strategy straight down the middle. While already an Oracle technology partner, Interlace also is an IBM business partner, and has NetWeaver and Integration certifications from SAP. In fact, on the day of the acquisition announcement, Interlace's partner Web page offered a link to another page on the Interlace site detailing its SAP integration.