Defense Dept. Chooses Oracle Financials To Track Government's Fuel Resources - Defense Energy Support Center selects Oracle Financials - Company Business and Marketing

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, May 10, 1999

Oracle Software Will Become Enterprise Platform For New Fuels Automated System (FAS) Effort

The US Defense Department's (DOD's) Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) will modernize its nationwide military and civilian energy management systems with Oracle US Federal Financials applications. DOD officials say key reasons for selecting the Oracle software were its scalability, interoperability, very large database (VLDB) architecture, data security and system management tools.

The DESC manages and tracks all Defense Department and federal civilian agency energy resources. The center oversees contracts with petroleum suppliers valued at about $4 billion annually and is responsible for management of wholesale federal government fuel inventory worldwide.

The DESC will use Oracle software as the enterprise platform for a modernization effort called the Fuels Automated System (FAS). The DESC acts as the designated representative of the Defense Logistics Agency in conducting the Pentagon's financial and inventory management of petroleum, natural gas, fuel oils, coal and electricity. Full implementation of the FAS system, which will enable point-of-sale data collection, inventory control, distribution, finance and accounting, acquisition, and facilities management, is expected in the fall of 2000. At that time, DESC officials estimate the FAS system will handle as many as 39 million transactions per year occurring on Oracle databases.

Using the Oracle database and applications, the DESC aims to lower life-cycle costs while taking advantage of embedded best practices and streamlining other business processes. The agency also plans to use the Oracle8 data server to build its data warehouse for FAS.

"The COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) solution Oracle has provided will automate many of the business practices and increase employee productivity," says Hank Marrangoni, the FAS Program Manager and DESC CIO. "The Oracle solution will provide for near real-time information management and inventory/financial reconciliation. A key piece to the enterprise solution was the adaptability of commercial business practices to those of DESC."