For years some of the most widely used scheduling systems in the construction industry came from Primavera. Now, nearly two years after Oracle, www.oracle.com, Bala Cynwyd, Pa., announced the acquisition of Primavera, executives at Oracle confirm it will cease sales of both P3 and SureTrak later this year. 

Oracle continues to bring to market new releases of Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management—even announcing the latest release from Oracle OpenWorld last week. However, in the past few years, plans for both Primavera SureTrak and Primavera P3 have remained undefined.

Now, Oracle confirms it will stop selling both products on Dec. 31, 2010. However, the company does confirm it will continue lifetime support of both products based on its Applications Unlimited program.

Still, for the construction industry, questions linger. According to a recent survey of Constructech readers, approximately 35% of construction professionals use Primavera products from Oracle for scheduling. This shows SureTrak and Primavera P3 have been some of the most widely used scheduling products in the construction industry—second only to Microsoft Project.

While SureTrak and P3 users can continue to receive support from Oracle, some may choose to make tough decisions and look elsewhere.

Other options include moving to Oracle’s Primavera P6 software, which is more of a full project-management system, as opposed to a targeted scheduling solution. Other construction companies may choose to look to Microsoft Project to schedule—as many construction companies already use other Microsoft applications as part of their daily routine.

Still, this could open the door to more niche scheduling software providers to enter and dominate this segment of the market. Some scheduling packages include Phoenix Project Manager from Phoenix Project Management Systems, www.phoenixcpm.com, Bountiful, Utah, and FastTrack Schedule from AEC Software, www.aecsoftware.com, Sterling, Va., among others.

In the next year, it will be interesting to see which technology providers will move into this position and how the market for scheduling will ultimately unfold.

SOURCE:  CONSTRUCTECH Magazine - the construction industry advocate focused on the technology needs of the construction professional dedicated to driving technology initiatives forward.   http://www.constructech.com/news/articles