Oracle will announce its next-generation flagship applications suite at a company event next week.

Oracle will announce its next-generation flagship applications suite at a company event next week, which may help spur recently lackluster sales in the company's fastest-growing business. At the Oracle ORCL OpenWorld 2000 event at the company's headquarters, Chief Executive Larry Ellison is expected to debut new products that could heat up the e-business software rivalry between Oracle and Microsoft - the world's two largest software powers. The announcement comes just weeks after lower-than-expected application sales in the August quarter took an 8 percent bite out of Oracle's stock. And it comes just days behind Microsoft's rollout of a family of new e-commerce software. Key for Oracle will be its attempts to market its product as the most reliable suite of software for handling cost-cutting corporate tasks such as online procurement, human resources management and customer relationship management. The new software is expected to be phased in over the next six months. Oracle's new software - along with increased efforts in sales and marketing -- may help ensure that the company won't disappoint analysts with its application software sales in future quarters. The company's applications business, which drives Oracle's stock valuation, increased sales 42 percent in its August quarter, to $156 million. Larry Ellison, Oracle's chief executive, said the sales gains came at the expense of competitors, especially Microsoft and IBM . In addition to a planned applications suite update, Oracle plans to unveil a revision of its top-selling software product: the Oracle's 8I database. It's expected to come with improved administration software and better security functions.