Oracle announced Monday that it is planning to configure a new student information system for higher education institutions with a focus on mobile and social features, and provide it as software-as-service, Campus Reform reported.

The new Oracle Student Cloud service will be able to manage "a variety of traditional and non-traditional educational offerings, and feature a dynamic user interface that promotes engagement and collaboration.

"No other company on the planet can draw on the rich portfolio of IP, development talent, deployment and implementation experience, and industry expertise than Oracle," Cole Clark, Oracle's global vice president for education and research, said in a blog post. "While I've said in this blog in the past that it's a very exciting time to be a part of the higher education IT ecosystem at this point in the industry's evolution, our focus on developing a modern SIS for higher education of 2015 and beyond makes this period even more compelling."

The Software giant will also release new features for higher education in its HCM (human capital management) and ERP (enterprise resource planning) cloud services during this year and next, accord to a press release.  The capabilities will target areas such as union contracts and grant management, and will be tied into Oracle Student Cloud.

The software giant, along with other enterprise resource planning software providers, has recently been challenged by new entrants into the market such as Workday and Kuali, "who have promised more flexible and lightweight student information systems."

"Oracle's worried about Workday who's been gaining traction and really the key head to head competitor in these deals," analyst Ray Wang, chairman and founder of Constellation Research, told The Computer World. "The goal here is to let the core base of PeopleSoft customers know there's a future path with Oracle while ramping up the marketing against Workday."