Oracle (Finally) Takes The Wraps Off Its Fusion Applications

Ellison said the new applications are built on a modular Software-as-a-Service [SaaS] architecture, marking a big departure from the older technology that underlies the company's current application products.

"It is a big project and we have been working on it for a long time," Ellison said of Fusion. "It's SaaS-ready."

"A modern user interface, integrated collaboration, integrated business intelligence, all of the modern pieces you need to do your job even better than you're doing it today with your current systems," Ellison said, following a demonstration of the applications that emphasized their interoperability and their sporty new user interface.

But Ellison also vowed that Oracle would continue to support its existing application products for at least 10 years, a vow that brought applause from the audience.

"We understand that our customers have enormous investments in existing Siebel applications, E-Business Suite applications, J.D. Edwards applications, PeopleSoft applications. A huge investment in, and commitment to, those technologies. We don't think all customers are going to replace what they have today."

Under what Ellison called a "Fusion Co-Existence Strategy," Oracle customers will be able to adopt Fusion applications over time, using them to replace older apps on a piecemeal basis or running Fusion applications alongside older applications to augment their functionality.

Following Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Siebel, Oracle outlined a plan to develop a new generation of applications that would ultimately unite the disparate product lines, combining the E-Business Suite with elements of the acquired products.

But very little has been said about the project in recent years: Ellison demonstrated an early version of the Fusion sales force automation application at Oracle OpenWorld two years ago.

Oracle also has found itself in heavy competition with younger developers of SaaS applications, including Salesforce.com and NetSuite.

The first set of Fusion applications won't be as comprehensive as the E-Business Suite, Ellison said, noting that it lacks manufacturing applications, for example.

The first wave of Fusion applications includes software for financial management, human capital management, sales and marketing, supply chain management, project portfolio management and procurement management. The suite also includes product and customer data hub tools, talent and incentive management applications, and software for governance, rick and compliance.

"It's the only suite of applications in the world that's based on standards-based middleware," Ellison said, referring to Oracle's Fusion Middleware line that supports the applications. "We used the most modern technology available.

But Ellison added that Oracle also relied on customer feedback in developing Fusion. "We had to have industry-specific knowledge from our customers to make these applications do what they are supposed to do. We have not built the Fusion applications in isolation."

Ellison said the Fusion code is finished, but the company is still "fixing bugs" and testing the applications with customers. He did not provide additional details on availability other than to say they would be out "next year."

Before unveiling Fusion, Ellison announced a Future release of the company's Oracle Enterprise Manager that will be integrated with the company's "My Oracle Support" online customer support service to collect system configuration data that can be used to build a "global configuration database." Ellison said that will be used to help design a next-generation support system that one day might be used for proactive problem detection, alerting IT managers to problems before they even become aware of them.

Ellison also devoted a fair amount of his keynote touting the capabilities of the Exadata Version 2 database machine that was unveiled last month.