Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The Oracle Fusion

When Oracle Corporation has announced that it will release a new suite of ERP related applications dubbed as Fusion, the news greatly clarified the vision of Oracle for its applications strategies which has been a point of concern in relation to customers of PeopleSoft, which Oracle bought for $10 billion. Fusion was expected to serve as a point of migration for customers all the three Oracle platforms.

Oracle Fusion is a middleware. It is portfolio of standards bases software application products. Oracle Fusion spans many services which include J2EE and developer tools, integration services, business intelligence, collaboration, and content management. But lot of the products which are being marketed under the Fusion Middleware banner are not really middleware products themselves. Fusion is just some sort of re-branding move for many products of Oracle outside of their core database and applications software offerings.

Another intended use of Oracle Fusion is to support the development, deployment, and management of Service-Oriented Architecture. This middleware can easily leverage existing software investments such as from IBM, Microsoft and SAP (All of them are Oracle's competitors in ERP), through a pluggable architecture.

Oracle Fusion is a Java-based, service-oriented architecture that has an automated upgrade process from PeopleSoft, Oracle and J.D. Edwards applications. The Oracle Fusion Architecture can provide a robust, very high performance and highly available computing environment. With all these factors that the Oracle Fusion can deliver, a business can have a rich catalog of standard business processes in a wide range of areas such as CRM, ERP, and supply chain management. Evolution is something that cannot be avoided in business as nobody would want to set up a business without having to grow. With Oracle fusion, a company can have a dynamic business process portfolio that can evolve with the company.

Oracle has been careful in defining the line between Oracle and PeopleSoft as both could be though of as one but they need separate marketing image as well. While working on the Fusion, Oracle has made sure it maintained some separation between its Oracle and PeopleSoft development teams.

Oracle Fusion will surely be a great challenge to Oracle's nearest rival in the ERP industry – SAP AG. Oracle has seen Fusion as a revitalizing factor in its aggressive pursuing of leadership in the business applications market. The applications market has a wide array of areas for software solution development including software solutions used for managing corporate functions like sales, human resources and supplier relationships.

As a watcher of competitions among these software giants, I get excited everyday with new developments. SAP is now aggressively marketing its SAP xApps, a range of software products targeted at specific industries and have smaller footprints compared to other ERP implementations. Examples of the xApps include SAP xApp Cost and Quotation Management (SAP xCQM), SAP xApp Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP xMII), SAP xApp Resource and Portfolio Management (SAP xRPM), SAP xApp Integrated Exploration and Production (SAP xIEP). Despite the develop of a variety of business solutions, the development of software solutions to "Fuse" these things together is always catching up.

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