Larry’s Soft Launch of Oracle Fusion Applications
October 16, 2009 – “This week Mr. Ellison closed his keynote with the soft launch of Fusion Applications. To be honest, we’re not sure why the company waited until the third day of the event… During his keynote Mr. Ellison acknowledged that new products like Fusion Apps will turn E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and Siebel into old, legacy systems. That said, he pledged to support all Oracle Apps Unlimited for another 10+ years and to provide easy connectivity to Fusion Apps through modular upgrades.
The first release of Fusion Apps will include financials, human capital management (HCM), sales and marketing, supply chain management (SCM), project portfolio management, procurement, and governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC). The missing pieces in the initial release include the customer service components of CRM, manufacturing applications, and vertical-specific functionality. No information was provided for the dates or functionality planned for future releases…
We were surprised at how understated the Fusion launch was. One executive told us that this was the intended plan. There’s still a lot of work underway to ensure optimal performance and quality. Oracle didn’t want to overhype the new products for fear that customers might postpone current purchase decisions...”
180 View – Bruce Richardson, the author of the article, is right about customer’s postponing their current purchase decisions. There is no such thing as an easy upgrade path. First, there’s no way that Fusion will contain all the functionality of E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. Second, any customizations will not be so easy to upgrade. Third, there is a huge internal cost to move to a new system.
posted by 180 Systems at 10:27 PM 
2 Comments:
Hello Michael,
I was in San Francisco for OpenWorld and was present for Larry's Fusion presentation. While there is no question that Larry is excited about the new technology that will be imbedded in the next generation applications, he was also very clear about Oracle's commitment to continue developing, not just supporting, JD Edwards, Oracle EBS, etc. In addition, there will be elements of Fusion that will be developed in and for the existing product sets. He made no implication, inferred or otherwise, that the existing products would become legacy applications. As I have heard Larry describe on several occasions, Fusion is a journey, a fifteen year blueprint for the evolution of their application technology that will create new functionality for the existing applications and add on modules for all of the products as well as being at the core of the new one. It will give customers more choices as to what is the best fit for their businesses as all of the products evolve.
Given the huge amount of R&D that has gone into the JD Edwards product line alone since Oracle acquired it, I have no reason to doubt Larry's restated commitment to its future.
I believe that the article and commentary in this issue are not completely representative of either what was said at OpenWorld or Oracle's development plans. I would be happy to discuss this with you.
Gary Shaffran
Senior Vice President
Syntax.net
I agree with you Gary. Thanks
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