Epicor 9: The Accomplishment That Eluded Microsoft and Oracle

September 2008 – “Once upon a time, Microsoft embarked on Project Green, an ambitious undertaking designed to take the best of its four ERP systems and converge them into a single code base, albeit a fifth product.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, Oracle set off on Project Fusion. This was to be the lunar landing of convergence, melding the best of Oracle, PeopleSoft, and J.D. Edwards into the Apollo of enterprise applications.

Today, Project Green lives on as a set of design principles for future application development. The dream of one product is long past the REM stage.

Project Fusion has become the service-oriented architecture (SOA) framework for connecting the original Fusion ERP components with the subsequent acquisitions (such as Agile, BEA, Demantra, G-Log, Hyperion, Retek, Siebel, and the rest). Given that it’s likely that Oracle has other application purchases in mind, it might have been unrealistic to expect the company to ever deliver one master software suite…”

180 View – Congratulations to Epicor for doing what eluded Microsoft and Oracle. We anticipate that Epicor 9 will appeal more to new customers than existing ones. When merging/fusing different products, the developer’s goal is to take the “best” features from each system. But “best” is a subjective term. Existing customers may rely on functionality that is not considered “best”. As well, existing customers may have customized their system and these customizations may have to be redone.