Friday, January 20, 2006

Is Oracle's Fusion really half complete?

Josh Greenbaum attended Oracle's briefing on Project Fusion, where co-president Charles Phillips said that Oracle is "half-way to Fusion." Josh thinks that Fusion is more like 25 percent complete, based on a start date of January 2005 (when Oracle acquired PeopleSoft) and Oracle's projected completion date of 2008.

Josh is also questioning the timeline based upon the fact that Oracle is counting on functionality from acquisitions to fill out Fusion:
I'm still very pessimistic about these dates, mostly because I still see a lot of unfinished business that I'm not sure can be resolved in time. One of the main issues is CRM: with the Siebel acquisition still not closed, it's hard to imagine that Fusion CRM, and the all-important customer record and vertical functionality that are supposed to be coming from Siebel, will also be delivered in this 2008 timeframe.

Then there's all those yet-to-be-acquired vertical applications that are supposed to propel Fusion into serious competition with SAP's vertical functionality. I’m not sure how you can deliver by 2008 something you haven't even tried to buy, much less integrate. Call me negative, but it's hard to imagine that Oracle is anywhere near half-way to its stated goal of a broadly verticalized product suite.
Read the whole article on Datamation.

Related posts
JDE users want Oracle's Fusion to support IBM technology
Brawl continues between Oracle and SAP
SAP slams Oracle's strategy as, Project Confusion

3 comments:

Dub Dubs said...

I agree with Josh. 50% complete is much too optimistic. Based on the quotes coming out of Oracle, simply having written specifications does not put you at 50%. Rather than posting my entire opinion, here's a link: Oracle Post on systematicHR

Anonymous said...

I agree that Oracle's statement is overly optimistic.
However, after having read a post from Joshua on the beauties of SAP Netweaver's strategy -extensively publicized by SAP- I would also put a 50% reliability on Joshua's comments re Oracle.

Anonymous said...

Well the question is what are you expecting as 'FUSION' arguably it is 50% complete but ....from my experience it's more like 2% complete..... (if as a customer I am expecting an integrated suite). you have to remember it has taken decades to get a product of this size and complexity 'working'....