The Enterprise System Spectator: Oracle's Fusion strategy: clear as mud

Friday, August 18, 2006

Oracle's Fusion strategy: clear as mud

Earlier this month, I wrote a post regarding Oracle's intention to build its next-generation Fusion applications on the Oracle E-Business Suite data model and business processes. My conclusion: for JDE and PeopleSoft customers, Fusion will not be like an upgrade to a new version but a migration to a whole new product.

Since then, Josh Greenbaum had the opportunity to sit down with Oracle's John Wookey to understand "the details of where Fusion 1.0 planning is today." Josh writes for Datamation, "I will say that Oracle’s strategy is now starting to make some sense."

Really?

Josh sums up Oracle's new Fusion story as this:
Fusion 1.0, instead of being a superset of the functionality available from the different stand-alone products that Oracle now owns, will be a subset culled from Oracle’s many product lines. That subset will appeal mostly to companies that think technology innovation along the lines of web services and business modeling is more important than functional innovation along vertical industry lines.

This means that Fusion 1.0 is not E-Business Suite 13, though many of the EBS data models will be part of Fusion 1.0. Nor is this a "SAP-killer" by any stretch of the imagination. The reality is that Fusion 1.0 is an alternative path toward web services, modeling, and other next generation functionality.
Well that certainly clears things up now, doesn't it?

Josh indicates that Oracle is about to launch "a road show designed in part to clear the air about what Fusion Applications are all about."

If Oracle's interview with Josh is any indication of what they will be presenting to customers, they might want to practice in front of the mirror a bit more before hitting the road.

Related posts
Fusion to build on Oracle's E-Business Suite

by Frank Scavo, 8/18/2006 10:13:00 AM | permalink | e-mail this!

Reader Comments:

How interesting that Oracle views its target market as "companies that think technology innovation along the lines of web services and business modeling is more important than functional innovation along vertical industry lines."
If I look at MBS and SAP, both seem to have the opposite view of their target market - ie, they are pushing their VARs towards verticals.
Who is more accurate? From my experience in the small and medium market, MBS and SAP have it right.

posted by Simon G | 9:10 AM, August 24, 2006 | link to this comment

I agree with Simon's comment. SMB's do not concern themselves with the "pretty" wrapping of technology. They want to do things faster, better, cheaper, with less people, or all of the above.

To give up functionality for the sake of technology makes no sense in this arena. Is Larry just trying to be different?

posted by John Pellegrino | 10:02 AM, August 25, 2006 | link to this comment

i think fusion 1.0 is targeted at companies whose business processes are different than others and who just want an application developement framework upon which they can build their own processes, less vertical orientation may seem strange now but may be in future they will give you a framework where you can implement your business processes just like creating a flow chart and you can use them just like a wizard. i think this framework based on open standard and technologies will result in all the good things we like to see in large or small scale applications.

posted by girish | 12:20 AM, July 25, 2007 | link to this comment

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