Oracle Corp.'s long-promised new enterprise application suite, Fusion Applications, won't be a reality for at least another year, according to Oracle officials who spoke at the company's OpenWorld customer conference in September.
In 2005, shortly after acquiring PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, Oracle announced its plans for Fusion Applications, which, the company said, would be a new suite of offerings combining the strengths of its stable of application products, including E-Business Suite. Oracle said then that it intended to roll out a comprehensive set of Fusion Applications in 2008. In January 2006, Oracle said it was "halfway" to that goal. Since then, Oracle officials have declined to discuss the rollout schedule.
In panel discussions at OpenWorld in San Francisco, however, Oracle officials said the company is now shooting for late 2009 for a rollout of Fusion Applications. And, in a published interview, Oracle Senior Vice President of Fusion Applications Development Steve Miranda said only early customers are likely to receive Fusion Applications late next year.
At OpenWorld, however, Oracle did conduct limited demonstrations of pieces of Fusion Applications, including what it called Financials Fusion Edition, as well as new customer relationship management and human capital management applications. Officials indicated that the new products would feature tightly integrated business analytics and collaboration based on Web 2.0 technologies, such as unified communications, wikis, and instant messaging.