In a bid to boost acceptance of its middleware offerings, Oracle has re-branded the products as Oracle Fusion Middleware and revealed a roadmap for certifying PeopleSoft and JD Edwards (JDE) applications.
Oracle Fusion Middleware is the new name for an existing group of products that make up the company's applications integration stack. They include Oracle Application Server 10g, Web services infrastructure, enterprise service buses, Business Intelligence (BI) tools, enterprise portals and mobile-data hubs and collaboration technology. Oracle database applications are not included, said Rick Schultz, vice president of product marketing at Oracle, in an interview.
Oracle is hoping the re-branding campaign will draw more attention to its middleware product offerings as it fights for share of mind with SAP's NetWeaver in the emerging Web services applications integration space. Since it is based on Java and Web services standards, Oracle claims it will be easier to use Fusion Middleware to modify Oracle programs and share information with non-Oracle-based environments. "The brand helps customers become aware of the different components, how well they're integrated with each other and how effective they are to integrate applications in the heterogeneous IP environment," said Schultz.
Though no new technology was unveiled, the re-branding announcement may be more important than many people think. "On one hand, it's a small item -- just a name change -- not meaningful by itself," said Yefim Natis, a vice president and analyst at Gartner Inc. " ... there's enthusiasm because it positions Oracle's middleware where it should be."
Oracle paid a heavy price for previous poor positioning of its middleware offerings. Marketing its entire middleware suite as application server software caused Oracle to undersell the market, said Natis.
This re-branding may help promote long-lasting benefits for Oracle's applications customers. "I believe [because of this repositioning] Oracle is going to be more successful in articulating long-term prospects for users," said Natis. Moreover, the re-branding puts "Oracle in a position to, over time, establish a competitive infrastructure [with] SAP," he said. This is critical, he said, because even though Oracle middleware offers applications support comparable to SAP's NetWeaver (e.g., Java, .NET), SAP's offerings are better known due to latter's ability to consistently articulate its vision over the past two years.
The certification campaign, meanwhile, demonstrates some momentum in Oracle's long-term vision of integrating its recently acquired PeopleSoft and JDE lines in a single, Web services applications architecture. "Much of the PeopleSoft and JDE applications are already based on standards ... a lot of this is around testing not done before. Now, we're ensuring that components of Fusion Middleware can be used with PeopleSoft and JDE," said Schultz, adding that "this is the first time customers who are using PeopleSoft or JDE will be able to use our middleware with those apps."
Certification is a two-phase approach that differs for PeopleSoft and JD Edwards customers. Some PeopleSoft applications will be certified in Q2 of this calendar year; more will become certified and available by Q4 of this year. For JD Edwards, some applications will be certified in Q3 of this calendar year, with more added in Q1 of 2006, said Schultz.