The Hindu Business Line : Oracle working on common platform for newer versions of product lines

ORACLE Corporation is facilitating a smooth transition for its large global user-base while moving into an integrated product line by 2007-08, according to its Senior Vice-President, Applications Technology, Mr Cliff Godwin.

Entrusted with the charge of a large group working on applications that integrate various product streams from Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, Mr Godwin heads a 1,000-strong team.

Speaking to Business Line at Oracle's India development centre (IDC), Mr Godwin said, "As we provide newer versions of the respective product lines, we are working on creating a common platform under the Project Fusion. The objective is to protect customer investments as they transition to next-generation products. The IDC is a crucial part of this transition."

Referring to the company's technology direction, Mr Godwin said, "The fusion platform for Oracle applications brings in next-generation applications. While this effort continues, the group also ensures that during the transition to this stage, which is likely to be completed by 2008, every customer would be able to manage change without any disruption."

The group is responsible for ensuring that Oracle applications effectively leverage various systems and technologies and help build common objects and services. In fact, in several areas customers can access some functionalities even before they are actually released with the new product, he said.

"As a part of this exercise, we work with system integrators such as Infosys and Satyam and take their feedback on projects and ensure concerns, if any, are addressed," he said.

The project seeks to ensure that customers enjoy better experience while reducing overall costs for deployment, maintenance and upgradation of various enterprise applications, especially shared enterprise services.

With the merger of Oracle and PeopleSoft, about 1,000 employees from Hexaware and Covansys have been inducted into Oracle.

On demand computing: "There is likely to be some shift towards `Software as a service', which is also referred to as `On Demand' computing. Some customers would opt for this. They don't want to own and manage software in the enterprise. All these would now be handled by a service provider that has expertise. This could be Oracle," he said.

In the next three to four years, many more companies would opt for on demand computing over the Web, he said.

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