The Hindu Business Line : Promise of smooth passage

Oracle is implementing `Fusion' project to integrate its enterprise application offerings for customers - including those of the companies it has snapped up recently — with the assurance of smooth software migration.

Recently in San Francisco

IF you were a PeopleSoft or JD Edwards enterprise applications customer, how would you react to the mega $10-billion acquisition with Oracle put through early this year? With trepidation, I guess. Realising the magnitude of the hostile takeover battle with PeopleSoft that lasted over a year, the $11-billion Oracle Corporation is on a relentless campaign to sensitise, convince and allay fears among the customers of PeopleSoft/JD Edwards that their enterprise investments across these platforms will be protected at any cost.

Just protect... .well, that will be a huge understatement. Oracle is going the whole hog from `Protect to Extend and Evolve' the investments of its customers across the three platforms. And fusing them all into what Oracle has coined as its latest and probably a highly ambitious project to date - `Project Fusion'.

Simply put, Oracle's vision of Project Fusion is aimed at providing its customers with significant enterprise-wide `business insight' for improved decision-making using the latest technologies and automation tools such as service-oriented architecture or business activity monitoring. Though `Fusion architecture' encompasses the whole gamut from technologies, applications and services under one umbrella, the crucial centrepiece of Oracle's strategy is around building out the `next generation applications' for enterprises.

Highlighting the hot features of `Project Fusion' that has been slowly unfolding since the PeopleSoft acquisition, at the recently-concluded Oracle OpenWorld, 2005, at San Francisco, Charles Phillips, President, Oracle, said this project has a two-fold objective. One, to build a single suite of applications over time across the three (or four, if Siebel is added to it) platforms and two, to fuse `the best of the best' across them, so that they offer a superior and lower cost of ownership experience to the end-customer.

Spearheading the applications side of this project, John Wookey, Senior Vice-President, Applications Development, says that the building blocks to this project will be to blend the need for business insight with an adaptive business process that will help businesses respond to changing market conditions. The roadmap for Project Fusion application suite across all product lines has been fixed for 2008, with the first applications likely to come out by 2007.

While this was the starting point, the whole design process for this project could get even more complex as in the run-up to the Oracle OpenWorld that opened on September 18, Oracle snapped Siebel Systems, CRM software specialist, in a deal valued at $5.85 billion. If this deal goes through, subject to regulatory approvals, Oracle will be facing the prospect of integrating Siebel's applications also into the broader framework of Project Fusion.

Protect, Extend, Evolve

To get back to the original point, Project Fusion aims to address the concerns of customers who have installed different versions of PeopleSoft's, JDEdwards and/or Siebel application suites for different applications, say, for human resources, marketing or customer relations. From these applications, their ability to move forward, with newer version releases along with continuing support form the backbone of the three pillars: Protect. Extend. Evolve.

Protect (Existing investments): In the first keynote address on the opening day of Oracle OpenWorld, Charles Phillips announced lifetime support for all Oracle applications, including those acquired through its blockbuster acquisitions. This was clearly intended as a signal that Oracle plans to support the current applications across all its acquisitions - PeopleSoft, JD Edwards (and Siebel, after it goes through). This essentially means that customers who are using the existing versions of these applications can continue as long as they are comfortable with them and that too, with uninterrupted support.

Extend (Value with new releases): Will PeopleSoft or JDEdwards customers be left out of the loop while the ambitious Project Fusion is in the making scheduled tentatively for 2008? To assuage these concerns, in a presentation, John Wookey spelt out newer releases for all the three existing enterprise platforms in 2006 and a clear migration path with defined timelines to let customers extend their investment. For instance, he pointed out that PeopleSoft Enterprise 8.9 customers could progress to the planned release of PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0 in 2006 and so could JD Edwards and Oracle customers.

Each of these new releases will add incremental applications and functionality, which will help customers get additional benefits. As an example, JD Edwards Enterprise One suite is building operational dashboards (with business activity monitoring) into the next release 8.12 (from 8.11) of its product suite to help senior executives get actionable and real-time business intelligence. And to top it all, Oracle's Fusion middleware is being pushed as the right glue to help different applications talk to each other without any hiccups, say JD Edwards inventory management platform with PeopleSoft's HR tool and Oracle's financials.

Evolve (into a new generation): Finally, the customers retain the option of moving directly to applications created by Project Fusion by 2008. The evolution path is significant as it offers the opportunity to combine the best-of-breed strengths of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Oracle (probably Siebel, to be added) into a new integrated Fusion platform. According to John Wookey, the strengths of each of these platforms have been identified. For instance, PeopleSoft offers ease of change, better user interface and strength in CRM (customer relationship management). JD Edwards has low TCO (total cost of ownership) for SMBs (small and medium businesses) and manufacturing. And Oracle can provide a single data model (built on a unified database, middleware and applications), embedded analytics and high-tech depth (such as Java, Web services and XML) in its E-Business Suite.

Some of the PeopleSoft/JD Edwards customers who attended Customer Panel discussions at Oracle OpenWorld expressed satisfaction that the lifetime support policies and a clear migration path is likely to ease the pain that they were expecting from these acquisitions. With a clearly defined roadmap, customers felt that the challenge for Oracle now boiled down to `executing on these promises'.

Picture by P.V. Sivakumar

maverick@thehindu.co.in

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