Oracle will not force transition to Fusion Applications

The new generation of business applications on the Oracle Fusion Applications platform which is initially completely developed on the principles of service-oriented architecture will begin to leave in 2008. The company is going release new software gradually, the module behind the module, within several next years.  The Sales Prospector application should become the first, it within a year will be followed  by Sales References  and Sales Tools.

According to the president of Oracle Charles Phillips, the company will not force the clients to pass to the new business platform quicker. Moreover, a part of clients can forever remain adherents of the product-based software of Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and other systems which is available for them. However they will be able to combine and add new features, using the separate Fusion components.

For simplification of such gradation the company made licenses for these products interchangeable that will allow clients to save the investments made earlier. Besides, a part of components of the new platform is included also into the software package of an interface layer Fusion Middleware. Thus, according to Charles Phillips, "if 75% of Fusion are implemented in software products already today, then there can be 20% of the companies will be able to pass to it tomorrow".

Mr. Phillips claims that Oracle quite is able to afford to support decades already available software products and at the same time to conduct full development of the new systems. The company, according to him, has sufficient financial provisions and has necessary number of the qualified developers at the order. According to Mr. Phillips, financial opportunities give to Oracle advantage in comparison with her main competitor SAP.

Though, perhaps, it is possible to argue with this his statement as SAP, without stopping support and development of the available business applications and products, released recently absolutely new development of Business ByDesign on which creation she worked several last years and also continues work on own integration NetWeaver platform. Unlike Oracle, SAP it is not necessary to spend the considerable funds (estimated at tens of billions of dollars) for integration of the purchased developments though the company nevertheless made several serious purchases recently.

SAP is guided more nevertheless by creation of the systems "from scratch" by own forces. Charles Phillips characterized the strategy of Oracle as the purchased, introduced innovations (acquired innovation). According to him, now to create new the companies and to begin own development it is not required to raise considerable funds. Therefore the innovation products can be created quickly enough. At this Oracle, purchasing such "startups", undertakes all administrative functions, allowing at the same time the companies to create the development strategy and promotions. Together with it, Oracle is ready to purchase also the large, already taken place companies to attach their market share.

The main strategy of Oracle is the offer to clients of the maximum number of ready-made, "boxed" solutions. Integration solving of tasks the company also intends to undertake, including integration with packets of different third-party producers (including SAP). According to Charles Phillips if now about a third of IT budgets of the company spend for acquisition and installation of ready-made solutions, then Oracle hopes to bring this share to two thirds.

As for development of applications "on demand", according to Mr. Phillips, the company already has more than 3.5 million users subscribers for the systems of the class CRM, ERP, management of finance and personnel, and their number practically doubled for the last one and a half years. Now, for the first time for 2.5 years, income from the placed business applications exceeded income from sale of normal licenses. Actually, practically the company is ready to provide all the systems according to the SaaS model.

However unlike salesforce.com and NetSuite which support multiple model (multitenant) when several different systems function within one database Oracle is just focused on placement at itself bases of the clients, setup and support of their software that is considered safer and reliable approach (we will notice that adhere to the same point of view also in SAP).