With its Fusion Middleware and database offerings providing the core to its technology stack, Oracle is busy building branches to its Fusion strategy with enterprise software applications, Oracle president Charles Phillips told users at the company's annual Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.
Phillips, who kicked off the users' conference OpenWorld, addressed the company's product roadmap and its strategy during his keynote speech.
"Under the umbrella strategy, Oracle's database and Fusion Middleware support the Oracle infrastructure," Phillips said. "The branches are the applications that leverage that core technology."
Oracle's Fusion architecture calls for developing its database, middleware and applications with its Fusion technology baked in "at the factory", Phillips said, noting that the unified Fusion stack aims to speed along installations, improve a system's monitoring and reporting, as well as reduce costs for users.
Users are keenly interested in Oracle's next round of product releases and whether it makes sense to jump to the next release or participate in Oracle's major Fusion migration, said Patricia Dues, president of the Oracle Applications Users Group.
Fusion is designed to combine the best technologies from Oracle and the numerous companies it has acquired, including its mega-mergers with PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems, and develop its next-generation technology. Fusion applications are expected to begin rolling out in 2008 and, last year, the company debuted its Oracle Fusion Middleware suite.
But Oracle has also been introducing strategies to keep PeopleSoft and Siebel customers from defecting to rivals, offering such programmes as its lifetime support for PeopleSoft and Siebel products, as well as announcing new versions for three of its major applications: PeopleSoft Enterprise 9, which debuted in June; Oracle E-business Suite 12; and JD Edwards 8.12, which was unveiled in April.
Oracle, Phillips noted, is planning to expand on these new releases with further enhancements in the near future.
Oracle is looking to leverage this Fusion stack by plugging in the technologies of the companies it acquires and building up its installed base. Phillips noted acquisition deals come at an incremental cost to Oracle, given it can leverage its technology stack.
