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Oracle's Phillips touts Fusion's heat

The company is baking its Fusion strategy into its enterprise software applications "at the factory."

Dawn Kawamoto Former Staff writer, CNET News
Dawn Kawamoto covered enterprise security and financial news relating to technology for CNET News.
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Dawn Kawamoto
2 min read
SAN FRANCISCO--Oracle is busy building branches to its Fusion strategy with enterprise software applications, Oracle President Charles Phillips told users here at the company's annual Oracle OpenWorld conference.

Phillips, who kicked off the users conference OpenWorld, addressed the company's product road map and its strategy during his keynote speech.

Phillips at Oracle OpenWorld

"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, and 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 those from the numerous companies it has acquired, including PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems. Fusion applications are expected to begin rolling out in 2008. Last year, the company debuted its Oracle Fusion Middleware suite.

Oracle has also been introducing strategies to keep PeopleSoft and Siebel customers from defecting to rivals, offering such programs as its lifetime support for those 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.

Phillips noted that the company is planning to expand on these new releases with further enhancements (click here for PDF) in the near future.

With the Fusion initiative, Oracle aims to integrate the technologies of the companies it acquires and build up its installed base. Phillips noted that acquisition deals come at an incremental cost to Oracle, given that it can use its technology stack to derive additional benefits.