In the Oracle earnings call yesterday Larry Ellison said ““…next year we are going to be delivering the next generation Fusion applications, which we have been investing very heavily in over the years…”
4 years ago, I blogged when Charles Phillips and John Wookey first talked about Fusion.
I was extremely optimistic for them
“It was good to see Charles Phillips, co-President and John Wookey, SVP Application Development comfortably and passionately (at least on video) kick off the Oracle Applications Strategy Tour in New York this week. I have known Charles from his days as a financial analyst. He knows the enterprise application market cold and has a huge rolodex in the CIO, vendor executive and media/analyst community. John is a dyed-in-the-wool applications executive (yes, you can argue chart of accounts issues with him) with years of industry experience within Oracle and before that at Ross Software. It is good to see Oracle – finally - with solid applications leadership. They are going to need lots of it over the next few years.
Oracle will be trying to release a new set of “Fusion” products by 2008 – blending the best of Oracle, PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards functionality.”
Lots has changed since 2005. The economy. Adoption of SaaS and clouds. Huge focus on mobile apps and web 2.0. Less so on SOA. Many more Oracle acquisitions. John Wookey is gone. Oracle is an unpopular vendor for many customers.
But no Fusion. No explanation why the 2008 delivery date had passed by.
So when it starts to finally roll out in 2010 what will it look like? How complete will it be? Will customers clamor for it? Or will it be like Vista – years late, and a forced march for customers?
I mentioned I was extremely optimistic for Oracle in 2005. Pardon me if I am much less so today.
