Fusion Expectations
Posted On: 1/8/2007
Topic: What can we expect from PeopleSoft Enterprise's successor product, dubbed Fusion, and is there anything we should be doing in preparation for its arrival?
Call me a cynic, but I find it hard to believe that Oracle - the same company who originally claimed it would purchase and then destroy PeopleSoft technology - will now create a best-of-breed product that incorporates the strengths of both the PeopleSoft and Oracle application suites. Although it's too early to completely dismiss Fusion as marketing hype, it seems marketing hype is all that currently exists. It serves Oracle quite well to define the product in such vague terms. For almost three years or more (unless you actually expect it to be released on schedule) they have smartly pushed away criticism for halting development on the PeopleSoft platform. In the meantime, PeopleSoft customers and partners are given a very critical reassurance that the product they have used for so long will not be thrown away.
What has been stated about Fusion is that it will be strong on "standards," that it will "incorporate key strengths [of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Oracle applications]" and that it will be "Java-based," among other things. It seems more than just peculiar that one of the only single hard technical details released about this effort is that it will incorporate technology rarely ever used in any of the PeopleSoft architecture, but the cornerstone of the Oracle application suite. Any ideas as to which current platform the new product will favor?
By no means, however, am I suggesting that Fusion is nothing but a smooth spin on a new version of Oracle applications. If statements declaring the number and variety of development resources focused on Fusion within Oracle are accurate, there appears to be sincere intent to deliver something unique and, potentially, revolutionary - just don't expect it to look like PeopleSoft.
Douglas Pace
Pace-Soft, Inc.
We expect Fusion to be a functionally enhanced version of Oracle's e-business Suite. Oracle has spent enormous sums of R&D budget to build out its modern Java-based enterprise architecture (version 11i) and there is no reason to expect it would be abandoned due to acquisitions. In fact, Oblix, Retek, AND PeopleSoft functional technologies can ALL expect to be folded into this SOA-enabled technology stack as the years progress.
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