The historical emphasis on process automation will be superceded by a focus on information-driven user interaction. That was a key takeaway of day two of the company’s OpenWorld show in San Francisco.
For Oracle, the next generation of applications will be information age applications, applications that blend insight and process automation, according to the company’s pitch.
That is what we are tying to deliver as part of the next generation of applications, said John Wookey, senior vice president of Oracle Applications. He said that while the industry has historically debated whether information or process was more important, Oracle’s view is that they need to be integrated and blended.
This is what we call the Fusion effect, he said, the objective of which is to provide customers with applications that provide information, presented in a way that will generate competitive advantage. This is the essence of Project Fusion.
Fusion is not about merging the best functionality from Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications, and there is no plan to attempt this, but about taking the best ideas and using them to create a new application, the firm indicated.
In this context, PeopleSoft was known for its user interface, its flexibility and its CRM capability, while JD Edwards had expertise in enabling low cost of ownership for SMBs and for demand-driven manufacturing.
The leading aspects of Oracle’s own application suite were its single data model and embedded analytics capabilities. These aspects are likely to be used to inform the Fusion design process.
Mashing together different design principles could be a recipe for a complicated disaster, but Mr Wookey said that Oracle is approaching the design from a perspective based on user roles, not isolated processes or business intelligence alone. The term Oracle uses is information-based.
It is different in its approach. It is about understanding specifics, about how an accounts clerk and a plant manager do their jobs. There are things they do in the system and things they do in their jobs in total and how with next generation applications we can make them more successful in how they do their job as a whole, said Mr Wookey.
It calls for a change in how applications are designed and accessed, with information being the starting point not a transactional activity.
It is a transitional change, he added, likening it to the paradigm change that occurred when the user interface shifted from text to graphical. You have to look at a better way of managing business activity and making it flexible so it can be managed by different people in the business and in different industries. You have to think more about a Google-type interface.
A new type of interface is a requirement for next generation products from all application vendors because processes do not map well to menu-based interfaces. This is driving a requirement for rich graphical process design tools and Mr Wookey admits that this is an issue for Oracle.
It has to be able to use this type of tool to build next generation products but also has to make them available to customers. Although it uses tools in house it does not own any so the company is considering whether to acquire, develop or partner.
Oracle has a lot to do in a short time frame. It expects to release some Fusion tools this year. In 2006 it is anticipating BPEL and BAM usage and the release of the next versions of current non-Fusion applications, plus operational dashboards.
The Fusion data hub, industry transaction bases and first applications are expected to be available in 2007 with the full Fusion suite arriving in 2008. Yet, that it a year behind SAP’s timeline for its next generation offerings; SAP brought its timeline forward when Oracle first announced Fusion.
Mr Wookey believes the Oracle timeline is achievable because it already has the platform and some of the tools available today and does not think that it will be an issue if SAP get to market first.
It is how and how well you do it that is more important than whether it is 2007 or 2008. We both agree that SOA and componentization is important. The debate is that we believe in adaptive processes and BAM and we have an advantage here because we have [this technology] today, he said.
NetWeaver does not have that, they have proprietary workflow and BPM, he added. I like our chances better because we have the tools to start building Fusion and they do not. It is very hard to build the tools and the platform at the same time.
