We have been defying the critics. Most companies in our industry would be happy to get one release out on time. We did five, said Oracle president Charles Phillips, as he announced the availability of E-Business Suite 12, PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0, Siebel CRM 8.0, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12, and JD Edwards World A9.1.
Head of application development John Wookey said the releases were a proof point for Oracle’s commitment to Applications Unlimited.
Phillips also promised at least one more release for each suite before the Fusion applications arrive in 2008 and reiterated the promise that the applications would be enhanced and supported for as long as customers required them.
That could become a rod for the company’s back. It was apparent that several customers were in no hurry to move to the just released versions and were planning to carry out long term assessments to see if an upgrade was warranted, and were not even considering Fusion applications at this stage.
Each application has been substantially upgraded in terms of functionality and integration with Fusion middleware and cross application integrations have been improved. Oracle is also developing web services to integrate old and new applications. There is also a focus on vertical industry capability, with Oracle having decided that is where future growth in enterprise applications will come from.
From initial customer reactions it appears the focus of interest will be on the new versions’ integration capabilities. This could cause Oracle a problem in the long run because if customers are happy with their existing applications and the new versions reinforce that, and the improved integration with Fusion Middleware and web services gives them access to additional capabilities, there could be less incentive to move to Fusion because they will get many of the benefits of SOA without having to undergo a migration.
Oracle is encouraging customers to upgrade to the latest versions by not charging for the upgrade, although that could have long term implications on application revenue and growth rates. It said that using the latest versions will ease the path towards Fusion because they use more of Oracle’s middleware capabilities and Oracle’s development model is to add more system level services to the middleware stack that tap into the applications. However Oracle middleware is not a requirement for either the current applications or the planned Fusion applications.
The company stressed that its Fusion application development project was ongoing. You will hear more from us about Fusion in the next couple of months, said Wookey.
At the moment though, Fusion remains a cloudy promise with Jesper Anderson, senior VP of application strategy admitting that because it was further away it and its potential benefits were less tangible. Until customers see and feel Fusion there will be uncertainty about it, he said.
