We were unable to confirm whether the stories were correct before going to press but various blogs and the Wall Street Journal have reported that an internal email was circulated to Oracle employees on Monday announcing the news.
The word is that Thomas Kurian, who currently heads up Oracle’s middleware business, will also take on responsibility for Fusion Applications. Development of Oracle’s other business applications, namely E-Business Suite, Siebel PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, would be assigned to Ed Abbo, currently senior VP of the business applications group. Where Wookey is responsible for the strategic direction of both Fusion Applications and the other business applications in the Oracle portfolio, Abbo’s remit covers the existing applications.
Wookey joined Oracle in 1995 and has worked on the planning and development of several of Oracle’s applications, including CRM, Financials, and Projects, as well as the Healthcare, Financial Services, Life Sciences and Student Systems groups. He came to Oracle from his role as vice president of development at ERP vendor Ross Systems.
Our View
Wookey is a good front man for Oracle’s business applications strategy so it would be a loss if he moved on. Although not considered in quite the same way as Shai Agassi was at SAP, Wookey has been instrumental in driving development strategy and communicating it to customers and the market in general. His departure would cause consternation and raise fresh speculation about the progress of Fusion Applications.
There are several interesting angles to the rumoured reorganization of the applications development group. The most significant would be the separation of Fusion Applications from the rest of the business applications and placing it with the middleware technology, and middleware management. Although Fusion Applications is not dependant on Fusion Middleware Oracle is blurring the lines between the two.
Ever closer alignment on the development side could raise questions about the form of the next generation SOA application. Splitting Fusion Applications out from the applications development group could also reawaken concerns over the long term future of the existing applications, despite the Applications Unlimited promise and the Application Integration Architecture.
The timing is interesting too, coming in the wake of Oracle’s offer to acquire middleware competitor BEA Systems. The inclusion of BEA could alter Oracle’s middleware execution, which could have a direct effect on Fusion Applications.
