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Wednesday 19th January 2005
Oracle Outlines Converged Future With Project Fusion
| CBDI COMMENTARY
Oracle has invested a lot to embrace Java, but has moved slowly in SOA. The huge acquisition and convergence task has clearly raised the importance of the API architecture and componentization for Oracle, and this is now their absolute top business priority. Both PeopleSoft and JDEdwards have considerably more experience of services than Oracle, and it's interesting to see the new Applications Strategy Team is being led by Jasper Andersen, who is ex Peoplesoft.
The progressive approach that the SOA based strategy delivers will play both to Oracle and its customers' advantage - it will permit Oracle to deliver converged product architecture very rapidly and for their customers, new and old to adopt them incrementally. So for all of Oracle's customers the transition is not too dramatic, and Oracle has a reasonable probability of retaining a very high proportion of the acquired customer base.
Whether Oracle is able to execute on the timeline is another matter. They are currently boasting that they have over 8000 developers, and that they have retained over 90% of the acquired development workforce. However all these developers are currently very busy and Oracle is maintaining that all development commitments will proceed unchanged. So it will only be 2007 before Oracle can release substantial numbers of developers to work on the promised replacement architecture. We would think it more likely that Oracle will deliver the full architecture in 2008/9. This may not be a major issue as existing or new customers are unlikely to want to effect complete replacement, rather adopting a progressive transition based on data hub and selective service strategies.
From a competitive point of view Oracle is likely to increase not only its application market share but also its middleware share. Although Oracle is committing to continue support for BEA and IBM application servers, the same caveat is being made - until 2013, and for most enterprises that will be sufficient to encourage them to make the move.
There are some interesting questions that we will attempt to address as we see more details on Project Fusion, around the openness of the Oracle architecture and whether it will equally open up alternative transition strategies as well as simplify convergence upon Oracle. Also whether the combined Oracle stack will implement any less lock-in than the equivalent from SAP.
Bottom line: The Peoplesoft acquisition is forcing Oracle to deliver an SOA based product line. This has to be good news and in general provide its current and new customers with a better, more open architecture. Whether this is the SOA your enterprise wants or needs is another matter, but that is business as usual. DS
LINKS
CBDI Report: Enterprise Applications and SOA?
STOP PRESS
Today 19th January we note SAP has provided a competitive answer to one of the questions we pose. They have announced a "safe passage" program for Peoplesoft and JDE users which comprises Netweaver based migration together with support for the legacy applications.
In making the announcement, SAP revealed that it had acquired TomorrowNow, an experienced third-party support provider of enterprise maintenance and support for customers of PeopleSoft and JDE. The SAP offering includes maintenance and software support for PeopleSoft and JDE solutions through TomorrowNow and will initially be directed at companies who are already joint SAP customers.
SOURCE: SAP | NEWS WITHOUT THE HYPE
On January 18th Oracle ran an event at its headquarters with more than 17,000 joining by Webcast and phone to discuss how the nearly 50,000-strong combined workforce of Oracle and PeopleSoft will support its 23,000 applications customers throughout the world.
At the announcement event Oracle were being extremely careful to keep the Peoplesoft and JDEdwards users happy. The rationale for the acquisition was always for Oracle to acquire the customer base and even Larry Ellison was walking on eggshells. However the usual steely determination was still evident and Ellison was quite open that support for Peoplesoft and JDEdwards products will be stopped in 2013. No ifs, buts or maybes - support stops at that date! And while there is commitment to continue development of the acquired products through 2005, 6 and 7, thereafter you might expect development effort to be seriously curtailed.
Oracle is adopting a core strategy to effect convergence of the portfolios as a major developental effort. The program, named Project Fusion, is planned to provide a common technology platform and interoperability architecture using open standards which will allow the products to move progressively to convergence.
Oracle SVP John Wookey described the strategy as leveraging the existing Oracle investment in Java, complemented with more metadata driven capabilities and an extensive API architecture. The first priority will be to deliver data hubs and transaction bases (assume this is Peoplesoft and JDEdwards on the Oracle App Server and Oracle Database). Thereafter we can expect a strongly process oriented integration approach which draws services from multiple sources.
Details of Project Fusion are extremely limited, but the Oracle spokespeople stressed the criticality of the service oriented architecture and the need for an entirely standards based approach. In the dev tools area, they are emphasizing standards of course because SAP persists in using proprietary ABAP tools.
Outline Roadmap:
2005 - continued releases- start introducing fusion architecture
2006 - first use of fusion architecture - data hubs and tx bases SO model
2007/8 - deliver successor apps, in family areas
2008 - full suite of new architecture apps (while continuing to support existing customers
SOURCE: Oracle
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