ERP Associates, Inc.

If you didn’t see Thursday’s Fusion Applications Unconference session, you missed out on the best Fusion Applications informational session in the whole conference.  Why was it so good? Because Oracle lifted the non-disclosure restrictions around Fusion Applications earlier that morning, and the people that have been the closest to the Fusion Applications can now speak freely about what they know.

And what do they know?  They LOVE Fusion Applications and they can’t WAIT until they are running in their respective companies. 

So what makes Fusion Apps so great?  From what I’m hearing, Fusion isn’t really a "fusion" of the best parts of PeopleSoft, EBS, JDE, Siebel, etc.  It was more of a ground-up redesign of everything based on how customers said they do business now.  As a result, Fusion focuses on end-to-end business process instead of module silos.  There is a lot of automation around those processes.  And information appears on the pages when and where you need it with additional information never more than a click away.

The screen shots show an elegant and intuitive interface, with a more static task list on the left and a context sensitive area on the right.  BI was blended with the rest of the app.  While I couldn’t tell from the screen shots, I was told that it wasn’t BI for the sake of BI.  There is just the right amount of information with drilldown to additional information never more than a click away.

I heard at least twice that you’re going to run departments with fewer people.  And this wasn’t from Oracle, it was from customers who have been validating Fusion.  With the exception-based workflow, there will be “no downtime in payroll information anymore”.  Project reconciliation and project invoicing received similar glowing reviews.  And you can be sure that any GL balances are already in the Essbase cube – no length cube extract and build required. 

All that being said, Fusion hasn’t shipped yet and there are still a lot of important questions to answer.  Some of my favorites:

• Fusion is all about choice and you can mix and match modules from other ERP applications (PS, EBS, SAP).  But what penalties do you incur when you try this in terms of overall usability and support?
• What is the upgrade process from PeopleSoft to Fusion going to look like (assuming there is one)?
• What are we going to do with our PeopleSoft customizations?  (I think the likely answer is that we’ll have to redevelop them).
• If we’re looking at a new, greenfield implementation should we wait for Fusion to be released before making a decision?

There hasn't been much information around Fusion applications, presumably because Oracle didn’t want to confuse the Fusion Applications message with the Apps Unlimited message which says Oracle will continue to enhance its existing product lines both strategically and tactically.  But I expect to hear more about Fusion Applications in the coming months as Fusion moves toward GA.

As an aside, the Apps Unlimited message was repeated in various different sessions by various executives.  If you are a PeopleSoft technical expert, you can remain a PeopleSoft technical expert as long as customers continue to purchase and upgrade PeopleSoft – which may be a very long time.  But if you would like to switch over to Fusion Applications at some point in your career, here’s the laundry list of Fusion Middleware components you should start getting familiar with:

• Java
• ADF Faces
• BPEL (including Business Rules)
• Web Center
• Oracle Metadata Service (MDS)
• Essbase, OBIE, BI Publisher, Primavera

If you would like more information about Fusion, the IOUC has a channel created for user feedback and anyone in the user group can ask questions.  In addition, I believe that they are going to host a Fusion Applications Q&A session in the near future.  If you’re not a member (like myself), you can follow these blogs by Ace Directors who are very familiar with Oracle Fusion:

·         ORCLville by Floyd Teter

·         Debra’s thoughts on Oracle and User Groups by Debra Lilley 

·         All About Fusion by Basheer Khan.  Basheer also maintains a more general Oracle blog called All About Oracle.