Oracle Fusion Applications To Begin Shipping By Year's End

CEO Larry Ellison, in a keynote at Oracle OpenWorld Sunday, said he would formally announce the new products Wednesday. He then proceeded to announce them.

"After more than five years, we're finally there," he said.

Oracle has taken functionality from its own E-Business Suite applications, as well as its acquired PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Siebel products, and rebuilt them to run on the company's Fusion middleware.

While Ellison will offer more details Wednesday, the ERP, CRM and HR management Fusion applications will be based on an SOA architecture to simplify integration, will be capable of running on-premise or in a Software-as-a-Service environment, and will incorporate business intelligence, social networking and collaboration capabilities.

Ellison said customers that use Oracle's current application products would not have to migrate to Fusion any time soon and that Oracle will continue to support the E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and J.D. Edwards products "for years to come. You can move to Fusion at a time of your choosing," he said.