Oracle Offers Roadmap For Combining Taleo, Fusion Applications

Oracle will integrate its soon-to-be-acquired Taleo cloud-based talent management applications with its own Fusion Human Capital Management software and with the Oracle Public Cloud service under a plan outlined by Oracle executives Friday.

"We're bringing the two solutions together on a Software-as-a-Service basis, delivered through the cloud," said Thomas Kurian, Oracle executive vice president of product development, in a Webcast.

But Oracle will continue to offer the Taleo software, including applications for employee recruiting, training and development as individual modules, Kurian said.

Earlier this month Oracle and Taleo announced a deal under which Oracle will acquire Taleo, a Dublin, Calif.-based developer of cloud-based human resource management applications, for $1.9 billion. The companies expect to complete the acquisition around the middle of the year.

The executives emphasized that while the Taleo acquisition adds to Oracle's Fusion application plans, it doesn't disrupt them. "There's no change to our strategy or our Fusion roadmap and release schedule," said Oracle president Mark Hurd, in the Webcast. "Taleo is incremental to Fusion."

Oracle's next-generation Fusion financial, HCM and CRM applications are designed to eventually succeed its Oracle E-Business Suite and acquired applications such as PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel. Oracle announced the general availability of the Fusion applications, which have been under development for a number of years, at last fall's Oracle OpenWorld conference.

Taleo's applications for employee recruiting, onboarding, and learning and development will become part of the Fusion HCM lineup. The Taleo performance management application will be combined with the Fusion HCM performance management application "into a single offering that has all the features [of both] and will allow for a seamless upgrade for all customers," Kurian said.

The rest of the Fusion HCM application lineup will remain as is, including software for employee engagement and retention, compensation and benefits, and talent review. That last application helps organizations study the skills of their employees and develop hiring, compensation and succession plans to meet the organization's expected needs.

The Taleo software also will become part of Oracle's Public Cloud service which also was unveiled at last year's Oracle OpenWorld. That will expand the applications' capabilities, such as making it possible to develop a "talent directory" of employee skills and use predictive analysis to identify key employees who are at risk of leaving.

"Oracle intends to integrate Taleo with the Oracle Public Cloud because it allows us to extend Taleo's capabilities with social networking, identity management, business analytics and a number of other capabilities that are part of Oracle's Public Cloud," Kurian said.