Are we bored of Fusion Applications?

As you know I have been involved in Fusion Applications since the first announcement of Project Fusion, and now I have seen some of the first release I am even more excited. But is everyone else or is everyone bored or worse not convinced there is anything to get excited about?

At Oracle Open World a few weeks ago I was very disapointed with the lack of presence Fusion Applications had in the agenda. Only 3 Oracle Sessions had the words 'Fusion Applications' in the title. The first was the joint presentation I did with Nadia Bendjedou based on her excellent paper 'the evolutionary path to fusion', then Fusion Applications Part I and Part II given on the Wednesday.

Nadia and I had a good attendance but Steve Miranda's presentations were I thought poorly attended, did people not realise they were on? It is a big pity because he actually demonstrated a fair bit of the content and for most people it was the first they had seen.

But am I basing my observation just on OOW? No, at OUG Scotland last week, I gave 2 presentations, one on automated delivery of Discoverer Reports and one on an update to Fusion. I know the Fusion was the last slot of the day, and Scotrail were on strike so some people left early but the numbers I felt were low. Those who did attend gave excellent feedback.

So my message to Oracle, get your message right, it may not be ready today for people to use but Fusion is coming and I like it. I want to go to R12 EBS first to take the additionally functionality available now, but I have Fusion Applications in my longer term sights!

Thinking of Fusion

So after the distractions of last week its time to get ready for Open World. My slides have to be in by Tuesday so I need to concentrate on them.

Like my friend Floyd I too have been privileged to have a ‘sneak’ preview of Fusion Apps. It is all under non disclosure so I can’t give any details but what I saw I liked, I loved!

What blew me away was the vision, all of the technology is here today and I could identify with it all, but it was all together in a single place.


So if the technology is available today, could I build it? Well not me (I’m not technical enough), but yes if I had the resources, the investment and above all the vision I could, but the problem with visionaries is we don’t take them seriously. Remember how we all laughed at the first mobile phones?

So Oracle has the vision and I hope that in no small way part of that came from listening to users. I know I saw what I wanted and what user group members have been telling us since the concept started.

I expect we will hear a lot more at OOW and then we can talk more. And Fusion is a journey, think back to that mobile phone, when we started to use them we always wanted the next model, I want Fusion v1 and I hope that Oracle will continue to listen to users as they think about future releases. A great opportunity for a proper Oracle enhancement process…