When To Fuse

Oracle, by announcing Application Unlimited are suggesting customers to take an evolutionary path to Oracle Fusion applications. In layman terms, they are asking Customers to take their own time to move to Fusion Apps. Which certainly has failed to enthuse most of the customers and most of them will hesitate to adopt the Apps in the foreseeable future. There is a hope that Larry Ellison might pull a Steve Jobs in terms of time to market and convincing customers to embrace the new technology. But ERP is not a fancy utility device and they might even miss the oppurtunity. As far as I (Oracle Apps Technical Consultant), am concerned, the big buck question is when is the right time to start learning Fusion? Or with my current skill sets (read Apps 11i and OA Framework) how fast I will get out dated?

One thing is for certain. Fusion is for real. I met few of my old colleagues at Oracle who are currently part of Fusion Apps development. And based on it, insider information or rumor or whatever you want to call, but certianly from reliable resources

• Coding is almost over and it might hit the market (may be to privileged few) around October 2009.
• It is toned down version with minimum features.
• It is developed almost from scratch. And not using the database design of EBS 11i or 12.
  
• Lots of RAD and less coding.
• They faced huge number of issues with Fusion Tech stack and believes it is still evolving and might take some releases to stabilize.
• Entirey different from OAF. There are some similarities.
• Dont worry about learning Fusion tecnology now.
  

Oracle is also recommending most Customers/Oracle Apps Consulting Organizations to start learning Fustion middleware and related technologies like SOA, BPEL, BIEE etc. And also promises that future releases of EBS will be using these techologies.

I will try to make a very silly guess how long OAF will last and when we should start embracing the Fusion technologies?

Oracle EBS Timeline

1987 - Oracle started its application division
1993 - First client server application release
1997 - Oracle announces native Java support and promises new set of RAD tools in Java. Genesis of Jdeveloper.
1998 - Oracle announces EBS 10.7 NCA
1999 - Releases Jdeveloper 2.0
EBS - Releases 11.0.3
2000 - First release of EBS 11i (11i1 and 11i2)
First release of Oracle 9i Application server
2001 - Release 11i3, 11i4 and 11i5
Release of Oracle 9i JDeveloper
2002 - Release of 11i6, 11i7 and 11i8.
Used JTF-the mother of OAF*
2003 - Release of 11i9
Started using OAF in its products.*
2004 - Release of 11i10
Maybe first stable and ironically last release of OAF as after 11.5.10 Oracle internally stopped providing enhancements or additions to OAF.*
2005 - Announces Project Fusion after acquiring host of companies.
2007 - Release of 12
2008 - Release of Fusion middle ware
Announcement of Application Unlimited and Evolutionary path to Fusion.


Timeline reference:

http://www.oracle.com/oraclemagazine/20/o20timeline.html

http://www.oracle.com/support/library/brochure/lifetime-support-applications.pdf

http://apps2fusion.com/apps/oa-framework/197-brief-history-of-oa-framework-and-future

* No references available.


Some observations based on the above timelines.
- It took seven years (97-04) for OAF or to be precise web based ERP application technology stack to become stable internally. OAF started percolating to outside consultancy world only after 11i10.
- It took six years and seven major releases for Oracle to release a relatively stable first application (11i7).

And my silly guess.

2009 - First cut privileged release of Fusion Apps.
2010 - EBS new release with more features from Fusion middleware.
2011 - First market release of Fusion Apps. Stable Fusion middleware.
2012 - Migration path to EBS to Fusion Apps clear.
2013/14 - Few more release of EBS slowly migrating towards Fusion and few more Fusion Apps releases.
2015 - No more new EBS releases and customers slowly start embracing Fusion Apps releases.

So,

- We got another two years for first stable release of Fusion Apps
- We got three years before EBS start looking like Fusion Apps.
- We got a good six year before Oracle might stop making EBS releases or OAF is completely out of the scene.

And a big question mark looms around the success of Fusion Middleware.

I don't want to make any conclusions and leave the readers to make chocies.