On 22 May 2011 Oracle Fusion Applications (Beta version) was available for download on eDelivery.

What is Oracle Fusion Applications:

‘Designed from the ground up using the latest technology advances and incorporating the best practices gathered from Oracle’s thousands of customers, Oracle Fusion Applications are 100% open-standards-based business applications that set a new standard for the way we innovate, work, and adopt technology’ (www.oracle.com)

To give you an impression of the end product see this demo.

To give an idea of the infrastructure of Oracle Fusion Applications, see the next picture.

This post and all posting still to come, will describe the installation steps to install Oracle Fusion Applications.

Who can say they never had the situation where you just can’t remember where a certain page or component is placed inside a PeopleSoft environment? I think nobody can. Oracle put an option in HCM where this question can be answered by yourself and it is called Portal Navigation Path.

When you navigate to this option through Set Up HRMS –> System Administration –> Utilities –> Portal Navigation Path, then you will see the following window:

Looking at the options you must be able to use atleast one to find what you are looking for.

Be aware that this functionality can only be used from version 9.1 with tools 8.50 and higher. The application version is most important in this, it is not a tools feature.

Recently the Oracle Applications team of Logica discussed the near future of Oracle Fusion Applications. In various breakout sessions, the team got a better understanding of Oracle Fusion.

During a joint session we had a discussion on a number of statements. A brief recap: 

• About the question that it still would take did some years there were diverging views. The majority agreed that widespread implementation and upgrades will not be seen in the immediate future. Oracle has a tradition that it will take a while before a full product suite is not only available, but also stable and ease to implement and maintain. 
• There is certainly a market for Fusion Applications. Both in HCM and Financials and accross all Industry Sectors. Keywords are: mobile applications, less need for customization and user friendly.
• Fusion Applications will be a re-implementation of the current applications like PeopleSoft. To our opinion both functionally and technically the difference with the current applications are so major that upgrading is not likely. Change management will be important. Financial Applications seem already familiar with process-oriented approach. HCM is more module / function-oriented. Fusion is certainly process driven and compares better with Oracle eBusiness Suite.
• On the question of what training would be needed, there was a dichotomy between the technical and functional consultants. The latter expected more training on new features such as integrated BI and the process approach. For the technical consultants the focus will be on Java / OAF / JDEV. A shift from customizations to configuration and integration. Impact seems bigger on technical side.

The next steps. Make it available in a sandbox environment.

Shortly after our meeting Fusion Applications became available for partners and one of our consultants is trying to implement Fusion Applications in our sandbox environment. Follow his progress http://twitter.com/#!/Hakanbiroglu

Ingredients:

For this demonstration Oracle Enterprise Linux (a.k.a. “Unbreakable Linux”) was used. Installed in a virtual environment with 1,5GB RAM and a 25GB harddisk.

The Release Value Proposition for PeopleTools 8.52 has been posted on metalink.

This realese of PeopleTools introduces and extends current PeopleTools technology that look and behave more and more like Fusion Applications. With this version the transition or fusion of PeopleSoft customers to Fusion Applications will be more streamlined.

In this post I will highlight some of the new features of PeopleTools 8.52